... Doesn't go to whoever directed last night's penalty shot contest as part of the three-ring circus known as the NHL All-Star Game Skills Competition.
There was a time that CBC farmed out both directors AND cameramen to other organizations wishing to broadcast hockey. Such was the quality of both skilled tradesman that CBC could get large rental fees. Deserved rental fees. John Shannon became a famous hired gun doing that.
Along the same time line, Fox became involved in broadcasting sports. Fox's entry was fashioned around selling pizazz rather than substance. The side dishes rather than the steak. Turns out, keeping a small black puck in focus is a TOUGH job. And having a director with a quick trigger finger AND a bunch of toys he was TOLD to play with, created a style of showmanship that lost me as a viewer.
I hated Fox, but I always had stolid old stalwart CBC to depend on. Put the camera on the fifty-yard line, at centre court and most especially at centre ice. Use the fancy new toys in replays. But never, never EVER miss action, never go for the starlet shot in the stands and remember that the fans at home are in the highest-priced seats in the house, paying MILLIONS of dollars for the privilege. Collectively.
So, with abject horror I watched an event that was timed to be over in less than ten minutes. Utterly unwatchable ten minutes. With little narrative and baffling live action shots that seldom matched. Shots of equipment on the ice. Replays while action was taking place at the other end of the ice. Shameful, shameful, shameful. It was like NBC and Sportsnet had had a meeting as to just how far beyond credible they could push the ten minutes for the event. And they discovered it was a very, very low barrier.
I would have rather have watched ten minutes of MMA assault, ten minutes of horses and well-dressed people pretending they were at an event they actually cared about, rather than just to be seen, or an auto race twenty minutes in on a fine sunny day.
I will resent the whole production crew who robbed me of ten minutes of life until I die, which isn't probably that far away. So, that ten minutes now is a measurable percentage of the remaining life I have to live.
CBC broadcast it, so it gets the scorn, hatred and this abuse. The rest of the people involved, from the conception of the event through the execution of it, all deserve non life-threatening diseases. I am being charitable.
When I tune into a sports event, I want the best seats in the house. I want super-slo-HD-3D replays when play comes to a stop (I'm looking at you, baseball and football). I don't want herky-jerky bird's eye view cameras no matter where they are situated. Quick tell me NOBODY's ever thought of the jockstrap camera for catchers in baseball!! There seems to be no crease, crevice or hole directors won't put cameras. Some we applaud. Most we hate. And the inventor of the moving camera in real-time play, a staple of NBC broadcasts? Please, please never procreate. At the very least, authorities should step in to prevent it happening.
Some idiots call it boring. Old fashioned. Takes too much attention. THESE are the people Cyril Kornbluth warned about when writing "The Marching Morons." The Ultimate distopia.
Gimme back my broadcast. After all, I've paid the price with years of benign support. And you young snots have done nothing to make life more bearable.
In case there's any doubt, I didn't like the broadcast Mr. Director. And yes, that's me you see when looking over your shoulder. Be afraid, very, very afraid.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
SPORTS: Jumping to pass, Jumping the Passing Lane
The Toronto Raptors are suffering from scout-itis. What's that you say? Well, let me tell you a story from last century, when I was still young and almost able. That's to set the time. I didn't play in the game in question.
Peel's junior championships came down to a battle between the Bramalea Broncos, who had to go on the road to battle the hated enemy and the Applewood Axemen. It was good guy double blue against the red and blue of badness incarnate, Applewood. My bad left knee, injured by an Axemen still makes me growl. And it's been fourty years of grudge-carrying.
In the practices leading up to the game, Coach Gerry (T. Tough) Thompson decided that the number of games the two teams had played against each other, between league jousts and tournament showdowns, meant it was time to introduce a new wrinkle into the Bronco offence. It was going to be guard Bobby Hamilton driving the middle and dealing off to an open Bronco for an easily makeable shot or a drive for a lay-up. Bobby (I still called him that back then, when we were classmates and still friends) was the high-scoring shooting guard for the junior Broncos, not the point guard. Who was Joe Tucci, if I remember right.
The new wrinkle failed. Bobby couldn't master what was, in effect, the 10-day transition to point guard. He drove, jumped up in the air and could not find a teammate open to pass to, despite being ganged up upon by the Axemen. The game was lost and a lot of people blamed bewildered Bobby Hamilton. I didn't. I knew Coach T was the culprit. It was a stumble in a long career of successes. But it was a mistake.
I learned one lesson that day. You don't jump to make a pass unless you are 101 percent sure you will succeed. Not 100 percent, not CLOSE to 100 percent. You have to make the pass and have it lead to success before even IMAGINING leaving your feet for a pass. It's one of the things that was beaten into my head by coach T. Ironic, hunh?
Return now to the present and the Toronto Raptors. A team with a league-leading number of turnovers during the first few weeks of the season. League-leading as in the fewest. The Raptors crisply passed the ball and hit the open shot. Offence wasn't the problem, even as the team struggled on defence right from the start. The reward was a place atop the Eastern Conference in the NBA and jokes about what was the clinching number for winning the Atlantic Division (still such an utter probability that the stats kings still maintain Toronto's chances at being in the play-offs as 100 percent).
But then the cracks started showing. The Raptors started playing better teams. And the teams they handled so deftly the first time around, started making things difficult in subsequent meetings. Which was surprising. The Raptors had been one of the most stable franchises in the league over the summer. Outside of adding Lou Williams and James Johnson to replace John Salmons and Steve Novak, the core of the active roster was unchanged. Williams became a candidate for the best sixth man award, surpassing even the best of Salmons, and Johnson became the defensive equivalent of Novak's so-so instant offence off the bench. But teams SHOULD have known all about the Raptors. And even the new guys, who are both long-time vets.
What the scouts didn't know then that they know now, is that the Raptors are as emotionally strong as a sheet of paper blowing in the wind. The team did stage several fourth quarter comebacks early, thus hiding the fact that the squad was so capable of building deep holes. But the essence of beating the Raptors is easily definable now. Get them to turn the ball over. On any given turnover, the Raptors rarely have more than one or two players run back. Which has turned into embarrassment more often than should be accepted. Oh, the scouts add, "And play the passing lanes."
Play the passing lanes? THAT got pounded out of me early too. "Gamble with your own money," would chirp the coach. "You've got teammates to apologize too if you're wrong." The result on any gamble was easy to see on Coach T's face. If it was successful, a tight-lipped glare. Unsuccessful meant a seat on the bench beside him. Being beside the coach when he was angry was the worst seat in the joint.
The Raptors don't play good fundamental basketball. Compared to the San Antonio Spurs and even the Atlanta Hawks, few teams do. But is it ever more apparent that the key cogs on the Raptors don't get that fundamental basketball is the way NOT to fall into a hole, to make fourth quarters much, much more manageable.
And the culprits are many, no one more so than the heroes, Kyle Lowry and Lou Williams. Lowry has jumped into the air and delivered more bad bounce passes over the last month than I bet he's done in the last three years, total. It turns out, as you jump in the air and twist your body, calculating where to bounce a pass through a maze of arms and legs is a very, very, very difficult thing to do. It's almost as difficult as forcing up a shot everybody knows is a whistler, a shot with no chance to go in, but one that the shooter hopes prompts the referees to save him. It's bad basketball. And lately it's been losing basketball.
Don't get me wrong. Lowry is entirely worthy of his starting All-Star nod. But the result of alll of his frantic effort in the last month is less than the sum of his individual team-carrying moments. But please Mr. Lowry, only throw those touchdown passes when you know you will connect. Even with two feet on the ground. As for jumping in the air hoping a passing lane opens? Ah, just no. No. NO!
Then there's Williams. He's feasted all year on free throws earned by swiping at carelessly positioned arms while standing just past the three-point line. It's been tweet and three free shots from the charity stripe, except on the few occasions when his defender-instigated shot actually goes through and it becomes a four-point play opportunity. But lately, teams have punished players who defend Williams badly. Pine time. Williams is now facing defenders who stand straight up and force him into his favourite move, a drive left and an unbalanced shot that actually DOES go in a fair amount of time. Still, any properly-coached defensive team merely contests the shot and hopes for the best, which isn't bad. It would be nice if Williams at least tried the odd pass in end of quarter moments. He doesn't. And the other team knows he won't.
The two heroes aren't the only players who have issues caused by good scouting. Neither of the two bigs, Jonas Valanciunas and long-time favourite Amir Johnson have proven themselves capable of dribbling the ball successfully this year. If they don't make a quick, instinctive move, they seem more likely than not to dribble into trouble. And when they do pass, it's immensely predictable where they will pass to. So much so, that as an opposing coach, I would tell my players, "Gamble."
Terrence Ross has a book out on him. The number of cross-court passes he and Greivis Vasquez complete are simply not worth the too-frequent gambles on the part of the Raptors. Indeed, Ross has resembled Bobby Hamilton at times. He jumps and ... hopes for the best. Vasquez is just as bad on the cross-court and combines that with a spin dribble move in contested ball-handling that creates turnovers and two points at a frightening rate.
Consistent decision-making. Poor decision making at that. Taking gambles. The Raptors are missing All-Star DeMar DeRozan badly. The man inhabiting his uniform right now is not All-Star DeMar DeRozan. That guy covered over a lot of problems. And that guy's 20 points a night, calming effect on the team and good fundamentals can't be taken away from the Raptor roster and expect success.
The Raptors put out the effort. Sure, I cringe watching Valanciunas lumber up and down the floor and react at every referee call, innocent or (VERY OFTEN) guilty. And sure, coach Dwane Casey drives me batty not pulling the heroes in the same way as he does T-Ross and JV. And we all know that a few more long-range bombs falling or a return to form of the player formerly known as All-Star DeMar DeRozan will turn things around. The Raptors rarely seem to be missing actual physical effort. The occasional suspects, JV and James Johnson, would be appreciated more if they didn't visibly malinger every so often. But both players are productive and arguably actually deserve more minutes, since the carrot of playing time does not seem to have had a beneficial effect.
And the panacea of just jacking up three point bombs isn't as much of a solution as the Raptors hope. It's also particularly galling on the other four players who are running full tilt to join the half-court offence when all of that running turns out to be wasted.
Coaching to change habits is tough. But that's why they get paid enough for the fine suits and I sit at home, grousing in my pajamas.
Scouts are plaguing the Raptors now. The word is out about their most obvious patterns. And it's time to change that. New players via a trade? Or realizing the futility of just jumping in the air without any idea of what's going to happen next and saying, "NO MORE!"
That look of resignation on Bobby Hamilton's face lingers on, decades later.
Peel's junior championships came down to a battle between the Bramalea Broncos, who had to go on the road to battle the hated enemy and the Applewood Axemen. It was good guy double blue against the red and blue of badness incarnate, Applewood. My bad left knee, injured by an Axemen still makes me growl. And it's been fourty years of grudge-carrying.
In the practices leading up to the game, Coach Gerry (T. Tough) Thompson decided that the number of games the two teams had played against each other, between league jousts and tournament showdowns, meant it was time to introduce a new wrinkle into the Bronco offence. It was going to be guard Bobby Hamilton driving the middle and dealing off to an open Bronco for an easily makeable shot or a drive for a lay-up. Bobby (I still called him that back then, when we were classmates and still friends) was the high-scoring shooting guard for the junior Broncos, not the point guard. Who was Joe Tucci, if I remember right.
The new wrinkle failed. Bobby couldn't master what was, in effect, the 10-day transition to point guard. He drove, jumped up in the air and could not find a teammate open to pass to, despite being ganged up upon by the Axemen. The game was lost and a lot of people blamed bewildered Bobby Hamilton. I didn't. I knew Coach T was the culprit. It was a stumble in a long career of successes. But it was a mistake.
I learned one lesson that day. You don't jump to make a pass unless you are 101 percent sure you will succeed. Not 100 percent, not CLOSE to 100 percent. You have to make the pass and have it lead to success before even IMAGINING leaving your feet for a pass. It's one of the things that was beaten into my head by coach T. Ironic, hunh?
Return now to the present and the Toronto Raptors. A team with a league-leading number of turnovers during the first few weeks of the season. League-leading as in the fewest. The Raptors crisply passed the ball and hit the open shot. Offence wasn't the problem, even as the team struggled on defence right from the start. The reward was a place atop the Eastern Conference in the NBA and jokes about what was the clinching number for winning the Atlantic Division (still such an utter probability that the stats kings still maintain Toronto's chances at being in the play-offs as 100 percent).
But then the cracks started showing. The Raptors started playing better teams. And the teams they handled so deftly the first time around, started making things difficult in subsequent meetings. Which was surprising. The Raptors had been one of the most stable franchises in the league over the summer. Outside of adding Lou Williams and James Johnson to replace John Salmons and Steve Novak, the core of the active roster was unchanged. Williams became a candidate for the best sixth man award, surpassing even the best of Salmons, and Johnson became the defensive equivalent of Novak's so-so instant offence off the bench. But teams SHOULD have known all about the Raptors. And even the new guys, who are both long-time vets.
What the scouts didn't know then that they know now, is that the Raptors are as emotionally strong as a sheet of paper blowing in the wind. The team did stage several fourth quarter comebacks early, thus hiding the fact that the squad was so capable of building deep holes. But the essence of beating the Raptors is easily definable now. Get them to turn the ball over. On any given turnover, the Raptors rarely have more than one or two players run back. Which has turned into embarrassment more often than should be accepted. Oh, the scouts add, "And play the passing lanes."
Play the passing lanes? THAT got pounded out of me early too. "Gamble with your own money," would chirp the coach. "You've got teammates to apologize too if you're wrong." The result on any gamble was easy to see on Coach T's face. If it was successful, a tight-lipped glare. Unsuccessful meant a seat on the bench beside him. Being beside the coach when he was angry was the worst seat in the joint.
The Raptors don't play good fundamental basketball. Compared to the San Antonio Spurs and even the Atlanta Hawks, few teams do. But is it ever more apparent that the key cogs on the Raptors don't get that fundamental basketball is the way NOT to fall into a hole, to make fourth quarters much, much more manageable.
And the culprits are many, no one more so than the heroes, Kyle Lowry and Lou Williams. Lowry has jumped into the air and delivered more bad bounce passes over the last month than I bet he's done in the last three years, total. It turns out, as you jump in the air and twist your body, calculating where to bounce a pass through a maze of arms and legs is a very, very, very difficult thing to do. It's almost as difficult as forcing up a shot everybody knows is a whistler, a shot with no chance to go in, but one that the shooter hopes prompts the referees to save him. It's bad basketball. And lately it's been losing basketball.
Don't get me wrong. Lowry is entirely worthy of his starting All-Star nod. But the result of alll of his frantic effort in the last month is less than the sum of his individual team-carrying moments. But please Mr. Lowry, only throw those touchdown passes when you know you will connect. Even with two feet on the ground. As for jumping in the air hoping a passing lane opens? Ah, just no. No. NO!
Then there's Williams. He's feasted all year on free throws earned by swiping at carelessly positioned arms while standing just past the three-point line. It's been tweet and three free shots from the charity stripe, except on the few occasions when his defender-instigated shot actually goes through and it becomes a four-point play opportunity. But lately, teams have punished players who defend Williams badly. Pine time. Williams is now facing defenders who stand straight up and force him into his favourite move, a drive left and an unbalanced shot that actually DOES go in a fair amount of time. Still, any properly-coached defensive team merely contests the shot and hopes for the best, which isn't bad. It would be nice if Williams at least tried the odd pass in end of quarter moments. He doesn't. And the other team knows he won't.
The two heroes aren't the only players who have issues caused by good scouting. Neither of the two bigs, Jonas Valanciunas and long-time favourite Amir Johnson have proven themselves capable of dribbling the ball successfully this year. If they don't make a quick, instinctive move, they seem more likely than not to dribble into trouble. And when they do pass, it's immensely predictable where they will pass to. So much so, that as an opposing coach, I would tell my players, "Gamble."
Terrence Ross has a book out on him. The number of cross-court passes he and Greivis Vasquez complete are simply not worth the too-frequent gambles on the part of the Raptors. Indeed, Ross has resembled Bobby Hamilton at times. He jumps and ... hopes for the best. Vasquez is just as bad on the cross-court and combines that with a spin dribble move in contested ball-handling that creates turnovers and two points at a frightening rate.
Consistent decision-making. Poor decision making at that. Taking gambles. The Raptors are missing All-Star DeMar DeRozan badly. The man inhabiting his uniform right now is not All-Star DeMar DeRozan. That guy covered over a lot of problems. And that guy's 20 points a night, calming effect on the team and good fundamentals can't be taken away from the Raptor roster and expect success.
The Raptors put out the effort. Sure, I cringe watching Valanciunas lumber up and down the floor and react at every referee call, innocent or (VERY OFTEN) guilty. And sure, coach Dwane Casey drives me batty not pulling the heroes in the same way as he does T-Ross and JV. And we all know that a few more long-range bombs falling or a return to form of the player formerly known as All-Star DeMar DeRozan will turn things around. The Raptors rarely seem to be missing actual physical effort. The occasional suspects, JV and James Johnson, would be appreciated more if they didn't visibly malinger every so often. But both players are productive and arguably actually deserve more minutes, since the carrot of playing time does not seem to have had a beneficial effect.
And the panacea of just jacking up three point bombs isn't as much of a solution as the Raptors hope. It's also particularly galling on the other four players who are running full tilt to join the half-court offence when all of that running turns out to be wasted.
Coaching to change habits is tough. But that's why they get paid enough for the fine suits and I sit at home, grousing in my pajamas.
Scouts are plaguing the Raptors now. The word is out about their most obvious patterns. And it's time to change that. New players via a trade? Or realizing the futility of just jumping in the air without any idea of what's going to happen next and saying, "NO MORE!"
That look of resignation on Bobby Hamilton's face lingers on, decades later.
Thursday, January 01, 2015
BOOKS: Getting Closer to the Top 25 Books of 2014
There was a day and time when culling my yearly reading list to JUST 25 books that earned top marks would have been easy. I read mostly authors I had read before (yes, I know that comes close to being an infinity loop of logic) and I read A LOT. But life intrudes and my reading totals have taken a tumble these last few years. Decades really.
So, this year, the Top 25 list will be 21 books long. A good--maybe great--21. But this is my blog and MY Top 25 List and I reserve the right to do as I please. Full steam ahead.
As in the past, my rating scale is in Kovids, named after the programmer of Calibre, Kovid Goyal. Now, if you read eBooks rather than dead tree books, and have not heard of Calibre, hare thee off to Calibre's home page and grab this indispensable bit of software to manage your eBooks. And if you need to ask questions, MobileRead's forum devoted to Calibre will do all of that and then some. And when you are finished don't forget to tinkle the tip jar. You'll want to, just to let you know in advance.
Unfortunately, the one wee problem with Calibre is that the rating star system is capped at five. But with a little finagling, you can create your own star system. My STARZ system is a better ranking system, topping out at 10 Kovids. This helps me with the problem of the five-star system having no way to handle AVERAGE, which we all know would be 2.5 stars or 5 Kovids. But Calibre doesn't permit a half-star. My Starz range from ten (the list of which is contained here), down to scores like 8 (recommended to readers interested in the genre) to 5 or 6 (books that are average or just a titch better than average), to 3 (tripe, usually from writers who should do better) to 1 (couldn't finish the book) and all the way to 0 (an affront to all of mankind usually involving the unholy trinity of ideologies, Conservatism, Unchecked Capitalism or just plain old Crap repackaged).
By the way, all of the links I'm listing here are to author pages to be found at Fantastic Fiction. Not strictly a site for the imaginative, FF is the place I go to find out all the series information. It includes lists of what's coming out and roughly when. And it has links to the local Amazon from wherever you call a home base. Because so many of the books listed below are series entries, having one place to go to see what else is available and in what order they should be read, makes FF indispensable.
A good to great book vs a REALLY great book is the difference between getting a nine and being in that paragraph at the end that lists authors who put out good efforts this year and 10 Kovid writers who get a whole paragraph (or more) here on this most valued list. This year, I found THREE 10-Kovid efforts written by Mike Shepherd (AKA Mike Moscoe) and eighteen others that are worthy of (windy) comment. Surprisingly, despite having the largest plurality, Shepherd did not cart off the top prize.
For the second time in three years, the best book I read in the past year was authored by Keigo Higashino. Malice continues Higashino's uncanny ability to run a Columbo plot past the reader and engross the reader despite knowing whodunnit almost from the start. The trick this time out is that the book's villain is not only jailed quite early in the book, he also makes a full written confession!! And with many page clicks to go, I wondered if this was the first story in a short story collection. After all, rule number one is always to stop working once the customer says yes. Or something like that. As it turns out, the book becomes a whydunnit and solving THAT particular exercise is a wonderful delight.
I read a SF short story many, many years ago that has stuck with me throughout the decades although I couldn't tell you the author's name or the title of the story to save my soul. Alien invasion starts. The aliens have the ability to completely mimic us from head to toe and have been studying humans for years and years. They are completely and utterly ruthless and the invasion starts with one last scouting sortie to begin the assault. But the aliens-masquerading-as-humans are caught almost immediately and the high mucky-mucks of the alien fleet abandon their assault plans based on this seemingly impossible defence capability by the humans. The last sentence of the story reveals the twist. The aliens, dressed as they had observed humans dressed, were arrested immediately after leaving their camouflaged landing site, taking on human form and then arriving in a nearby small town. The aliens had landed in a nudist colony.
To read Higashino is to know that there's a literary nudist somewhere in the reveal. It's been that way through every book I've ever read that he's penned (two Professor Jupiter books published thus far on this side of the Pacific and this one in the Kyoichiro Kaga series). And yet I was completely compelled to get to that last sentence, page click by page click. It also helps that the killer and the victim are both writers, which appeals to me on several levels. Who among us have not contemplated the perfect crime? Writers take that one step further. Having writers play hero and villain in this book moves it another step beyond.
This is a delightful book. Do yourself a favour and delve into the Higashino library. It will be worth it. I guarantee it!!
The OTHER 18 books on this list can be broken down into Science Fiction, Fantasy, Sports, Mysteries/Thrillers, Humour and ... well, I'll get to THAT book down at the end of this post. You'll see why.
The afore-mentioned Shepherd has been awesomely entertaining. He sticks with military space opera and does it exceedingly well. The whole library pivots around his Kris Longknife, one of THOSE damned Longknifes. She's a tactical genius and the daughter of the Prime Minister back home and the grand-daughter of The Emperor and mostly responsible for the protection of humanity from a scourge that is becoming ever-more frightful every book that Princess Kris stars in ... which is now up to 12 with this year's Tenacious. By the way, there are assorted short stories and novellas that actually drive the total of Longknife books closer to 20 in all. Tenacious is a tad on the pessimistic side, with a lot of grim "Never again!" utterances. Ones that seems pretty legitimate. Shepherd has his cast of Longknife playmates intact, except for frenemy Vicky Peterwald. The book is more exploration than fight-filled which is entertaining in and of itself. But the stage for a video-gamer's dream has been set with Tenacious.
Vicky is off to a good start with her own series in Vicky Peterwald: Target. (And yes, there IS a preceding novella that was one of the better efforts left off of last year's list). Vicky is the Kris-equivalent from the totalitarian regime that had made her and Kris natural and enthusiastic enemies before the threats to humanity's survival showed up and made the frenemies more friends than enemies. I've lost count how often Vicky's life has been saved by Kris. But that's what best bud's are for. In Target, Vicky finds herself all alone, or almost all alone, back in the not so gentle embrace of the people who have tried to have her and her dad, the Wardhaven Emperor, knocked off--frequently. She gets bucked down to ensign and finds out her 'new' extended family comes replete with frenemies and actual support when the action requires it. It smells a bit of 'Kris Longknife: The Early Years.' But it's fun to start from the prospective of a spoiled brat, rather than the preternaturally brilliant Kris. Quite an enjoyable 'first' book.
Lastly, Shepherd has been writing Longknife prequel books about the Jump Universe/Society of Humanity under his own name. To Do or Die is the fourth book in that series, first as being by Shepherd, and it finally puts the two Kris Longknife grand-dads in the making, Future Emperor Ray the First and Trouble Tordon in the same place at the same time. Rita (who's back as a supporting character in the current Kris adventures) Longknife isn't around in this one, but Ray, Trouble and his missus, Ruth, are all that stands between the planet Savannah and a rigged election that will make official what's been going on for ages. The rule by thugs. The problem for the bad guys is that when you put Longknifes, Tordons and lots and LOTS of military hardware all in the same place at the same time, the bad guys don't fare well at all. By the end of the book, you'll be getting your hurrahs straight from the huzzahs and having a good time.
The rest of the Science Fiction faves run the gamut of Steven Gould's Exo to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Skirmishes and then back to outright military space opera again with Jody Lynn Nye's The View from the Imperium and Jean Johnson's Hellfire. Each is a series book and each is stronger than other entries from each series I read this past year. Do they stand up by themselves? I'd say yes to Exo and to The View from the Imperium, but no to the entries by Rusch and by Johnson. But you might disagree.
Gould's Exo is possibly the best Jumper book since the first entry, Jumper. A year ago, I though the series was done. Not because of the damage done by the foray into a parallel dimension where a book that was a novelization of the movie had to be written. But because the natural progression that started with Davy, then his future wife Millie and then daughter 'cent (short for Millicent) seemed to have run it's course. it was interesting in each case to see the jumping capability become part of each of their lives. What would YOU do if you could literally jump to anyplace in the world in the blink of an eye? After about the third answer, ennui SHOULD have set in. But Gould takes 'cent off into a new direction with a true hard science SF story that took my breath away. I was sure that this book was going to be the top place finisher this year until Higashino arrived to snatch top spot late in the year. 'cent takes "I spy with my little eye ..." and let's a telescope take the limits of her imagination and smash it to little pieces. All the while doing battle with Big Gov and small minds. Old enemies show up and Davy shows he still has the mettle to protect his loved ones. This is a really great book. And I can't see ANOTHER book in the series happening ... but I've said THAT before and see how happy I was that I was wrong?
Rusch's Skirmishes is another Diving Universe book. It's probably fourth in the series, but if you count all the short stories Rusch has written in the Diving Universe, then there's at least two, maybe three more books worth of pages in the lot. But officially, this is DU #4. This is another hard SF book and we see so little of that these days, what with military space opera almost completely taking over from what little fantasy leaves in the SF/Fantasy publishing niche. Don't get me wrong. I like Military Space Opera, as this list shows. But good HARD SF, where the scientific extrapolation is top-notch is like little treasures when you find them. Thankfully, Rusch is incredibly prolific and dependable. We get more Ivoire back story here with Coop Cooper finding more answers and many, many more mysteries in the Sargasso of outer space called The Boneyard. Boss, who's attraction to Coop grows by the story, let alone by the book, has her own problems as Rusch continues to run the two story-lines almost separately. Boss and her team of divers into the confluence of dimensions that is old tech, is one of SF's most intriguing bunch of characters. You can't jump into this book without reading the others. i just wish i could give you the reading list and how to get hold of them. Raiding Amazon for the first three books and however many shorter works in the series is just a start. But a start you'll enjoy. I should also point out that the prolific Rusch is setting aside the Diving Universe in 2015 to concentrate on more stories from the Retrieval Artist series of SF Mysteries. IF she comes back with three entries on next year's Top 25, I might be the least surprised person in the world. I am REALLY looking forward to what's headed for my bookpile this year!
I've enjoyed Nye's work over the years. She has a sly sense of humour with an ability to flaunt authority. The good news is that The View From the Imperium is a wonderful start to a series that one-time writing partner Robert Asprin would be proud of. His Phule's Company books are clearly inspiration for this book that is described as "P.G. Wodehouse meets Space Opera." And for once, the billing lives up to the performance. Ensign Thomas Innes Loche Kinago turns out to be an able commander despite being the spoiled brat hanger-on of the true-born nobility that rules space eons from now. He's almost a royal, but carries himself off as a dandy of sorts. But a dandy who understands leadership. And the rag-tag group he eventually calls his command come to adore him, despite the issue of him being almost a royal and all. It's great fun and I pounced on the second book in the series Fortunes of the Imperium as soon as I finished The View. Alas, Nye followed up on another of her habits I've become accustomed to: the inability to maintain the momentum of a brilliant first book. See the Taylor's Ark series for example. The second book is not a bad read, it's just not a 10-Kovid follow-up. You've been warned.
Jean Johnson turns the Nye reading experience on top of it's head. Hellfire is the third book in the "Theirs Not to Reason Why" series. Don't get me wrong, i had enjoyed the first two books in the series, but had no reason to expect that Hellfire would be a big step up. All the way to the 10-Kovid level. Another Military Space Opera that steps away from her fantasy background, the Johnson series suffered from a major flaw. It's the 'Superman Conundrum.' Johnson's star of the books is Ia, who does Superman one better by being able to see the future. Otherwise, she's every bit the SuperWoman that Superman is in the comics. The powers are slightly different, but you can't tug on Superman's cape and that's basically true of what little Ia might be wearing at any given time, too. But somehow, Johnson gets around the conundrum in this third book and really brings all of 'the woman with the plan' into a mini-denouement. As it turns out, the trilogy is only the start. Two more entries in the series were published last year and I was expecting a sixth. But unlike Ia, my future forecasting seems a little off and I'll be reading Hardship and Damnation early in the new year. Don't expect a neat conclusion to every storyline in Hellfire. And obviously, no reading this book without reading the earlier tomes in the series. I wouldn't wait for my New Year's Day report next year, I'd pick up anything Johnson's written in this series.
Back at the start of the year, I thought I was headed for a monster year, reading-wise. I had just discovered Jean Johnson and there were books by old pros like Lawrence Block and Jeffery Deaver on the top of the pile. But I was MOST interested in getting to He Drank, And Saw the Spider by Alex Bledsoe. The fifth Eddie LaCrosse Mystery was maybe the best book in the series since the first one. And despite being a Mystery, the book is most definitely a fantasy. Eddie is the pre-eminent sword jockey of his time. A P.I. with a strong sword arm and a stronger sense of ethics. But a history where that wasn't always so. So, Eddie revisits the past to set things right by Isadora, a young baby he left with shepherds sixteen years ago. He failed the man who tried to protect Isadora from a mauling bear, but goaded by gal pal Liz, Eddie decides to revisit the scene of the tragedy. In doing so, a couple of kingdoms, a town of ... let's call them eccentrics, and Isadora herself all become embroiled in his attempt to, if not rewrite history, at least update it. There are sorcerers and all kinds of things to go bump in the night (and I'm not JUST talking about inebriated townspeople). It's all a fun frolic, if a bit deadly to some of the players. Highly, highly recommended.
MYSTERIES/THRILLERS
Deaver and Block were followed later in the year by works from long-term favourites Barry Eisler, Brett Battles, Spencer Quinn, Clive Cussler and the omni-bus effort called FaceOff that featured pairings of famous characters by the likes of Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Lisa Gardner, Steve Berry, John Sandford, Jeffery Deaver, Lincoln Child, Dennis Lehane, Joseph Finder, Douglas Preston, Heather Graham, James Rollins, Linda Fairstein, Steve Martini, Linwood Barclay, Ian Rankin, Raymond Khoury, M. J. Rose, John Lescroart, R. L. Stine, Peter James, T. Jefferson Parker and F. Paul Wilson. You might notice that Deaver is in there too, giving him, in effect, two books to place second to Shepherd for the year. I'm leaving the link hunting for FaceOff at Fantastic Fiction to you.
Deaver's separate entry in the list this year is a novella-collection called Triple Threat. Both series character entries in Triple Threat work exceedingly well. There's a Kathryn Dance short called Fast and a John Pellam 'Stranger New in Town' type mystery called Paradice that both sing and zing. Fast has to adhere to the total pace as Dance races against a clock to deny a terrorist the chance to enter heaven with a death toll to pay the gate tax. It's a Mission Impossible task for the modern age. And neat. Pellam's story makes me wistful for more Pellam stories. His arrival in town when a crime and a killing or two are in the process makes for entertaining fodder. Points for having an interesting sheriff rather than a witless dope that merely serves as a witness. As for the third of the trio of tales? Game was the least of the efforts, but serviceable. Which was all the was required to keep this book at the 10-Kovids rating. Short stories have been something I've come back to of late. And I'm very, very glad that I did with this single-author anthology.
Now, as for the full-on FaceOff anthology, the conceit had each of the brace of authors taking their characters into a shared setting and letting loose with the consequences. Not every story in the book entertained me. But what worked, really, REALLY worked. And in doing so, I've added a couple of writers to my pre-approved set of authors. Given my long-time love for Deaver's Lincoln Rhymes and John Sandford's Lucas Davenport, it won't be shocking to commend that entry here. (Aside: Both characters have been played by black actors in movies ... despite neither character being black in the books). Deaver and Sandford weren't editor David Baldacci's only successful pairings. Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly had a great start-off mixup of Patrick Kenzie and Harry Bosch. That was followed by the equally solid pairing of Ian Rankin's John Rebus and Peter James' Roy Grace. I wasn't overly fond of the R.L. Stine/Preston and Child pairing, but found myself surprisingly entertained by M.J. Rose's Malachai Samuels meeting up with Lisa Gardner's D. D. Warren. Then an uptick yet again as Steve Martini's Paul Madriani had to tangle with Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper in a tale about courtroom justice. Of the rest of the stories, all decent, the one other effort that made me start looking for backlists, was John Lescroart's Wyatt Hunt teaming up with T. Jefferson Parker's Joe Trona, a pair of characters who I'd only heard of before, but have never read about in the past. That has already changed. I heartily recommend FaceOff, not because it's perfect, but because of it being a Yelp for mystery fiction.
Block's book store owner slash cat burglar, Bernie Rhodenbarr, had special significance to me this year. I had inundated a sick friend with books and tv shows aplenty in what was the last few months of his life. His favourite? The Rhodenbarr books. As it turns out, in giving him the books, I discovered I had overlooked The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. What a delight!! Bernie's best friend, lesbian Carolyn, goes from after-the-fact complicit to criminal acts to being part of a burglary team. Maybe as a result, Bernie's plans don't work out quite the way they are supposed to. Until the end. By caper's end, Carolyn decides being only a little bit law non-abiding is better than being a burglar and leaves that to Bernie, once again. What I got out of the book was a remembrance at just how much fun Block had writing these books and how much enjoyment it and the other books in the series gave my dying friend. It is, and WAS, a rare, rare gift.
Both Eisler and Battles are frequent contributors to my best books lists. Eisler's John Rain and Battles' Jonathan Quinn both looked to the past for their eighth entries in their respective series's. The Rain book, Graveyard of Memories, serves almost as the secret origin of the man who would become the infamous assassin. Rain's fresh off the killing fields of Southeast Asia, working as a bagman for the CIA and battling with the Yakuza to start this book. He plays the role of a pawn in a game by higher ups, all the while acquiring the skills that would polish the one-time sniper into the feared, rightfully so, John Rain. While the Battles book, The Discarded, starts in the past, it most definitely finishes in the here and now. Quinn's beloved, Orlando, gets brought into the past by her mentor, Abraham. The mission he didn't see through to the finish line plagues him on the doorstep of his final resting. In need of the peace of knowing he did more right than wrong, Abraham begs, pleads and bullies his way into one last job. Orlando realizes what's going on, but the Quinn extended family of cleaners needs to do this for her honour and for the respect they all have for Abraham.
Spencer Quinn, aka Peter Abrahams, continued to charm me with the latest Chet and Bernie mystery, Paw and Order. I love Chet's dopey dog viewpoint because hard-of-remembering Chet is all hero. As is his human partner, Bernie. In Washington DC to visit Bernie's girlfriend Suzie Sanchez, the detective duo end up entangled with everything that makes DC stop ticking, including the requisite international conspiracy (what's a visit to America's capital if NOT to encounter an international conspiracy). This eighth outing (seems like a lucky number in 2014), goes along as it should. Chet sniffs out a mystery, and remembers enough in time to make Bernie a hero, in between dreams of food and nightmares involving a hamster. Or is Barnum a guinea pig? Say, what's the difference between a hamster and a guinea pig? What's for supper? Why isn't everybody reading Chet's adventures? And so it goes.
I miss Veronica Mars, erstwhile high school student by day, detective by night. Or in a skipped lunch period. (I've forgotten that third season in college, where all the fun of being in Neptune California was forgotten.) But 2014 we saw a new Veronica Mars movie released that resolved a few of the threads left over from the now forgotten TV show. And, a release of a Veronica Mars novel did not go un-noticed by me. The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by series creator Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham was quintessential Veronica Mars. Brash and clever, touching in the way Veronica steps in for her dad, and interesting. Take March Break, add in miscreants, missing YA's, Mexican cartel royalty and mistakes aplenty by the law-makers and law-keepers of Neptune and add in Veronica's ability to take the shine off all of them and you get a page turner that would have been a dandy two or three episodes of the old series. I really miss Veronica Mars. When is the next book coming out?
Cussler didn't have a great year this year. He has so many series going with so many authors that, the whole seems lesser than the individual parts. It's obvious that the research for one series is being rehashed almost immediately in one the other series. In fact, at least two books this year from the Cussler production assembly line, featured Cuba prominently. Which isn't especially bad, when you also mix in Vikings, Baffin Island, Quetzalcoatl and archeoterrorists in Mexico, as Cussler and Russell Blake did in The Eye of Heaven, a Fargo's Adventure. I like the Fargo's, the 'Nick and Nora' of Cussler's stable of marine-interested characters. It's all lovey-dovey and hair-raising thrills as Cussler ties in the Vikings of yore, with the Toltecs, also of yore, with Caribbean sphere locales to come up with a page turner with all of the Cussler expertise. Entertaining DESPITE my usual plea for the factory to STOP putting Cussler in his books as a character. It's off-putting, juvenile and distracting to the goal of writing thrillers that aren't resolved by a mysterious man of a certain age and a certain ability to provide help from out of nowhere. Lazy writing. But the rest of the book is worth 10 Kovids.
As much as I miss Veronica Mars, I miss the Montreal Expos more. And the World Hockey Association. Two enterprises that needed documenting. And to a certain extent, Jonah Keri and Howard Baldwin have done exactly that. (You'll have to excuse the direct Amazon links, what with these books not fitting into the FICTION part of Fantastic Fiction).
Keri was an Expo fan who was there when Coco Laboy made the nascent Expos the story of Canada's baseball team. I'm from Toronto and cheered on the Expos in their opening-day win over the New York Mets waaaaaaay back last century. Keri details the rise and subsequent painful fall of Les Expos from the pained point of view of a Montreal fan, even after the team had fallen to second in the heart's of Canada. Keri's who's now one of the leading baseball scribes in the business, makes no bones about what Up, Up and Away is: A love poem to the team that was Canada's team before they became the Washington Nationals and left a whole country to cheer for MY home town Toronto Blue Jays. Up, Up and Away is a chronicling, year by year, of the Expos as they became the model modern day major league baseball franchise, culminating in being the best team in the game ... in the year they canceled the World Series. The year Bud Selig and the burghers of baseball stopped a third straight Canadian World Series triumph, following up on the two-time world champion Blue Jays. while that decision broke the spirit here in Toronto too, it proved fatal for the shoestring-budgeted Expos. There's so much heart in this book that Keri brings a rival's team's fate near and dear to my heart too. It's not a fresh release, but I read it in 2014 and I'm glad that I did.
Howard Baldwin's Slim and None isn't exclusively WHA, but it's got more details from one of the wildest and wackiest sports enterprises that ever existed. The rise of Baldwin, a ticket salesman for the Philadelphia Flyers, into the ownership of the New England/Hartford Whalers and later multiple NHL teams and even later into becoming an Oscar-winning Hollywood producer, is wacky all by itself. But the WHA parts is what makes this book a great read. As we now face a time when Gordie Howe might not be with us much longer, it's an interesting read as to how the 'Howe Family to the WHA' storyline developed and the behind the scenes maneuvering that brought the whole thing to fruition. It's timely, which is unfortunate. And it's a good read, which is just the opposite.
Leonard Wibberley broke big in the 50's with The Mouse That Roared, the story of The Grand Duchy of Fenwick going to war with the United States and defeating America with a handful of bowmen and a string of fortune that beggars incredulity. And thus was born the Grand Fenwick series. In each book, Wibberley would find a way for his perpetually stuck-in-the-past little Duchy to have sweetness and honesty (well, almost complete honesty) and memories of better days gone by succeed when intent and greed work against it. And somehow the Duchy always seems to be pulling the world's bacon out of the fire while doing it. Last year, I re-read The Mouse on Wall Street one evening when looking for something light and frothy and fun and a quick read. Check, check, check and CHECK!! It's difficult to find anything to complain about the book or ANY of the books in the series. Unless you're a too big for your britches Wall Street financier. Then, you might be shown for the type A person you are. The rest of us? We will all just enjoy the read.
And now we come to the conclusion of this year's list. Honestly, this really isn't the ChickLit section. More properly, this section should be ... gasp! The ROMANCE section!!!!
it was the first week of January and I was enjoying that time early in the year when the glow of Christmas is still all about and nobody's mind is back to work yet. And there I was reading one of the newfangled Marvel Comics prose novels. It was Marta Acosta's The She-Hulk Diaries. Now in my defence, I've been a long-time fan of Hulkie's lawyer cousin Jen, who Stan Lee turned into a distaff Hulk to protect Marvel's trademark, copyright and any other creative rights he could wrap up by making a She-Hulk before his Distinguished Competition could do the same thing. In name only, of course. She Hulk has been through a lot over the years, including five, if memory serves correct, solo series starring the jade-hued giantess. She-Hulk has been treated seriously and seriously made fun of. She's been part of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and other teams I'm having trouble remembering right now. She's been drawn by the likes of John Byrne and artists who shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence as John Byrne. But her adventures have been entertaining more often than not.
Still, it was with little expectation that I picked up Acosta's book. And what I got was a healthy does of Sex in the City wrapped up in a black and green wrapper straight from the funny books. It was a romance of unrequited love and still filled with, you know, strong woman stuff. Like throwing trains around strong woman stuff. Not strong willed. Far from it. Turns out Jen's a bit of a wreck. And forlorn. Which can be a dangerous combination. Albeit, a hilarious combination.
I've tried writing/explaining/excusing about why and how it came to be that I read a Romance book. And I liked it. That IS how the refrain goes, doesn't it? There, I've said it. It bears never repeating again. But I read a Romance book in 2014, gave it 10 Kovids and plan to never do it again. Promise. Really, I promise. Probably.
2014's done and gone. I hope to do better in 2015.
So, this year, the Top 25 list will be 21 books long. A good--maybe great--21. But this is my blog and MY Top 25 List and I reserve the right to do as I please. Full steam ahead.
As in the past, my rating scale is in Kovids, named after the programmer of Calibre, Kovid Goyal. Now, if you read eBooks rather than dead tree books, and have not heard of Calibre, hare thee off to Calibre's home page and grab this indispensable bit of software to manage your eBooks. And if you need to ask questions, MobileRead's forum devoted to Calibre will do all of that and then some. And when you are finished don't forget to tinkle the tip jar. You'll want to, just to let you know in advance.
Unfortunately, the one wee problem with Calibre is that the rating star system is capped at five. But with a little finagling, you can create your own star system. My STARZ system is a better ranking system, topping out at 10 Kovids. This helps me with the problem of the five-star system having no way to handle AVERAGE, which we all know would be 2.5 stars or 5 Kovids. But Calibre doesn't permit a half-star. My Starz range from ten (the list of which is contained here), down to scores like 8 (recommended to readers interested in the genre) to 5 or 6 (books that are average or just a titch better than average), to 3 (tripe, usually from writers who should do better) to 1 (couldn't finish the book) and all the way to 0 (an affront to all of mankind usually involving the unholy trinity of ideologies, Conservatism, Unchecked Capitalism or just plain old Crap repackaged).
By the way, all of the links I'm listing here are to author pages to be found at Fantastic Fiction. Not strictly a site for the imaginative, FF is the place I go to find out all the series information. It includes lists of what's coming out and roughly when. And it has links to the local Amazon from wherever you call a home base. Because so many of the books listed below are series entries, having one place to go to see what else is available and in what order they should be read, makes FF indispensable.
A good to great book vs a REALLY great book is the difference between getting a nine and being in that paragraph at the end that lists authors who put out good efforts this year and 10 Kovid writers who get a whole paragraph (or more) here on this most valued list. This year, I found THREE 10-Kovid efforts written by Mike Shepherd (AKA Mike Moscoe) and eighteen others that are worthy of (windy) comment. Surprisingly, despite having the largest plurality, Shepherd did not cart off the top prize.
For the second time in three years, the best book I read in the past year was authored by Keigo Higashino. Malice continues Higashino's uncanny ability to run a Columbo plot past the reader and engross the reader despite knowing whodunnit almost from the start. The trick this time out is that the book's villain is not only jailed quite early in the book, he also makes a full written confession!! And with many page clicks to go, I wondered if this was the first story in a short story collection. After all, rule number one is always to stop working once the customer says yes. Or something like that. As it turns out, the book becomes a whydunnit and solving THAT particular exercise is a wonderful delight.
I read a SF short story many, many years ago that has stuck with me throughout the decades although I couldn't tell you the author's name or the title of the story to save my soul. Alien invasion starts. The aliens have the ability to completely mimic us from head to toe and have been studying humans for years and years. They are completely and utterly ruthless and the invasion starts with one last scouting sortie to begin the assault. But the aliens-masquerading-as-humans are caught almost immediately and the high mucky-mucks of the alien fleet abandon their assault plans based on this seemingly impossible defence capability by the humans. The last sentence of the story reveals the twist. The aliens, dressed as they had observed humans dressed, were arrested immediately after leaving their camouflaged landing site, taking on human form and then arriving in a nearby small town. The aliens had landed in a nudist colony.
To read Higashino is to know that there's a literary nudist somewhere in the reveal. It's been that way through every book I've ever read that he's penned (two Professor Jupiter books published thus far on this side of the Pacific and this one in the Kyoichiro Kaga series). And yet I was completely compelled to get to that last sentence, page click by page click. It also helps that the killer and the victim are both writers, which appeals to me on several levels. Who among us have not contemplated the perfect crime? Writers take that one step further. Having writers play hero and villain in this book moves it another step beyond.
This is a delightful book. Do yourself a favour and delve into the Higashino library. It will be worth it. I guarantee it!!
The OTHER 18 books on this list can be broken down into Science Fiction, Fantasy, Sports, Mysteries/Thrillers, Humour and ... well, I'll get to THAT book down at the end of this post. You'll see why.
SCIENCE FICTION
The afore-mentioned Shepherd has been awesomely entertaining. He sticks with military space opera and does it exceedingly well. The whole library pivots around his Kris Longknife, one of THOSE damned Longknifes. She's a tactical genius and the daughter of the Prime Minister back home and the grand-daughter of The Emperor and mostly responsible for the protection of humanity from a scourge that is becoming ever-more frightful every book that Princess Kris stars in ... which is now up to 12 with this year's Tenacious. By the way, there are assorted short stories and novellas that actually drive the total of Longknife books closer to 20 in all. Tenacious is a tad on the pessimistic side, with a lot of grim "Never again!" utterances. Ones that seems pretty legitimate. Shepherd has his cast of Longknife playmates intact, except for frenemy Vicky Peterwald. The book is more exploration than fight-filled which is entertaining in and of itself. But the stage for a video-gamer's dream has been set with Tenacious.
Vicky is off to a good start with her own series in Vicky Peterwald: Target. (And yes, there IS a preceding novella that was one of the better efforts left off of last year's list). Vicky is the Kris-equivalent from the totalitarian regime that had made her and Kris natural and enthusiastic enemies before the threats to humanity's survival showed up and made the frenemies more friends than enemies. I've lost count how often Vicky's life has been saved by Kris. But that's what best bud's are for. In Target, Vicky finds herself all alone, or almost all alone, back in the not so gentle embrace of the people who have tried to have her and her dad, the Wardhaven Emperor, knocked off--frequently. She gets bucked down to ensign and finds out her 'new' extended family comes replete with frenemies and actual support when the action requires it. It smells a bit of 'Kris Longknife: The Early Years.' But it's fun to start from the prospective of a spoiled brat, rather than the preternaturally brilliant Kris. Quite an enjoyable 'first' book.
Lastly, Shepherd has been writing Longknife prequel books about the Jump Universe/Society of Humanity under his own name. To Do or Die is the fourth book in that series, first as being by Shepherd, and it finally puts the two Kris Longknife grand-dads in the making, Future Emperor Ray the First and Trouble Tordon in the same place at the same time. Rita (who's back as a supporting character in the current Kris adventures) Longknife isn't around in this one, but Ray, Trouble and his missus, Ruth, are all that stands between the planet Savannah and a rigged election that will make official what's been going on for ages. The rule by thugs. The problem for the bad guys is that when you put Longknifes, Tordons and lots and LOTS of military hardware all in the same place at the same time, the bad guys don't fare well at all. By the end of the book, you'll be getting your hurrahs straight from the huzzahs and having a good time.
The rest of the Science Fiction faves run the gamut of Steven Gould's Exo to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Skirmishes and then back to outright military space opera again with Jody Lynn Nye's The View from the Imperium and Jean Johnson's Hellfire. Each is a series book and each is stronger than other entries from each series I read this past year. Do they stand up by themselves? I'd say yes to Exo and to The View from the Imperium, but no to the entries by Rusch and by Johnson. But you might disagree.
Gould's Exo is possibly the best Jumper book since the first entry, Jumper. A year ago, I though the series was done. Not because of the damage done by the foray into a parallel dimension where a book that was a novelization of the movie had to be written. But because the natural progression that started with Davy, then his future wife Millie and then daughter 'cent (short for Millicent) seemed to have run it's course. it was interesting in each case to see the jumping capability become part of each of their lives. What would YOU do if you could literally jump to anyplace in the world in the blink of an eye? After about the third answer, ennui SHOULD have set in. But Gould takes 'cent off into a new direction with a true hard science SF story that took my breath away. I was sure that this book was going to be the top place finisher this year until Higashino arrived to snatch top spot late in the year. 'cent takes "I spy with my little eye ..." and let's a telescope take the limits of her imagination and smash it to little pieces. All the while doing battle with Big Gov and small minds. Old enemies show up and Davy shows he still has the mettle to protect his loved ones. This is a really great book. And I can't see ANOTHER book in the series happening ... but I've said THAT before and see how happy I was that I was wrong?
Rusch's Skirmishes is another Diving Universe book. It's probably fourth in the series, but if you count all the short stories Rusch has written in the Diving Universe, then there's at least two, maybe three more books worth of pages in the lot. But officially, this is DU #4. This is another hard SF book and we see so little of that these days, what with military space opera almost completely taking over from what little fantasy leaves in the SF/Fantasy publishing niche. Don't get me wrong. I like Military Space Opera, as this list shows. But good HARD SF, where the scientific extrapolation is top-notch is like little treasures when you find them. Thankfully, Rusch is incredibly prolific and dependable. We get more Ivoire back story here with Coop Cooper finding more answers and many, many more mysteries in the Sargasso of outer space called The Boneyard. Boss, who's attraction to Coop grows by the story, let alone by the book, has her own problems as Rusch continues to run the two story-lines almost separately. Boss and her team of divers into the confluence of dimensions that is old tech, is one of SF's most intriguing bunch of characters. You can't jump into this book without reading the others. i just wish i could give you the reading list and how to get hold of them. Raiding Amazon for the first three books and however many shorter works in the series is just a start. But a start you'll enjoy. I should also point out that the prolific Rusch is setting aside the Diving Universe in 2015 to concentrate on more stories from the Retrieval Artist series of SF Mysteries. IF she comes back with three entries on next year's Top 25, I might be the least surprised person in the world. I am REALLY looking forward to what's headed for my bookpile this year!
I've enjoyed Nye's work over the years. She has a sly sense of humour with an ability to flaunt authority. The good news is that The View From the Imperium is a wonderful start to a series that one-time writing partner Robert Asprin would be proud of. His Phule's Company books are clearly inspiration for this book that is described as "P.G. Wodehouse meets Space Opera." And for once, the billing lives up to the performance. Ensign Thomas Innes Loche Kinago turns out to be an able commander despite being the spoiled brat hanger-on of the true-born nobility that rules space eons from now. He's almost a royal, but carries himself off as a dandy of sorts. But a dandy who understands leadership. And the rag-tag group he eventually calls his command come to adore him, despite the issue of him being almost a royal and all. It's great fun and I pounced on the second book in the series Fortunes of the Imperium as soon as I finished The View. Alas, Nye followed up on another of her habits I've become accustomed to: the inability to maintain the momentum of a brilliant first book. See the Taylor's Ark series for example. The second book is not a bad read, it's just not a 10-Kovid follow-up. You've been warned.
Jean Johnson turns the Nye reading experience on top of it's head. Hellfire is the third book in the "Theirs Not to Reason Why" series. Don't get me wrong, i had enjoyed the first two books in the series, but had no reason to expect that Hellfire would be a big step up. All the way to the 10-Kovid level. Another Military Space Opera that steps away from her fantasy background, the Johnson series suffered from a major flaw. It's the 'Superman Conundrum.' Johnson's star of the books is Ia, who does Superman one better by being able to see the future. Otherwise, she's every bit the SuperWoman that Superman is in the comics. The powers are slightly different, but you can't tug on Superman's cape and that's basically true of what little Ia might be wearing at any given time, too. But somehow, Johnson gets around the conundrum in this third book and really brings all of 'the woman with the plan' into a mini-denouement. As it turns out, the trilogy is only the start. Two more entries in the series were published last year and I was expecting a sixth. But unlike Ia, my future forecasting seems a little off and I'll be reading Hardship and Damnation early in the new year. Don't expect a neat conclusion to every storyline in Hellfire. And obviously, no reading this book without reading the earlier tomes in the series. I wouldn't wait for my New Year's Day report next year, I'd pick up anything Johnson's written in this series.
FANTASY
Back at the start of the year, I thought I was headed for a monster year, reading-wise. I had just discovered Jean Johnson and there were books by old pros like Lawrence Block and Jeffery Deaver on the top of the pile. But I was MOST interested in getting to He Drank, And Saw the Spider by Alex Bledsoe. The fifth Eddie LaCrosse Mystery was maybe the best book in the series since the first one. And despite being a Mystery, the book is most definitely a fantasy. Eddie is the pre-eminent sword jockey of his time. A P.I. with a strong sword arm and a stronger sense of ethics. But a history where that wasn't always so. So, Eddie revisits the past to set things right by Isadora, a young baby he left with shepherds sixteen years ago. He failed the man who tried to protect Isadora from a mauling bear, but goaded by gal pal Liz, Eddie decides to revisit the scene of the tragedy. In doing so, a couple of kingdoms, a town of ... let's call them eccentrics, and Isadora herself all become embroiled in his attempt to, if not rewrite history, at least update it. There are sorcerers and all kinds of things to go bump in the night (and I'm not JUST talking about inebriated townspeople). It's all a fun frolic, if a bit deadly to some of the players. Highly, highly recommended.
MYSTERIES/THRILLERS
Deaver and Block were followed later in the year by works from long-term favourites Barry Eisler, Brett Battles, Spencer Quinn, Clive Cussler and the omni-bus effort called FaceOff that featured pairings of famous characters by the likes of Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Lisa Gardner, Steve Berry, John Sandford, Jeffery Deaver, Lincoln Child, Dennis Lehane, Joseph Finder, Douglas Preston, Heather Graham, James Rollins, Linda Fairstein, Steve Martini, Linwood Barclay, Ian Rankin, Raymond Khoury, M. J. Rose, John Lescroart, R. L. Stine, Peter James, T. Jefferson Parker and F. Paul Wilson. You might notice that Deaver is in there too, giving him, in effect, two books to place second to Shepherd for the year. I'm leaving the link hunting for FaceOff at Fantastic Fiction to you.
Deaver's separate entry in the list this year is a novella-collection called Triple Threat. Both series character entries in Triple Threat work exceedingly well. There's a Kathryn Dance short called Fast and a John Pellam 'Stranger New in Town' type mystery called Paradice that both sing and zing. Fast has to adhere to the total pace as Dance races against a clock to deny a terrorist the chance to enter heaven with a death toll to pay the gate tax. It's a Mission Impossible task for the modern age. And neat. Pellam's story makes me wistful for more Pellam stories. His arrival in town when a crime and a killing or two are in the process makes for entertaining fodder. Points for having an interesting sheriff rather than a witless dope that merely serves as a witness. As for the third of the trio of tales? Game was the least of the efforts, but serviceable. Which was all the was required to keep this book at the 10-Kovids rating. Short stories have been something I've come back to of late. And I'm very, very glad that I did with this single-author anthology.
Now, as for the full-on FaceOff anthology, the conceit had each of the brace of authors taking their characters into a shared setting and letting loose with the consequences. Not every story in the book entertained me. But what worked, really, REALLY worked. And in doing so, I've added a couple of writers to my pre-approved set of authors. Given my long-time love for Deaver's Lincoln Rhymes and John Sandford's Lucas Davenport, it won't be shocking to commend that entry here. (Aside: Both characters have been played by black actors in movies ... despite neither character being black in the books). Deaver and Sandford weren't editor David Baldacci's only successful pairings. Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly had a great start-off mixup of Patrick Kenzie and Harry Bosch. That was followed by the equally solid pairing of Ian Rankin's John Rebus and Peter James' Roy Grace. I wasn't overly fond of the R.L. Stine/Preston and Child pairing, but found myself surprisingly entertained by M.J. Rose's Malachai Samuels meeting up with Lisa Gardner's D. D. Warren. Then an uptick yet again as Steve Martini's Paul Madriani had to tangle with Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper in a tale about courtroom justice. Of the rest of the stories, all decent, the one other effort that made me start looking for backlists, was John Lescroart's Wyatt Hunt teaming up with T. Jefferson Parker's Joe Trona, a pair of characters who I'd only heard of before, but have never read about in the past. That has already changed. I heartily recommend FaceOff, not because it's perfect, but because of it being a Yelp for mystery fiction.
Block's book store owner slash cat burglar, Bernie Rhodenbarr, had special significance to me this year. I had inundated a sick friend with books and tv shows aplenty in what was the last few months of his life. His favourite? The Rhodenbarr books. As it turns out, in giving him the books, I discovered I had overlooked The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. What a delight!! Bernie's best friend, lesbian Carolyn, goes from after-the-fact complicit to criminal acts to being part of a burglary team. Maybe as a result, Bernie's plans don't work out quite the way they are supposed to. Until the end. By caper's end, Carolyn decides being only a little bit law non-abiding is better than being a burglar and leaves that to Bernie, once again. What I got out of the book was a remembrance at just how much fun Block had writing these books and how much enjoyment it and the other books in the series gave my dying friend. It is, and WAS, a rare, rare gift.
Both Eisler and Battles are frequent contributors to my best books lists. Eisler's John Rain and Battles' Jonathan Quinn both looked to the past for their eighth entries in their respective series's. The Rain book, Graveyard of Memories, serves almost as the secret origin of the man who would become the infamous assassin. Rain's fresh off the killing fields of Southeast Asia, working as a bagman for the CIA and battling with the Yakuza to start this book. He plays the role of a pawn in a game by higher ups, all the while acquiring the skills that would polish the one-time sniper into the feared, rightfully so, John Rain. While the Battles book, The Discarded, starts in the past, it most definitely finishes in the here and now. Quinn's beloved, Orlando, gets brought into the past by her mentor, Abraham. The mission he didn't see through to the finish line plagues him on the doorstep of his final resting. In need of the peace of knowing he did more right than wrong, Abraham begs, pleads and bullies his way into one last job. Orlando realizes what's going on, but the Quinn extended family of cleaners needs to do this for her honour and for the respect they all have for Abraham.
Spencer Quinn, aka Peter Abrahams, continued to charm me with the latest Chet and Bernie mystery, Paw and Order. I love Chet's dopey dog viewpoint because hard-of-remembering Chet is all hero. As is his human partner, Bernie. In Washington DC to visit Bernie's girlfriend Suzie Sanchez, the detective duo end up entangled with everything that makes DC stop ticking, including the requisite international conspiracy (what's a visit to America's capital if NOT to encounter an international conspiracy). This eighth outing (seems like a lucky number in 2014), goes along as it should. Chet sniffs out a mystery, and remembers enough in time to make Bernie a hero, in between dreams of food and nightmares involving a hamster. Or is Barnum a guinea pig? Say, what's the difference between a hamster and a guinea pig? What's for supper? Why isn't everybody reading Chet's adventures? And so it goes.
I miss Veronica Mars, erstwhile high school student by day, detective by night. Or in a skipped lunch period. (I've forgotten that third season in college, where all the fun of being in Neptune California was forgotten.) But 2014 we saw a new Veronica Mars movie released that resolved a few of the threads left over from the now forgotten TV show. And, a release of a Veronica Mars novel did not go un-noticed by me. The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by series creator Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham was quintessential Veronica Mars. Brash and clever, touching in the way Veronica steps in for her dad, and interesting. Take March Break, add in miscreants, missing YA's, Mexican cartel royalty and mistakes aplenty by the law-makers and law-keepers of Neptune and add in Veronica's ability to take the shine off all of them and you get a page turner that would have been a dandy two or three episodes of the old series. I really miss Veronica Mars. When is the next book coming out?
Cussler didn't have a great year this year. He has so many series going with so many authors that, the whole seems lesser than the individual parts. It's obvious that the research for one series is being rehashed almost immediately in one the other series. In fact, at least two books this year from the Cussler production assembly line, featured Cuba prominently. Which isn't especially bad, when you also mix in Vikings, Baffin Island, Quetzalcoatl and archeoterrorists in Mexico, as Cussler and Russell Blake did in The Eye of Heaven, a Fargo's Adventure. I like the Fargo's, the 'Nick and Nora' of Cussler's stable of marine-interested characters. It's all lovey-dovey and hair-raising thrills as Cussler ties in the Vikings of yore, with the Toltecs, also of yore, with Caribbean sphere locales to come up with a page turner with all of the Cussler expertise. Entertaining DESPITE my usual plea for the factory to STOP putting Cussler in his books as a character. It's off-putting, juvenile and distracting to the goal of writing thrillers that aren't resolved by a mysterious man of a certain age and a certain ability to provide help from out of nowhere. Lazy writing. But the rest of the book is worth 10 Kovids.
SPORTS
As much as I miss Veronica Mars, I miss the Montreal Expos more. And the World Hockey Association. Two enterprises that needed documenting. And to a certain extent, Jonah Keri and Howard Baldwin have done exactly that. (You'll have to excuse the direct Amazon links, what with these books not fitting into the FICTION part of Fantastic Fiction).
Keri was an Expo fan who was there when Coco Laboy made the nascent Expos the story of Canada's baseball team. I'm from Toronto and cheered on the Expos in their opening-day win over the New York Mets waaaaaaay back last century. Keri details the rise and subsequent painful fall of Les Expos from the pained point of view of a Montreal fan, even after the team had fallen to second in the heart's of Canada. Keri's who's now one of the leading baseball scribes in the business, makes no bones about what Up, Up and Away is: A love poem to the team that was Canada's team before they became the Washington Nationals and left a whole country to cheer for MY home town Toronto Blue Jays. Up, Up and Away is a chronicling, year by year, of the Expos as they became the model modern day major league baseball franchise, culminating in being the best team in the game ... in the year they canceled the World Series. The year Bud Selig and the burghers of baseball stopped a third straight Canadian World Series triumph, following up on the two-time world champion Blue Jays. while that decision broke the spirit here in Toronto too, it proved fatal for the shoestring-budgeted Expos. There's so much heart in this book that Keri brings a rival's team's fate near and dear to my heart too. It's not a fresh release, but I read it in 2014 and I'm glad that I did.
Howard Baldwin's Slim and None isn't exclusively WHA, but it's got more details from one of the wildest and wackiest sports enterprises that ever existed. The rise of Baldwin, a ticket salesman for the Philadelphia Flyers, into the ownership of the New England/Hartford Whalers and later multiple NHL teams and even later into becoming an Oscar-winning Hollywood producer, is wacky all by itself. But the WHA parts is what makes this book a great read. As we now face a time when Gordie Howe might not be with us much longer, it's an interesting read as to how the 'Howe Family to the WHA' storyline developed and the behind the scenes maneuvering that brought the whole thing to fruition. It's timely, which is unfortunate. And it's a good read, which is just the opposite.
HUMOUR
Leonard Wibberley broke big in the 50's with The Mouse That Roared, the story of The Grand Duchy of Fenwick going to war with the United States and defeating America with a handful of bowmen and a string of fortune that beggars incredulity. And thus was born the Grand Fenwick series. In each book, Wibberley would find a way for his perpetually stuck-in-the-past little Duchy to have sweetness and honesty (well, almost complete honesty) and memories of better days gone by succeed when intent and greed work against it. And somehow the Duchy always seems to be pulling the world's bacon out of the fire while doing it. Last year, I re-read The Mouse on Wall Street one evening when looking for something light and frothy and fun and a quick read. Check, check, check and CHECK!! It's difficult to find anything to complain about the book or ANY of the books in the series. Unless you're a too big for your britches Wall Street financier. Then, you might be shown for the type A person you are. The rest of us? We will all just enjoy the read.
CHICKLIT
And now we come to the conclusion of this year's list. Honestly, this really isn't the ChickLit section. More properly, this section should be ... gasp! The ROMANCE section!!!!
it was the first week of January and I was enjoying that time early in the year when the glow of Christmas is still all about and nobody's mind is back to work yet. And there I was reading one of the newfangled Marvel Comics prose novels. It was Marta Acosta's The She-Hulk Diaries. Now in my defence, I've been a long-time fan of Hulkie's lawyer cousin Jen, who Stan Lee turned into a distaff Hulk to protect Marvel's trademark, copyright and any other creative rights he could wrap up by making a She-Hulk before his Distinguished Competition could do the same thing. In name only, of course. She Hulk has been through a lot over the years, including five, if memory serves correct, solo series starring the jade-hued giantess. She-Hulk has been treated seriously and seriously made fun of. She's been part of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and other teams I'm having trouble remembering right now. She's been drawn by the likes of John Byrne and artists who shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence as John Byrne. But her adventures have been entertaining more often than not.
Still, it was with little expectation that I picked up Acosta's book. And what I got was a healthy does of Sex in the City wrapped up in a black and green wrapper straight from the funny books. It was a romance of unrequited love and still filled with, you know, strong woman stuff. Like throwing trains around strong woman stuff. Not strong willed. Far from it. Turns out Jen's a bit of a wreck. And forlorn. Which can be a dangerous combination. Albeit, a hilarious combination.
I've tried writing/explaining/excusing about why and how it came to be that I read a Romance book. And I liked it. That IS how the refrain goes, doesn't it? There, I've said it. It bears never repeating again. But I read a Romance book in 2014, gave it 10 Kovids and plan to never do it again. Promise. Really, I promise. Probably.
2014's done and gone. I hope to do better in 2015.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
SPORTS: Fran Rider was a Hall of Famer 30 Years Ago
The news yesterday that filtered down through the Internet to me that Fran Rider has been elected to the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame brought back warm memories and an over-riding sense of happiness for me.
Back in the late 70's and through most of the 80's, my job was being a Sports Reporter under another Hall of Famer, editor Ken Giles of the Brampton Guardian. Each year, I knew my 'beat' included The Silver Stick Boys' Hockey Tournament bracket at Bramalea's Victoria Park Arena over Christmas and the March Break Brampton Canadettes Hockey Tournament held in Mississauga, of all places. The tournament had outgrown it's humble origins in Brampton to become "The Largest Women's Hockey Tournament in the World!"
So, I saw a LOT of tournament hockey. There was also the Brampton Atom Lions Hockey Tournament for 10 year olds (Wayne Gretzky played FIVE years in that tournament and his first ever LIVE on-air interview was with The Boss, Ken Giles, after one fabulous game at the event. Brantford always seemed to lost to Whitby, though). The season-ending Chinguacousy Tykes Tournament for the LITTLEST kids was the year-end capper that meant softball was soon to take over my life.
I LOVED tournament hockey. Still do. Not as much as my brother Wayne, who schedules his life around the Christmas-time World Junior Men's Hockey Championships. Oddly enough, he so loves the TV broadcasts, that I've never been able to get him to GO to one of Canada's games when they are playing within hailing distance. Maybe next year as circumstances are putting a kibosh on any travel for me this year. Not up to cheering right now.
Did I mention I LOVE tournament hockey? Well, maybe the most fun of the tournaments for doing my job was the Canadettes tournament. The reason was one of access. Rider held court in a tiny office at the complex where the games were played. She would spend HOURS talking about hockey, not just women's hockey, but hockey in general. Sure, she had an overly-willing audience in me, but she spared not one moment she had available to just yak with me and any other reporter who dropped by.
And did she ever sell the girls' game! And when she needed a heavy hitter, she rolled in Hazel McCallion, the Mississauga Mayor for Life, until she stepped down a few years back, well into her 80's. McCallion, a force of nature at the worst of times, was always at her best pitching women's hockey. This was a woman who BUILT Mississauga out of a conglomeration of small western Toronto suburbs, but who lived and breathed hockey before politics. The two of them were good for a broadsheet page of quotes every spring ... even though some of the quotes were re-runs.
Still, if Rider had decided to buck McCallion in politics, I'm not sure of who would have won. Rider was about ten years my senior, putting her in her late 20's, early 30's when I first met her. She was already pushing being too old to be playing competitive hockey at her age. She laughed at retirement talk. Kept laughing for another TWO decades. She played AND ran the tournament AND created the Women's Hockey League in Canada and the US AND politicked for the Olympics to create a women's division. And she never was defeated, only delayed a little. Occasionally.
Still, she did it with the velvet glove approach until it became painfully obvious that the iron fist had come out. She COULD wield that fist very effectively. So much so, that she made enemies. But even amongst the enemies who earned her eagle-eyed glare from under the black as midnight blunt bangs, they all had to respect her.
I remember a LOT of little stories from the tournament, too many to enumerate here. The players from all over the world, including my favourites from Sweden (hey, I was a young man, don't look at me like that) and Israel (who KNEW!?!), as well as the local lasses that let me write as much as I wanted to because of all the good local news copy. I watched Hall of Famer Angela James grow up (I happened to be keenly aware of both her hockey AND softball career). I watched many, many of the future Olympians and Gold Medal winners play as precocious teens. Tweens even.
And through it all, Rider kept up the PR push, the let's talk hockey until YOU quit plan. Cuz I'm never going to quit. And she did it with a smile and a general love of hockey and of 'her girls and ladies.'
Fran Rider was a Hall of Famer decades ago. It just took until this week for Rene Faisel and the rest of the old fogies (i orginally typed in doyennes, but there is a discernable LACK of women on the executive) of the game to confirm it. Congratulations Fran.
Merry Christmas to all and to all, a good end to this post.
Back in the late 70's and through most of the 80's, my job was being a Sports Reporter under another Hall of Famer, editor Ken Giles of the Brampton Guardian. Each year, I knew my 'beat' included The Silver Stick Boys' Hockey Tournament bracket at Bramalea's Victoria Park Arena over Christmas and the March Break Brampton Canadettes Hockey Tournament held in Mississauga, of all places. The tournament had outgrown it's humble origins in Brampton to become "The Largest Women's Hockey Tournament in the World!"
So, I saw a LOT of tournament hockey. There was also the Brampton Atom Lions Hockey Tournament for 10 year olds (Wayne Gretzky played FIVE years in that tournament and his first ever LIVE on-air interview was with The Boss, Ken Giles, after one fabulous game at the event. Brantford always seemed to lost to Whitby, though). The season-ending Chinguacousy Tykes Tournament for the LITTLEST kids was the year-end capper that meant softball was soon to take over my life.
I LOVED tournament hockey. Still do. Not as much as my brother Wayne, who schedules his life around the Christmas-time World Junior Men's Hockey Championships. Oddly enough, he so loves the TV broadcasts, that I've never been able to get him to GO to one of Canada's games when they are playing within hailing distance. Maybe next year as circumstances are putting a kibosh on any travel for me this year. Not up to cheering right now.
Did I mention I LOVE tournament hockey? Well, maybe the most fun of the tournaments for doing my job was the Canadettes tournament. The reason was one of access. Rider held court in a tiny office at the complex where the games were played. She would spend HOURS talking about hockey, not just women's hockey, but hockey in general. Sure, she had an overly-willing audience in me, but she spared not one moment she had available to just yak with me and any other reporter who dropped by.
And did she ever sell the girls' game! And when she needed a heavy hitter, she rolled in Hazel McCallion, the Mississauga Mayor for Life, until she stepped down a few years back, well into her 80's. McCallion, a force of nature at the worst of times, was always at her best pitching women's hockey. This was a woman who BUILT Mississauga out of a conglomeration of small western Toronto suburbs, but who lived and breathed hockey before politics. The two of them were good for a broadsheet page of quotes every spring ... even though some of the quotes were re-runs.
Still, if Rider had decided to buck McCallion in politics, I'm not sure of who would have won. Rider was about ten years my senior, putting her in her late 20's, early 30's when I first met her. She was already pushing being too old to be playing competitive hockey at her age. She laughed at retirement talk. Kept laughing for another TWO decades. She played AND ran the tournament AND created the Women's Hockey League in Canada and the US AND politicked for the Olympics to create a women's division. And she never was defeated, only delayed a little. Occasionally.
Still, she did it with the velvet glove approach until it became painfully obvious that the iron fist had come out. She COULD wield that fist very effectively. So much so, that she made enemies. But even amongst the enemies who earned her eagle-eyed glare from under the black as midnight blunt bangs, they all had to respect her.
I remember a LOT of little stories from the tournament, too many to enumerate here. The players from all over the world, including my favourites from Sweden (hey, I was a young man, don't look at me like that) and Israel (who KNEW!?!), as well as the local lasses that let me write as much as I wanted to because of all the good local news copy. I watched Hall of Famer Angela James grow up (I happened to be keenly aware of both her hockey AND softball career). I watched many, many of the future Olympians and Gold Medal winners play as precocious teens. Tweens even.
And through it all, Rider kept up the PR push, the let's talk hockey until YOU quit plan. Cuz I'm never going to quit. And she did it with a smile and a general love of hockey and of 'her girls and ladies.'
Fran Rider was a Hall of Famer decades ago. It just took until this week for Rene Faisel and the rest of the old fogies (i orginally typed in doyennes, but there is a discernable LACK of women on the executive) of the game to confirm it. Congratulations Fran.
Merry Christmas to all and to all, a good end to this post.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
SPORTS: The Next Step to Fill the Nest
There is a reason Alex Anthopoulos is the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays and you and I are not. I think a plan for the future was moved into phase two last night with the Blue Jays' trade of Anthony Gose to the Detroit Tigers for second base prospect Devon Travis.
It creates a road map that borders on being short AND long-term savvy. There's a couple more steps involved in this post-season makeover of the close-but-not close-enough Jays of 2014. A team that demonstrated it COULD compete, but ultimately didn't have the depth to actually pull it off.
And here I am waxing prosaically about the acquisition of a player that will not start 2015 on the field at Rogers Centre. Oh, he'll wear Blue Jay togs before the year is over, but he'll be in Buffalo on opening day.
Here's what I think AA does to round out his Winter Wish List. He signs Russell Martin and Frankie Rodriguez and then deals Mark Buerhle for Matt Kemp and dollars to come in the 2016-2019 time period. Don't know how many dollars, but it will be SOME to off-set Kemp's contract payments. AA might flop a relief pitcher or two from the group he has available, but I think the moves I just mentioned finish off his transaction page appearances.
Let's examine the fallout if AA does what I suggest.
In Canadian-born Martin, the Jays get a catcher that can share a season-long workload with Dioner Navarro, with the other getting DH at-bats from the freshly-freed position previously held by fan favourite Adam Lind, a guy who turned into a one-sided power-poor singles hitter last year. I'm in the group that thinks getting him off the bases, where he was a clog waiting to happen, and opening the DH spot to spell any player who needs a day off from the Rogers Centre tarmac, was a REALLY good idea.
Martin will have a bunch of duties. He'll catch the majority of games, including when R.A. Dickey pitches. That means bidding adieu to Josh Thole and his anemic bat for 30+ games this season. Martin also has a little 3B history and wouldn't be out of place at 1B on games where you want Edward Encarnacion resting between swings of the bat. Heck, in a pinch, Martin could play LF. And there was that hare-brained scheme to have him start at SS in the last World Cup. Yep, he'll play a lot of games. Navarro is a guy who tops out at 100 games max and probably would be best at somewhere around 90. With some extra duty at DH, he and Martin have catcher covered. And with Navarro an expiring contract, he leaves open a spot for A.J. Jiminez in 2016. And Martin's three or four-year contract will be up just about the time that Max Pentecost should be Big Show bound. Short and long term catching solved? Check.
The starting infield on Opening Day will be Encarnacion, Maicer Izturis, Jose Reyes and Brett Lawrie. Not a hearty and hale bunch by any means. But one you should be able to take into battle in 2015 to start with. Izturis is only keeping the seat warm for the newest Jay farmhand, Devon Travis, freshly moved from the number one spot in the Detroit Tiger Prospect List to the starting job with the Buffalo Bison, where he will get some AAA seasoning. Izturis is the forgotten man for Toronto, a guy who actually looked to be off to a decent start in 2014 before getting hurt and lost for the season. Is he a star? Nope. He's a career backup on the last year of a contract with a hot prospect breathing down his back. He'll either meet the challenge or give way. Second base short and long term solved? Check.
It's hard to argue against the other three starters as not being injury prone. In Encarnacion's case, its aches and pains. But he's got a David Ortiz vibe. He'll sign an extension to his really, really inexpensive contract sometime in the next 12 months. First base long and short term solved? Check. (Oh, the reason why he'll get big bucks for a three-year extension? The kiddie corps starting pitchers will allow for spending on Encarnacion and Jose Bautista up to 2020).
Lawrie's the wildcard. He'll play good enough defence at third to off-seat the plummeting defensive range of Reyes. He'll provide some power and some speed and maybe hit, maybe not. Is he the long and short term solution at third? Who knows? I don't. But I want the Canadian kid to stay healthy, harness his spectacular physical talents and be a checkmark in both columns. I'm biased, but I'm a Lawrie supporter.
Reyes is a guy I would LOVE to turn into a DH at home (and in Tampa), while having him play shortstop the other 70 games or so. I don't think Izturis can be a shortstop and not having anything more than Ryan Goins (The starting shortstop in Buffalo until the turn of the decade) leaves one checkmark off the list. Reyes is the short term solution at shortstop. The long-term solution? Somebody who signs NEXT winter, maybe after being acquired in a mid-season trade this year.
Moving to the outfield, we have Kemp and Bautista bracketing the kid(s). Bautista, as mentioned, gets an extension for his post 2015 Blue Jays career. With the departure from the books of contracts of 2014 regulars Lind, Navarro, Buerhle, Juan Francisco (for at least a month) and maybe even Dickey, the 2016 payroll has a distinct kid-'n-vets vibe. And don't forget no Rickey Romero money left either. With kids having really, really small payouts, it leaves room for Bautista and Encarnacion to cash in along side of Kemp, Reyes and Martin. So, the corner outfielders are taken care of short and long term too. One caveat? Kemp and his health are no sure thing.
In centre field, the Blue Jays will start Dalton Pompey. I don't think they will go with Kevin Pillar to delay the hometown hero's clock from starting to tick. That would be possible if Pompey has a bad spring and needs the confidence booster Buffalo might provide. But I suspect manager John Gibbons is right in proclaiming Pompey's the guy. Pillar is no old coot himself and there's a bit of Michael Brantley in him. Might require going elsewhere, or he might stay and make Kemp redundant and an expensive bench piece (which he's been, at times, with the Dodgers). But Pillar is not a bad fourth outfielder. However, he might need at bats in Buffalo early. Either coming or going, he becomes a fairly decent fourth outfielder. Betting the farm on Pompey seems reasonable from this corner as there aren't any warning signs other than his injury-delayed progression through the minors. That was until vaulting from A to MLB in one year made 2014 a season to remember. Centre field long and short term solved? Yep.
The composition of the four-man bench squad could go in a lot of different ways. Left-swinging Andy Dirks Seems almost assured of being that fourth/fifth outfielder, although he's basically just a left-fielder. The only other reasonable left-handed bench guy would be the switch-hitting Justin Smoak, an erstwhile first-baseman and DH. He's got to show he's worth being on the squad for more than just power that has come and gone in his big-league career. Pillar, Danny Valencia and John Mayberry Jr. are all righties. Four of the five will stay. Pillar has options left and he makes sense to begin in Buffalo. Thus, I make the bench out to be the rather DH-ish oriented boppers in Smoak and Mayberry with Dirks providing late-innings relief for Kemp and Valencia combining with Izturis to provide middle infield and third-base backup. This is an ALL short-term solution set outside of Pillar. If any of them got traded for a shortstop kind of guy, it wouldn't shock me. The 2016 version will probably be a lot different.
With the Buerhle-Kemp trade being largely salary neutral for this year, this offensive group actually comes in a significant bit cheaper than the 2014 version. It starts five RH swingers in Martin, Encarnacion, Lawrie, Kemp and Bautista with four, count 'em, four, switch-hitters in Izturis, Reyes, Pompey and Navarro. The batting order? Reyes, Lawrie, Bautista, Encarnacion, Kemp, Martin, Navarro, Pompey and Izturis. It bunches up both the RH's and the switch-hitters. I could see Kemp and Navarro swapping spots against some right-handers. But it's not going to be an easy line-up on pitching staffs whatever hand the hurler throws with.
The starting pitching staff is young, save for the old goat, Dickey. He'll have to make do with Martin catching him, but the athletic Martin should be up to the task. After Dickey comes Marcus Stroman, Drew Hutchinson, J.A. Happ and Aaron Sanchez. The long man in the pen will be Estrada, who has breakout bullpen arm capability. And Daniel Norris and Kendall Graveman are a heart-beat away in Buffalo. That's the eight arms you HAVE to have to start a season. I have NO problem with this kiddie corps, that will only get younger when Norris supplants Happ (and/or Dickey) in 2016. Long and short term solution solved? Check.
Which brings us to the bullpen. I've got Frankie Rodriguez signing for the money that Martin doesn't suck up. He becomes the new closer. And he starts my ulcer hurting. Frankly, Frankie worries me. But Martin will take most of the Blue Jays' 10-20 million free agent dollars. In fact, I think the Jays have to dig into the 2016 budget to sign him. The best part? No losing a draft pick. In fact, the off-season plan seems free of qualifying offer signings other than Martin. And that one comes back in the form of the compensatory pick not re-signing Melky Cabrera will bring. It'll be about a dozen picks later, meaning the player is more likely to be a future bench piece than a starter. But Martin off-sets that. So, while signing a Dave Robertson is out of bounds, getting a FRod is certainly reasonable.
The lefty side of the bullpen is reasonable and should return in the form of Brett Cecil and Aaron Loup. I also think Sean Nolin breaks camp in the pen, to give the team three southpaws. Rodriguez and Estrada and ... ? Well, that is the question, isn't it. There was a lot of talk about 'fixing' the bullpen, but that's an arcane science at the best of times. If, in fact, the rest of the seven-man pen turned out to be Chad Jenkins and Steve Delabar, I could live with that. Todd Redmond's an Estrada competitor and who knows what kind of chance Kyle Drabek has now that he's a full-time reliever in mind and spirit. There's talent there that a changed mindset might release. The same thing might happen positively for Romero and wouldn't that be a wonderful story. Plus, there's the chance that the lessons of the early 90's might be re-learned. That's the era when future starters cut their teeth in the bullpen regularly, which would make Norris and Graveman candidates to join the equally inexperienced Nolin. This bullpen seems more long-term positive than short-term. But then again, it was only two season back that the Jays sent two relievers to the all-star game. Maybe the old adage about relievers needing short memories has some words of wisdom for fans and would-be GM's too.
And so we come to the end of this What I Did This Winter essay, as intended to be written by Alex Anthopoulos. He need not do whole-sale surgery to make the Jays a contender this upcoming season and for at least the next three or four after that.
And if you are counting, besides the Canadian GM, the Blue Jays would start THREE Canucks on opening day. On a contending team. What a BRILLIANT idea!! If I don't say so myself.
It creates a road map that borders on being short AND long-term savvy. There's a couple more steps involved in this post-season makeover of the close-but-not close-enough Jays of 2014. A team that demonstrated it COULD compete, but ultimately didn't have the depth to actually pull it off.
And here I am waxing prosaically about the acquisition of a player that will not start 2015 on the field at Rogers Centre. Oh, he'll wear Blue Jay togs before the year is over, but he'll be in Buffalo on opening day.
Here's what I think AA does to round out his Winter Wish List. He signs Russell Martin and Frankie Rodriguez and then deals Mark Buerhle for Matt Kemp and dollars to come in the 2016-2019 time period. Don't know how many dollars, but it will be SOME to off-set Kemp's contract payments. AA might flop a relief pitcher or two from the group he has available, but I think the moves I just mentioned finish off his transaction page appearances.
Let's examine the fallout if AA does what I suggest.
In Canadian-born Martin, the Jays get a catcher that can share a season-long workload with Dioner Navarro, with the other getting DH at-bats from the freshly-freed position previously held by fan favourite Adam Lind, a guy who turned into a one-sided power-poor singles hitter last year. I'm in the group that thinks getting him off the bases, where he was a clog waiting to happen, and opening the DH spot to spell any player who needs a day off from the Rogers Centre tarmac, was a REALLY good idea.
Martin will have a bunch of duties. He'll catch the majority of games, including when R.A. Dickey pitches. That means bidding adieu to Josh Thole and his anemic bat for 30+ games this season. Martin also has a little 3B history and wouldn't be out of place at 1B on games where you want Edward Encarnacion resting between swings of the bat. Heck, in a pinch, Martin could play LF. And there was that hare-brained scheme to have him start at SS in the last World Cup. Yep, he'll play a lot of games. Navarro is a guy who tops out at 100 games max and probably would be best at somewhere around 90. With some extra duty at DH, he and Martin have catcher covered. And with Navarro an expiring contract, he leaves open a spot for A.J. Jiminez in 2016. And Martin's three or four-year contract will be up just about the time that Max Pentecost should be Big Show bound. Short and long term catching solved? Check.
The starting infield on Opening Day will be Encarnacion, Maicer Izturis, Jose Reyes and Brett Lawrie. Not a hearty and hale bunch by any means. But one you should be able to take into battle in 2015 to start with. Izturis is only keeping the seat warm for the newest Jay farmhand, Devon Travis, freshly moved from the number one spot in the Detroit Tiger Prospect List to the starting job with the Buffalo Bison, where he will get some AAA seasoning. Izturis is the forgotten man for Toronto, a guy who actually looked to be off to a decent start in 2014 before getting hurt and lost for the season. Is he a star? Nope. He's a career backup on the last year of a contract with a hot prospect breathing down his back. He'll either meet the challenge or give way. Second base short and long term solved? Check.
It's hard to argue against the other three starters as not being injury prone. In Encarnacion's case, its aches and pains. But he's got a David Ortiz vibe. He'll sign an extension to his really, really inexpensive contract sometime in the next 12 months. First base long and short term solved? Check. (Oh, the reason why he'll get big bucks for a three-year extension? The kiddie corps starting pitchers will allow for spending on Encarnacion and Jose Bautista up to 2020).
Lawrie's the wildcard. He'll play good enough defence at third to off-seat the plummeting defensive range of Reyes. He'll provide some power and some speed and maybe hit, maybe not. Is he the long and short term solution at third? Who knows? I don't. But I want the Canadian kid to stay healthy, harness his spectacular physical talents and be a checkmark in both columns. I'm biased, but I'm a Lawrie supporter.
Reyes is a guy I would LOVE to turn into a DH at home (and in Tampa), while having him play shortstop the other 70 games or so. I don't think Izturis can be a shortstop and not having anything more than Ryan Goins (The starting shortstop in Buffalo until the turn of the decade) leaves one checkmark off the list. Reyes is the short term solution at shortstop. The long-term solution? Somebody who signs NEXT winter, maybe after being acquired in a mid-season trade this year.
Moving to the outfield, we have Kemp and Bautista bracketing the kid(s). Bautista, as mentioned, gets an extension for his post 2015 Blue Jays career. With the departure from the books of contracts of 2014 regulars Lind, Navarro, Buerhle, Juan Francisco (for at least a month) and maybe even Dickey, the 2016 payroll has a distinct kid-'n-vets vibe. And don't forget no Rickey Romero money left either. With kids having really, really small payouts, it leaves room for Bautista and Encarnacion to cash in along side of Kemp, Reyes and Martin. So, the corner outfielders are taken care of short and long term too. One caveat? Kemp and his health are no sure thing.
In centre field, the Blue Jays will start Dalton Pompey. I don't think they will go with Kevin Pillar to delay the hometown hero's clock from starting to tick. That would be possible if Pompey has a bad spring and needs the confidence booster Buffalo might provide. But I suspect manager John Gibbons is right in proclaiming Pompey's the guy. Pillar is no old coot himself and there's a bit of Michael Brantley in him. Might require going elsewhere, or he might stay and make Kemp redundant and an expensive bench piece (which he's been, at times, with the Dodgers). But Pillar is not a bad fourth outfielder. However, he might need at bats in Buffalo early. Either coming or going, he becomes a fairly decent fourth outfielder. Betting the farm on Pompey seems reasonable from this corner as there aren't any warning signs other than his injury-delayed progression through the minors. That was until vaulting from A to MLB in one year made 2014 a season to remember. Centre field long and short term solved? Yep.
The composition of the four-man bench squad could go in a lot of different ways. Left-swinging Andy Dirks Seems almost assured of being that fourth/fifth outfielder, although he's basically just a left-fielder. The only other reasonable left-handed bench guy would be the switch-hitting Justin Smoak, an erstwhile first-baseman and DH. He's got to show he's worth being on the squad for more than just power that has come and gone in his big-league career. Pillar, Danny Valencia and John Mayberry Jr. are all righties. Four of the five will stay. Pillar has options left and he makes sense to begin in Buffalo. Thus, I make the bench out to be the rather DH-ish oriented boppers in Smoak and Mayberry with Dirks providing late-innings relief for Kemp and Valencia combining with Izturis to provide middle infield and third-base backup. This is an ALL short-term solution set outside of Pillar. If any of them got traded for a shortstop kind of guy, it wouldn't shock me. The 2016 version will probably be a lot different.
With the Buerhle-Kemp trade being largely salary neutral for this year, this offensive group actually comes in a significant bit cheaper than the 2014 version. It starts five RH swingers in Martin, Encarnacion, Lawrie, Kemp and Bautista with four, count 'em, four, switch-hitters in Izturis, Reyes, Pompey and Navarro. The batting order? Reyes, Lawrie, Bautista, Encarnacion, Kemp, Martin, Navarro, Pompey and Izturis. It bunches up both the RH's and the switch-hitters. I could see Kemp and Navarro swapping spots against some right-handers. But it's not going to be an easy line-up on pitching staffs whatever hand the hurler throws with.
The starting pitching staff is young, save for the old goat, Dickey. He'll have to make do with Martin catching him, but the athletic Martin should be up to the task. After Dickey comes Marcus Stroman, Drew Hutchinson, J.A. Happ and Aaron Sanchez. The long man in the pen will be Estrada, who has breakout bullpen arm capability. And Daniel Norris and Kendall Graveman are a heart-beat away in Buffalo. That's the eight arms you HAVE to have to start a season. I have NO problem with this kiddie corps, that will only get younger when Norris supplants Happ (and/or Dickey) in 2016. Long and short term solution solved? Check.
Which brings us to the bullpen. I've got Frankie Rodriguez signing for the money that Martin doesn't suck up. He becomes the new closer. And he starts my ulcer hurting. Frankly, Frankie worries me. But Martin will take most of the Blue Jays' 10-20 million free agent dollars. In fact, I think the Jays have to dig into the 2016 budget to sign him. The best part? No losing a draft pick. In fact, the off-season plan seems free of qualifying offer signings other than Martin. And that one comes back in the form of the compensatory pick not re-signing Melky Cabrera will bring. It'll be about a dozen picks later, meaning the player is more likely to be a future bench piece than a starter. But Martin off-sets that. So, while signing a Dave Robertson is out of bounds, getting a FRod is certainly reasonable.
The lefty side of the bullpen is reasonable and should return in the form of Brett Cecil and Aaron Loup. I also think Sean Nolin breaks camp in the pen, to give the team three southpaws. Rodriguez and Estrada and ... ? Well, that is the question, isn't it. There was a lot of talk about 'fixing' the bullpen, but that's an arcane science at the best of times. If, in fact, the rest of the seven-man pen turned out to be Chad Jenkins and Steve Delabar, I could live with that. Todd Redmond's an Estrada competitor and who knows what kind of chance Kyle Drabek has now that he's a full-time reliever in mind and spirit. There's talent there that a changed mindset might release. The same thing might happen positively for Romero and wouldn't that be a wonderful story. Plus, there's the chance that the lessons of the early 90's might be re-learned. That's the era when future starters cut their teeth in the bullpen regularly, which would make Norris and Graveman candidates to join the equally inexperienced Nolin. This bullpen seems more long-term positive than short-term. But then again, it was only two season back that the Jays sent two relievers to the all-star game. Maybe the old adage about relievers needing short memories has some words of wisdom for fans and would-be GM's too.
And so we come to the end of this What I Did This Winter essay, as intended to be written by Alex Anthopoulos. He need not do whole-sale surgery to make the Jays a contender this upcoming season and for at least the next three or four after that.
And if you are counting, besides the Canadian GM, the Blue Jays would start THREE Canucks on opening day. On a contending team. What a BRILLIANT idea!! If I don't say so myself.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
INTERNET: I Hope Emily and Pawan and Praveen and Linda ALL Get Ravaging ...
This post comes without my admonishment at the top not to click on any link you might find in the comments section. While that cautions against clicking on links from people like Lee and Angela and Judy and My MOM, it also prevents an unaware reader who managed to get ALL the way to end of one of my posts from slipping and clicking on posts from Emily and Pawan and Praveen and Linda and the rest of the hijacked and fake names the mental midgets who spread spam use to post in Blogger comment sections.
That's right. There's a cadre of sweat shop workers who sit all day and copy and paste links into comments sections in Blogger posts. They have to do that because Blogger does JUST enough to stop robots from doing it. Which would be cheaper than using close to slave labour. So kids, and grand-gens and out of work slackers sit and paste all day, either using hijacked accounts (You REALLY should do better in setting up passwords and answers to the password revealing Who Are You questions). Or they set up a new Google account and blast away until enough bloggers complain and that account is shut down. Either way, it's a blight on society.
By the way, when you click on a link, a penny goes into the worker's pocket, the slumlord at the top gets a buck and the sites you go to are so virus and worm-laden, they will come CLOSE to shutting down your computer from doing anything OTHER than joining a zombie army to attack some site, an attack that generates the slumlord and the crap-site owners MILLIONS of dollars. You? You get to bring the machine to me or your local computer whiz and hand over a hundred bucks. Or thereabouts.
While I don't get many readers, let alone legitimate comments, the fact is, I still wanted to leave the teeny, tiny, tinsy, slim (what, you thought MORE T words?) chance of an honest-to-goodness comment getting through. I've had authors and people involved in the actual production of the shows I comment on, leave comments. I treasure those and the ones from friends. The rest of the crew, from the minions to the millionaires/billionaires, read my type:
I hope EACH and EVERY ONE OF YOU gets a ravaging sexual disease that leaves you on THIS side of death to suffer ... for decades.
Sound harsh, especially since I know children are involved? Yeah, it is. But the harshness is often required to stamp out disease. And this is a pock-marking blight on the whole internet. So, I'll stand by my statements. Not that you can comment and offer your support.
Why?
Because I've turned off commenting. The dedicated might travel to the email site and inundate me with crap. So be it. I'm getting it anyway. Yeah, I filter it all out, but some will get through. And maybe some of the some will be written well enough for me to consider clicking on it in an unprotected web browser. After all, I take LOTS and LOTS of medication. Get me at the right moment and I might even be nice. But those moments are statistically non-existent.
So, NO MORE COMMENTS. NO MORE PREAMBLE ON ALL POSTINGS. A small strike in the war on ... pick a name. I've thought of worse, said worse, and even typed worse. But it's fun, isn't it?
Something has been lost to me today, so I am sad. But something has been gained. And I will nap this afternoon, thinking happy thoughts of the slumscum not having any more dollars from readers here with an itchy click finger. Ahhhhhhh. sweet sonambulant slumber awaits. Montreal plays Philly in three hours.
That's right. There's a cadre of sweat shop workers who sit all day and copy and paste links into comments sections in Blogger posts. They have to do that because Blogger does JUST enough to stop robots from doing it. Which would be cheaper than using close to slave labour. So kids, and grand-gens and out of work slackers sit and paste all day, either using hijacked accounts (You REALLY should do better in setting up passwords and answers to the password revealing Who Are You questions). Or they set up a new Google account and blast away until enough bloggers complain and that account is shut down. Either way, it's a blight on society.
By the way, when you click on a link, a penny goes into the worker's pocket, the slumlord at the top gets a buck and the sites you go to are so virus and worm-laden, they will come CLOSE to shutting down your computer from doing anything OTHER than joining a zombie army to attack some site, an attack that generates the slumlord and the crap-site owners MILLIONS of dollars. You? You get to bring the machine to me or your local computer whiz and hand over a hundred bucks. Or thereabouts.
While I don't get many readers, let alone legitimate comments, the fact is, I still wanted to leave the teeny, tiny, tinsy, slim (what, you thought MORE T words?) chance of an honest-to-goodness comment getting through. I've had authors and people involved in the actual production of the shows I comment on, leave comments. I treasure those and the ones from friends. The rest of the crew, from the minions to the millionaires/billionaires, read my type:
I hope EACH and EVERY ONE OF YOU gets a ravaging sexual disease that leaves you on THIS side of death to suffer ... for decades.
Sound harsh, especially since I know children are involved? Yeah, it is. But the harshness is often required to stamp out disease. And this is a pock-marking blight on the whole internet. So, I'll stand by my statements. Not that you can comment and offer your support.
Why?
Because I've turned off commenting. The dedicated might travel to the email site and inundate me with crap. So be it. I'm getting it anyway. Yeah, I filter it all out, but some will get through. And maybe some of the some will be written well enough for me to consider clicking on it in an unprotected web browser. After all, I take LOTS and LOTS of medication. Get me at the right moment and I might even be nice. But those moments are statistically non-existent.
So, NO MORE COMMENTS. NO MORE PREAMBLE ON ALL POSTINGS. A small strike in the war on ... pick a name. I've thought of worse, said worse, and even typed worse. But it's fun, isn't it?
Something has been lost to me today, so I am sad. But something has been gained. And I will nap this afternoon, thinking happy thoughts of the slumscum not having any more dollars from readers here with an itchy click finger. Ahhhhhhh. sweet sonambulant slumber awaits. Montreal plays Philly in three hours.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
TV: The Top 25 Shows of 2013-2014
[Do NOT click on ANY LINK found in the comment section of this blog. No matter how innocuous the link MIGHT appear to be, it is MOST LIKELY SPAM or a link to MALWARE. I am disheartened by the need to do this, which accounts for the sparsity of posts this year.]
Every year I call a halt to the TV
season on my birthday and produce a list here of the shows I most
enjoyed over the last 12 months. It’s my Top 25 TV Shows and I make
no claim that they are the best in any way. They are the shows that I
enjoyed the most. And I don’t enjoy what a LOT of critics enjoy. I
do not look for the ‘new’ and avante garde. I like what I like
and do not apologize for my taste in entertainment. So read ahead
with that understanding. Oh, by the way, you’ll be doing LOTS of
reading (It's pushing 10,000 words). You’ve been warned.
I had a rather tougher year making this
list than in the past. The problem, I think, was the disappointment I
had in many old favourites. Shows that have entertained me, sometimes
a LOT, but have withered just a little on the vine. When I looked at
my list of shows this year, there was The Big Bang Theory at 34, Hart
of Dixie at 36 and the latest incarnation of The Dog Whisperer (Cesar
911) sitting at 37. Last year's champ, ESPN 30 for 30, couldn't
muster a top-30 finish, getting only the 35th spot on my list. And
you know, none of them deserved Honourable Mention. None of them.
Because, in most cases, the shows threw away what little spark they
had in my imagination.
As has become the practice here in the
yearly awards, now it's time for the show(s) that made me
disappointed and/or mad. Last year it was Arrow. This year it is
Arrow. Symmetry at it's best. The acting is still wooden. The show
can't get off that damned island in STILL too many flashbacks. And
yet I still watch the show week after week to catch the inside
references we old comic book coots love so much. You have to love
comic books and you have to be steeped in DC lore, otherwise, this
continues to be a waste of watching time. I’ve actually seen star
Stephen Amell without his face in a rictus. Really, he CAN smile. I
hope he does next season. Maybe with Katie Cassidy’s Laurel Lance
moving towards assuming the Black Canary role and the inevitable
pairing with Amell’s Arrow (the Green Arrow and Black Canary were a
couple for decades in the comics), we can see some of the banter
uplifted from grim and gritty to the occasional light comedy the
comic book characters were capable of. By the way, I’m not ragging
on comic books turned TV shows. Marvel's Agents of SHIELD wasn't good
enough to make the top 25, but it's one of the Honourable Mentions
this year.
So much for disappointment. On to the
Bad. Starting with possibly a new low in Bad. Dads. Beyond horrible,
approaching criminal. That bad. Dads had wonderful opening credits
and a great theme song, Brenda Song and Nick Lachey's gorgeous wife
Vanessa. And it was a complete waste of the talent of actors like Seth Green,
Giovanni Ribisi, Martin Mull and Peter Riegert. It was misogynistic,
racist and incredibly stupid. Oh, left out homophobic. If there was
an ‘ist’ or an ‘ic’ they left out, I can’t think of one.
Every single actor in this misbegotten career train wreck probably
fired their agents after this fiasco. Mind you, racist humour wasn’t
only the preserve of Dads.
George Lopez's Saint George, was
incredibly offensive to me, and I’m not even Mexican-American! It’s
an accepted belief that comedians are allowed to make fun of their
own, but outsiders cannot. But Lopez’s caricatures of Mexicans only
re-inforced stereotypes. Lopez once again depicted his mother
character as just short of being an unloving monster, a master of
meanness and uncaring. And yet I’ve never met a family of Mexican
heritage where the mom was not big-hearted and a bit of a mother hen.
So THAT offended me too. Lopez is always appealing himself. But every
other Mexican-American in the show was depicted as boorish, stupid,
mean or all three.
Now, being Canadian, I must point out a
mistake of our own. Aside from Dave Foley mugging for the cameras,
Spun Out was horrible. He played the role TV producers call the
'lovable lush with charm' type and informally refer to as the Dave
Foley role. When he wasn’t speaking or reacting, nothing about this
show was pleasing. No, I take that back. It did have Rebecca Dalton,
making the show, the Canadian version of Ground Floor. But not as
good. Not nearly as good. And Ground Floor was not good. Dalton was a
dead ringer for an old co-worker from back in my newspaper days. One
I had a crush on. And the resemblance was so spot on, I actually took
to the internet to see if her mother might have been my old editor.
She wasn’t. Once you got past Foley and Dalton’s appearance, it
turns out Spun Out was a lot of ‘est’ and ‘ic’ done in the
polite Canadian way.
I keep mentioning Ground Floor, an
otherwise unremarkable comedy that features Briga Heelan (the floor
resident) who I believe will break out sooner or later. John C.
McGinley did his usual scenery-chewing part to try to inject humour.
But despite the two shining lights, the comedy was not good. Not at
all. Maybe the second season will turn the corner.
I know I’m supposed to get to the top
25 and I promise it IS coming. But a word about the supposed rebirth
of the sitcom this past year. Indeed, some new half-hours made the
top 25. But most didn’t. And, in an infuriating way, a lot of them
were JUST this close to being good enough for a long run.
The Goldbergs was simply too loud and
the Barry character (Troy Gentile) was too annoying, which off-set an
otherwise really pleasing cast. The fix? Send him off to play Junior
hockey and replace him with an exchange student. Young Sean Giambrone
will also be a major star some day. The major problem with About a
Boy was Minnie Driver, who I adore. Just not in the role as the new
age hippie mom. (And yes, I'd fly away to NY to be with Adrianne
Palicki too). It’s mean, but I’d have dear old Minnie pass away,
leaving adorable Benjamin Stockham to be adopted by next door
neighbour Will (David Walton) and Palicki’s Dr. Sam who comes home
to become a newlywed and a step-mom all in a rush. The Millers has
superstar Margo Martindale (as good at comedy as she is in dramas
like The Americans), which almost off-set starring Will Arnett.
Almost. Maybe a Bewitched-like switch in the lead. Anybody but
Arnett. Arrrgghhhh!
Not all shows will be back for a second
go around to test out my fixes. Back in the Game featured a totally
unlikeable James Caan. How exactly do you screw up a show with Maggie
Lawson? This one did. The fix would have had Lawson finding a new
boyfriend with serious marriage potential, thus reducing Caan to cameos. The Crazy Ones needed to
replace Robin Williams with John Larroquette to save a talented cast
and a good premise. Larroquette could have been a long-lost brother
who takes over when Williams keels over due to the excesses of his
past. His character that is. Larroqutte would have then stepped in as
a part of the cast, rather than the scenery chewer that Williams is.
The Michael J. Fox Show needed one less kid (send the eldest, Conor
Romero, off to college again) and one less sister (Katie Finneran, taking annoying to a whole new level),
plus more workplace shenanigans. This was the most surprising and
disappointing of all of these comedies. Sean Saves the World could
have dumped the boss/bozo (Thomas Lennon) and might have lasted years.
Sean Hayes was very likable and assembled an otherwise entertaining
cast around him. Trophy Wife needed one less wife (number two,
Michaela Watkins) and more showdowns between Malin Ackerman and
first wife Marcia Gay Harden. Lastly, Kirstie. The assembled cast,
which included Michael Richards and Rhea Perlman, could probably have
pulled off the concept with any actress in Hollywood...except Kirstie
Alley. Don’t know if it’s coming back (it shouldn’t), but a
little radical surgery would have made the question moot. That's a
long list of almost-were's. And the end of the disappointments.
The Honourable Mentions list includes a
little bit of everything. Both of my ultra-violent shows from last
year, Banshee and Vikings, did enough to merit watching in their
sophomore season. I was more entertained by Banshee than Vikings, but
it was gratifying to see Vikings get away from that bad turn to
mystic mumbo-jumbo that it took in the last couple of first-season
episodes. Both are cautious, with yellow police tape around them,
recommendations for their second seasons. Marvel's Agents of SHIELD
started off at near Arrow level season one horribleness. It managed
to pull things around to the point of being pretty watchable by
year's end. Clark Gregg is a surprisingly effective lead and Chloe
Bennet and the dependable Ming-Na both created a little intrigue. Add
a A little more polish (more Patton Oswalt, please) and it's a
contender for next year.
The kids had some good stuff come down
the pipe. The second season of Dragons, Riders of Berk was even
better than the first year of the animated spin-off of the How to
Train Your Dragon movies. And I had a great time watching Wizard
Barristers - Benmashi Cecil and The Irregular at Magic High School.
Both anime series were very watchable. I can also recommend another
anime, Attack of the Titans, but it's far, far from being youth age
appropriate. A real horror cartoon success. American cartoons-wise,
Beware the Batman was short-lived and really a lot better than the
critics said. And my guilty pleasure was Disney's latest scream-com,
Mighty Med, a live-action series with engaging kids, goofy adults (a
Disney staple) and enough pure love for comic books to carry the day.
Well done.
Any Honourable Mention list would have
to include Ambassadors, a wicked political satire based in a British
embassy in a fictional country in the 'stans, plus returning British
series of Jonathan Creek, The Indian Doctor and Silk. And there's a
little gem out there called Serangoon Road from Australia about
sixties era Singapore. A rather tight little drama that I,
unfortunately, saw out of order. And let's finally say good-bye to
Rake. Not the American abomination, but the Aussie original. It's
been an interesting run.
On to the list:
25 Taxi Brooklyn French
A bit late to the party with it's debut
in the last week of June, this hour-long dramedy features something
not too old, Chyler Leigh, and somebody brand new, Jacky Ido. Ido is
going to be a star, Hollywood’s next black actor with magnetism …
and a real sense of humour. He plays Leo the taxi driver, who ends up
ferrying around Leigh who’s Detective Cat Sullivan could come from
any number of successful mystery books starring tough as nails female
detectives. The show is a ‘re-interpretation’ of the movie, Taxi,
a broad comedy penned by Luc Besson. The pairing of Leigh and Ido
works incredibly well. It’s a buddy comedy without one of the two
parts of the buddies really realizing that she is in a relationship.
And, like in most buddy entertainment, the sum is better than the
parts. So there are jokes, thrills and lots of car-chases involving
Leo’s bright yellow taxi. That should be enough for almost anyone.
The show’s not perfect. Sullivan is a bit of a cliché in that she
has to track down the killer of her father. Castle anyone? I’d have
thrown the idea overboard and made her dad a quirky professor of
something esoteric at Columbia or NYU. I think that would have been a
better idea than making her mother (Ally Walker) a constant source of
irritation. Again, cliché run amok. But the drive to find the killer
is what is driving Taxi Brooklyn in what I hope will be the first of
many seasons.
24 House of Lies
It's raunchy. It's nasty. Nastier
language-wise than I like and just at the limit of my tolerance. And,
I think, it's probably a lot truer than people in the 'consulting'
biz would like to admit. But that just makes it funny and watchable.
Don Cheadle eats up the screen and Kristen Bell captivates it. And
that's before the scheming sets in. Now in it's third year, I didn't
think there was any more double-crossing and backstabbing left for
House of Lies. I was wrong. Happily. The pairing of Bell’s Jeannie
Van Der Hooven and Cheadle’s Marty Kaan was a long time in the
making. And in House of Lies fashion, just as quick to come asunder.
The last shot of Marty for this season was … emotional. There were
other developments. Ben Schwartz’s Clyde actually became tolerable
this season. Human even. On the other hand, there wasn’t a moment
on screen for Josh Lawson’s Doug that I didn’t regret the writers
wasting my time. Doug was annoying. Liked Monica’s come-uppance as
Dawn Olivieri continued playing Marty’s ex with lioness ferocity.
And Donis Leonard Jr.’s Roscoe got older and wiser and even more
confused, if that’s possible. By the way, the fact that Glynn
Turman, as Grandpa Jeremiah, continued to be a successful playa,
gives hope to all of us old coots.
23 Almost Human
Science Fiction. Fox TV. Surprise,
early cancellation. Just how stupid are we SF fans to continually
invest in Fox SF and act like we are surprised when that network
cancels the show before it's time to go? Smack. Hand to forehead.
Idiot. Now, let's admit this show was not perfect. It had a bit of a
scattergun approach initially, with suggested-at plots from the pilot
left untouched before the jig was up. But the partnership between
human cop John Kennex (Karl Urban) and android cop Dorian played by
Michael Ealy, was starting to come together by the time the pink slip
arrived in the email. The imagineering of the future for the show
featured some real good ideas. Not the least of which was that the
bad guys were always one step ahead of the good guys, stuck
perpetually playing catch-up. The problem was that the bad guys were
TOO far ahead. I would have liked the gap to be a bit smaller. I also
identified with old grouch Kennex, who was just a little bit more
spare parts than I am. Which made his early problems with Dorian easy
to understand. Lili Taylor was an effective top cop and Minka Kelly’s
Detective Valerie Stahl was moving in the direction of being Kennex’s
romance partner, not that the big lug would figure it out until long
after it became obvious to everybody else. Mackenzie Crook’s Rudy
was weird as the cop-shop version of Q. But that weirdness led to at
least one good episode. Almost Human was more future than now and
would have been better a season from now. But it was Fox. Of course
it got cancelled. Idiots, idiots, IDIOTS!!!
22 Republic of Doyle Canada (LY - 21st)
Okay, okay. It's here because it's got
to be here. It didn't take a mean turn, like The Big Bang Theory. It
didn't wear us out with secondary characters like Hart of Dixie did.
But it didn't do a lot to stay on this list, except show off my
beautiful Newfoundland heritage and let me watch Allan Hawco as Jake
Doyle and company work. It's getting a little long in the tooth and I
have the distinct impression its going to be completely missing from
this list next year, but I love the show. NOT sorry in any way. Hear
that Mom? NOT Sorry! It has Krystin Pellerin and that Newfie purr. It
has mismatched adult adults Malachy Doyle, Jake’s dad, and Rose
Miller played by Sean McGinley and Lynda Boyd. It’s a show that
attracts the likes of Russell Crowe as a guest star. It even has a
third generation detective in the making in policewoman Tinny Doyle
(Marthe Bernard). Mind you, I continue to rail at the continued
presence of bozo savant Des (Mark O’Brien), but did I mention the
scenery? And I’m not a scenery kind of guy. We are talking about
God’s Little Green Acre, aren’t we. The Doyles and even many of
the recurring bad guys have become like family on my TV. And I have
no problem recommending the show.
21 Revenge (LY - 7th)
You want some refreshing vitality
injected in any show's third year. I'm ambivalent about the
rejuvenation that was injected in Revenge Year 3, mostly because it
had a distinctly "Bobby in the shower" vibe to it. (That's
a reference to the year AFTER Dallas did away with Patrick Duffy's
Bobby, only to bring him back a year later via the shower scene. It
was all just a dream.) I wish I felt better about the McGuffin being
pulled out from underneath 50+ episodes of watching. But it DID
suggest some life was left over in this tale of revenge done hot.
Questions about about the master manipulator Emily (Canada’s own
Emily Van Camp) suddenly finding out she isn’t the one actually
pulling the puppet strings. There’s the annual will she, won’t
she aspect of the relationship between Emily and the scion of the
Grayson’s, Daniel, played by Joshua Bowman. Through the whole
series, Daniel’s probably the source of the most growth of any
character in the series. Of course, the doyenne of the Grayson’s,
the uber-nasty Victoria, played with relish by Madeleine Stowe
managed to continue her all out battle(s) with Emily. To some
success, but not much. And of course, there’s David Clarke (James
Tupper). And with that, I end my review of the third season of
Revenge. Don’t cliffhangers make you mad?
20 Broadchurch British
American TV is remaking this show as
Gracepoint come this fall. Even importing star David Tennant to
replay his role of the overwhelmed police detective assigned the task
of stopping a child killing from becoming the powder keg that blows
up a small sea-side town. Tennant has never looked more worn out.
Indeed, there's a thread to the mystery that makes one wonder if DI
Alec Hardy will solve the mystery before he, himself, keels over.
There's a fire that starts with the first episode with the murder of
a child that threatens to consume the town. We watch as small-town
dynamics takes a close-knit community and unravels it at lightning
speed. The media, specifically newspaper journalism (my old job), is
shown at its worst. And its worst is plenty bad. It's a lethal mix
that results in more death and the worst of us all coming out. It's
bleak and dispiriting and well-done. You'll hate yourself for liking
the limited series so much. The late news that there
will be a second Broadchurch series makes me wonder how that will
come about. I have a difficult time believing the town could even
come close to surviving a second murder. And yet apparently Hardy and
his number two, DS Ellie Miller played by Olivia Colman return, which
will set the second season squarely back in the now recovering town.
Hmmmm, this will either be a writer’s triumph or an unnecessary
rehash. Either way, we’ll have to await the finish of Tennant’s
American commitment, one in which Fox has surprisingly decided to
limit to just ten episodes, rather than trying to expand the
8-episode British original to 20 plus shows. And it means that second
season that confuses me might very well start in late 2014. That’s
good news.
19 Person of Interest (LY - 5th)
Not enough Bear. That was my first
reaction to binge-watching the third season of Person Of Interest. A
little too much god-like power (and even allusions), too. And just
how many secret agencies and goofball cabals can there be out there?
One more than you think. All the time. Still, what kept Person of
Interest on the list this year was a mid-season casting change that
had a smaller impact than did the sea change in The Good Wife. But it
was close. Bringing in Sarah Shahi to replace outgoing Taraji Henson
allowed for a very emotional send-off. And more Root, played with
ethereal weirdness by Amy Acker. Two actresses to cover for the loss
of Henson’s Detective Joss Carter. The well oiled machine that was
Carter, fellow detective Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman), operational
head Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) and the whispering action star
John Reese (James Caviezel), came acropper in the third season. THE
Machine became one of the machines, plural. One of the shadowy
organizations managed to get some manner of control. And the
government befouled every attempt to fix things. Many of the shows
this year were not saves for people in trouble. They were about
looking after the core of what The Machine was all about. And with it
kidnapped and the loony tunes from Vigilance putting Finch on trial,
it was a slam-bam finish. Not quite as overall satisfying as the
second season. Not enough of Bear the dog. The humanizing element for
Finch last year. Bear could have done the job this year with Root if
he had been given the chance. C’est la vie. NOTE: My next door
neighbours have a German Shepherd named Bear. A nicer, more
well-behaved dog I have never met. I like dogs. And after all of the
Bear screen time in season two, I am permitted to be disappointed
that the only time with Bear this year is when I venture next door.
18 Old School Australian
Another spring surprise and it just
goes to show that a couple of old pros, like Bryan Brown and Sam
Neill still have it in them to produce entertaining TV. It's a buddy
comedy from down under, with all the delights and perks that entails.
Brown plays the sprung ex-con, back on the radar of Neill, playing a
now-retired cop, Ted McCabe. Still a cop in all but badge, McCabe
wants to resolve the case that ended his career while sending Brown's
Lennie Cahill onto one of Her Majesty's finest jails. The opening
episode includes a HUUUUUGE clanker at the end where the bad guy yaks
with nobody filming the confession. But it's more than made up for
over the remainder of the series. There's a cadence and a whole new
parlance of Aussie accents to make the show sound so good. It's a
show for old coots BY old coots (and I suspect, for old coots). But
if you like to see the cop-concrim buddy show done
right, it's hard to argue with Old School.
17 The Escape Artist British
David Tennant. Again. Doing what he
does best. Out-think the opposition ... and the viewer. And do it with
a lot of savoie faire. Tennant's Will Burton, is a
barrister-extraordinaire in this tight three-episode series from
Engand. He's inordinately successful, which rubs opponents like
Maggie Gardner (Sophie Okonedo) the wrong way. Which pleases Burton
immensely. Burton eventually discovers clever can be a two-edged
sword and a client he gets off turns out to be a psycho. And Toby
Kebbell makes Liam Foyle a REAL SCARY psycho (is there any other
sort?). Thus, Burton has to have a showdown with the bad guy, who
despite his scariness and an episode long ability to survive several
attempts by lawyer turned murderer Burton, finally succumbs. Which
ends up placing Burton square in the hairs of the justice system he
has manipulated throughout his life. And riding to his rescue? None
other than Maggie. All of this done in three episodes, where American
TV moguls would be tempted to make it last 22 episodes for the first
of a seven year run. And you wonder why so many British shows end up
on this list every year. Or why so many David Tennant shows do.
16 New Tricks British (LY - 11th)
Had it been a decade? Close to it. And
I could go on and on about how great it is to watch the old gang get
together and do what they do best, solve crimes and entertain and
prove that age and treachery trumps youth and inexperience all the
time. But the old gang isn't the old gang any more. In fact, the old
gang is just one man. And the gang is, still composed the same way.
But not with the familiar old faces. So, does the new New Tricks
work? In the main, yes. A strong start in Gibraltar to start the year
doesn't ever stop as newness permeates the UCOS squad in London. It's
a new character here, a new character there. And before too long, we
have Dennis Waterman's Gerry Standing as the longest member in
standing. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But a lot of the
shorthand Standing was able to use with the gang has had to be
redefined, changed around to accommodate his new role as elder
statesman. I had become accepting of James Bolum's Jack Halford
departing, although remembrances of Jack lead to two of the weepier
moments this year (and by weepier, I mean ME tearing up). Denis
Lawson's Steve McAndrew seemed to fit like a glove with Standing and
the team magic missed very little. But the team dynamics did take a
pounding when Brian Lane exited stage left (with beloved wife Esther)
after the caper in Gibraltar, replaced by Danny Griffin played by
Nicholas Lindhurst. It was a tough fit, with the Lane mania as Alun
Armstrong played him, changing to external calmness, Lyndhurst's most
obvious character trait. But, I came around. Then, with half the
season to go, came the gut punch. The team was losing Amanda Redman
and her DS Sandra Pullman. Incoming was young(ish) DCI Sash Miller,
played by Tamzin Outhwaite. THAT took some getting used and I'm not
sure yet whether it has the effect of putting my beloved Cold Case
squad show from England on the backbench. Overall, this was a top 25
show (again). But unsettling is the head that lies of the New Tricks
fan.
15 Mom
The early days of The Big Bang Theory
were dominated by the self-absorbed antics of Jim Parsons' Sheldon.
So much so, that any discussion of funniest characters on TV had to
include him. As Sheldon passes from entertaining to mean, selfish and
frequently unfunny, riding to the rescue of the reputation of the
self-absorbed we have Allison Janney. Allison...wait! Allison
Janney?? The occasionally acerbic but mostly professional competent
everywoman from The West Wing? THAT Allison Janney? Yep. Who knew?
Within the tall, tall frame of CJ Cregg was a comedienne of
incredible proportions. And make no mistake, the eldest of the moms
on Mom is pure comedic gold. Bonnie's little girl Christy is a mess.
And of course, Christy has a little girl, Violet. And Violet's about
to have a little girl. Cue scene one for the year. You've got
everything you need to know whether you'll like the show or not.
Janney great? Check. LOTS of mommy and mommy-to-be jokes? Check. LOTS
of AA stories/jokes/emotional moments for Janney's Bonnie and Anna
Faris' Christy (Mom Gen 2)? Check. There's a couple of supporting
characters that really work, like cancer-stricken AA member Marjorie
played by sad-faced Mimi Kennedy and Luke, the dumber than a rock
with a vein of gold through the heart, played with lovable goofiness by
Spencer Daniels. Faris' Christy is weary and wise to all the tricks
of addicts and teenage moms to be. She's not so good communicating
with people who don't fall into either camp. But she's making smarter
and smarter choices all the time. She sees the end of the tunnel,
especially when she finds her father, the same guy (Kevin Pollak),
who her 'lying because she's breathing mother' has insisted left on the
first train out of Dodge, when he found out about his impending
fatherhood. About the only thing this comedic half-hour could work on
for year two is turning daughter Violet (Sadie Calvano) into
something less utterly dis-likable.
14 Real Time with Bill Maher (LY - 16th)
I wish he could do it without the
crudities. But that's not going to happen. I'm not sure I'm aboard
the train backing marijuana, although I support decriminalization
(except for dealing to kids, in which case—summary execution). I'm
not on board with PETA or his jihad against religions, even though my
official position on religion is that religion is good. The practice
of organized religion is bad. And I'm surely more accepting of the
drugs that keep me alive. But in the main, Bill Maher and I think
alike. He thinks funnier than I do (and that's before writers step
in). But we are sympatico in most things. So, how did Real Time do
this year? Well, it was going to be a top five show, AHEAD of The
Daily Show, until this winter when Maher gave TV time to William
Krystol. That shouldn't happen. In fact, Maher rails against JUST the
type of person Krystol is. And when he was on the show, the red meat
alert was not out. Maher, as he does with people who's opinions he
disagrees with, when in person, treats them with civility. The
solution to not savaging Krystol as the witless war-mongering tool
that he is, is not to allow him airtime where civilized folks can be
exposed to him. Let him inhabit the environs of Fox, where facts were
a casualty long, long ago and only fools watch and believe the
pundits. I know the electorate that does that is large enough to
plague American politics, but why, oh why, make us listen to this
windbag? That one show, back in February, or thereabouts, spoiled the
whole season for me. And it was a strong season otherwise. There were
left wingers and right wingers and conservatives of thoughtful
stripes (David Frum, Reihan Salam and even soon-to-be-adjudicated
Dinesh D'Souza will offer up interesting arguments). Lots of smart
people and the odd religious person or two that Bill seemed to go
beyond tolerating to actually liking. But there was that appearance
back in November of Ann Coulter, long a weakness of Maher's. And
Krystol. My stress levels reached near fourth heart attack levels.
And that's why Real Time is ten spots lower than MOST of this past
season rated.
13 Alpha House
It'll never be the same again. Internet
killed the TV star. Okay, enough with vain attempts to find a cliché
to describe exactly what Alpha House means to the TV viewing public.
Alpha House was NOT a TV series, although I used a network cable
connection to my TV to watch this Amazon show. And this was NOT an
internet show, staffed by names unknown to anybody but their family,
friends, and the people they work with in the day jobs. This was high
production value, high end TV-making starring the likes of John
Goodman, Clark Johnson and Mark Consuelos. Which would roughly be the
A, B and C rank level of TV star. That's not to ignore the work of
Matt Malloy and Yara Martinez, but I was trying to make a point.
Amazon is in the TV business. Just not IN the TV as much as ON the
computer and occasionally routed THROUGH the TV. But for all intents
and purposes, Alpha House was a show that made you laugh … and
think a bit. Goodman's Gil John Biggs is a southern political force
from North Carolina who suddenly finds his job and purpose for being
threatened by a contender. To say it's unsettling is … not CLOSE to
how devastating Biggs finds it. Biggs cohabits a Washington DC house
with three other Senators, Johnson's Robert Bettancourt (PA),
Consuelos's Andy Guzman (FL) and Malloy's Louis Laffer (NV). Each of
the Senators has to play the politics game, whether nationally, as in
the case of Laffer, locally as with Biggs or in the bedroom, as with
Guzman. Bettancourt seems above it all and floats there through much
of this first season, until finally dealing with his ethics committee
issues. Johnson, a local guy from Toronto, and a talented director,
helmed the season ender. The series has been written by Garry
Trudeau in the main, which means the comedy is black, black and
blacker. But true moments of humanity showed through on Biggs' return
back to the shores of North Carolina. All in all, this was a very,
very satisfying show to binge-watch one night (it was a LOOOOONG
night). Looking forward to downloading season two when Amazon
releases it.
12 The Blacklist
Where exactly to put the 'breakout' hit
of last year's TV season. An NBC show to boot. And one I disliked a
fair bit while others were issuing the hosannas. Obviously, I was
supposed to make it one of those shows in the bad half-hour comedy
block you read about a half-hour ago. But a funny thing happened
along the way. The Blacklist got better. Indeed, it started to EARN
some of those accolades. Oh, James Spader never quit hamming it up.
And I DO suspect the writers knew what they were doing all along. But
the key was that Agent Liz Keen, played by Megan Boone, started
developing a personality. Maybe a new acting coach? I dunno, but to
the roughly half-way point I thought I was seeing Bionic Woman II
redux. Michelle Ryan turned that show into something unwatchable and
I was under the impression Boone was just another pretty face too.
And as much as I enjoy spending my time with pretty women, however
electronically, I wanted to be entertained, intrigued, thrilled,
amused or any combination of the above. Spader's Red Reddington took
care of the last, with some droll humour. That Reddington was barely
different than Spader's Alan Shore of The Practice and Boston Legal
mattered not a whit. It was wonderful to see the ham back on the
tube. It's increasingly difficult to remember that Spader was once
the king of the pretty-boy roles. He's settled into middle-age
wonderfully. But I must return to the subject of Boone. She was
completely unconvincing as an FBI agent right up until about the time
her father died and her husband, Ryan (Tom Keen) revealed himself to
be the louse that he is (or MAYBE revealed himself). The turn, a hard
turn, from jailing the bad guy of the week, into dealing with vast
conspiracies, saved the show as much as Boone discovered various
expressions on her face come in handy. Emotions, who da thunk it? The
rest of the show is above average in good acting. Amir Arison,
Parminder Nagra, Diego Klattenhoff and Harry J. Lennix did good
turns. Which leaves me hopeful that this is a long-running staple in
the making. Just please don't let Boone become a blank slate. Again.
11 The Tunnel English/French
In Scandinavia, the show was called The
Bridge. Moving further south, the English and French co-producers of
the remake changed the title to The Tunnel. In either case, it's a
serial murder mystery that requires often-feuding, always dismissive
sides from two countries to solve the case, starting with the first
murder that features a body half in one country and half in the
other. Or so it seems. That it isn't exactly that, is one of the
great moments of the pilot show and there's no reason for me to spoil
the discovery of that for you. Now, having saved a juicy morsel for
you, let me move on. Getting police departments to co-operate from
one town to the next is usually … difficult. Getting coppers from
England, such as Stephen Dillane's DCI Karl Roebuck to work with a
weird French detective, Elise Wassermann, played by Clémence Poésy
of Harry Potter movie fame (She was Fleur), well THAT defines
difficult. Until Karl figures out Elise is smart and sexy, despite
her off-putting non-involvement. That leads to the inevitable
regrettable hook-up, which leads to all kinds of repercussions in
Karl's home life (dunh!) but nothing positive in their pursuit of the
mass-killing narcissist, The Truth Terrorist. The show has a lot of
twists and turns through the ten episodes. And some weariness sets in
until the final two episodes where the Terrorist is finally
identified for sure, for sure and the denouement begins. I should
mention that the show uses the natural home language of the speaker
of the moment. Which means lots of English sub-titles for the action
in France. Specifically, the police offices Elise attends every now
and then (Have I mentioned yet she's a little OCD and a LOT
functionally autistic, having absolutely no idea of how what she says
can impact people, frequently grieving people? Guess not.). At the
end, you are left wondering whether Karl's home life is irreparably
damaged and whether a second go-around with Elise is in the cards. Or
whether Elise might be interested in more play time with Karl's son,
despite not understanding how that would effect Karl. Or whether
there's another Chunnel-hopping madmen that needs stopping regardless
of their feelings for each other. I hope there is.
10 Nothing Trivial New Zealand (LY - 14th)
I have memories, pleasant memories, of
getting out to the local bar every week to play Trivia. Specifically,
NTN Trivia. I played at a couple of different bars, frequently
playing squarely against one of the best teams in North America, by
the results. And my team, even when it was just me, held its own. I
really, truly enjoyed the competition and the environment, despite
the fact that I don't drink alcohol. Never have. And if the game had
been available in somebody's home too, THAT's where I would have
played the game. But the coming of the always-connected
internet-aware phones really, really killed NTN Trivia nights for me.
So, I stopped going. The Brampton Bumms were no more. I hadn't
thought about those trivia nights in years until a few years back
when I ran into this show from New Zealand. It's about pub quiz night
and it's set in the current era. And it even addresses the issue of
unscrupulous teams cheating. And because New Zealanders are every bit
the polite people as Canadians, they don't cheat. Which means they
all can enjoy a social night out, competition included. It's almost
quaint. And it works for the team of Brian (Blair Strang), Emma
(Debbie Newby-Ward), Michelle (Nicole Whippy), Catherine (Tandi
Wright) and Mac (Shane Cortese). Over now three years, this fivesome
have paired off, Brian and Emma, Catherine and Mac, Nicole and a
succession of boyfriends, each running into bumps and outright
roadblocks. The show isn't about pub quiz night, it's about five
people living life as large as their circumstances permit. But this
third season has been dark. Very dark. Rape intruded upon Michelle's
life from an unexpected source, her psycho psychiatric therapist. And
as soon as that horrible chapter in everybody's lives ends, the
season ends with a thud. And I'm not just talking about the
cancellation that leaves me wondering why oh why I invested in this
series emotionally to such a degree. The answer is because it is was
a good show, worthy of those minutes you spent watching it. (Sorry
about having you find out this way, Brian. It's not coming back for a
fourth season).
9 Brooklyn Nine-nine
On to something lighter, frothier and a
helluva lot funnier. And a second show set in Brooklyn. Shows how
mature I am that I don't blame the TV for the cheatin' Nets defeating
my Toronto Raptors. How to describe Brooklyn Nine-Nine? It has the
comic sensibilities of it's great grand-dad, Barney Miller. It has a
lot of the slapstick features of uncle Get Smart. It's modern enough
to treat homosexuality as a fact, like with distant cousin Modern
Family. And it has attractive women. Works for me. The precinct police
comedy has been around forever, but rarely this well done. Andre
Braugher, the token black AND gay, runs the place with practiced
patience and a guiding hand that reigns in the stunts of workplace
clown Andy Samberg, playing Detective Jake Peralta. Even with tough
as nails Sgt. Terry Jeffords (the always dependable Terry Crews),
Peralta had turned the office into a playpen. Melissa Fumero's Det.
Amy Santiago, a stick-up-her-butt butt-kisser was often the object of
the play. Finding out she was actually competent and maybe even an
eventual love interest wasn't something Peralta could figure out
until Braugher as Captain Ray Holt, checked into the Dead End Job
known as The Nine-Nine. And suddenly the place began to look like a
precinct. Oh, most of the character caricatures still fumbled around,
but there suddenly was a lot of promise in the squad. Peralta and
Santiago were the stars, but nobody, criminals included, wanted to
cross the tougher than REALLY TOUGH nails Det. Rosa Diaz, played with scary
ferocity by Stephanie Beatriz. She seemed to have one crack in her
hard exterior for Det. Charles Boyle, played with charm by Joe Lo
Truglio. In the pilot, I was sure Boyle was nothing but an
uber-clumsy bozo, strictly there for the slapstick and nothing more.
Ooops. Turned out Boyle had a lot of layers to him and there's hope
for Rosa/Charles still. Or maybe she just adopts him. Either way. Of
course, the season ended on a cliff-hanger, with Peralta called up to
a mysterious task force that leaves him missing from the Nine-Nine
and unable to press his case for a future with Santiago. That might
NOT be the most important facet of the change, but it is what it is …
a setup for a second season of the best on-going network comedy, new
or otherwise, this year.
8 Betas
Betas is a comedy. So how come Brooklyn
Nine-Nine gets all the stellar judgements? Because Brooklyn
Nine-Nine's coming back. And Betas isn't. Oh, and no network
BROADCAST Betas. Yes, this is another Amazon production. And
honestly, not many reading this will be interested in it. There was
no reason whatsoever to expect Betas to have a second season. It was
such an inside baseball series (Inside Baseball being a term to
describe any subject that requires extensive niche knowledge) that
when Amazon announced it was not going to be renewed, it hardly came
as a surprise. So, the first season of Betas now stands as a
stand-alone 10-episode mini-series. about start up companies in
Silicon Valley. And I found it hilarious and even a bit informative.
I failed when I started my own media company many decades ago and
understood perfectly how things go south in this series from start to
almost finish. The show got off to a slow start but then picked up
steam (read, laughs) as the series went along. Four guys and a gal,
Trey (Joe Dinicol), Nash (Karan Soni), Hobbes (Jon Daly), Mitchell
(Charlie Sexton) and Mikki (Maya Erskine), have an idea and most of a
plan. It's another social site/app and it has caught the eye of
money-man George Murchison, played against type by Ed Begley Jr, who
has ensconced the group into his incubator. That's a money and
facilities setup that investors offer to get a piece of the end
company. Most incubator ideas die still-born. Some perish quickly
after the start. But the ones that hit, hit big. And that means money
for everyone. But to get TO the money stage, the Betas have to
produce a plan, a pack of other investors, a product and a demo day.
At each stage, Murchison evaluates whether keeping spending money is
worthwhile. He's rich and he's what the inside baseball people would
call a douche-bag. Maybe even not that principled. It's tough to love a geek. But watching Betas might change your mind.
7 The Americans (LY - 8th)
Keri Russell's Elizabeth Jennings is
one very, very scary woman. And hubby Philip (Matthew Rhys) has the
stuff too, to snuff out lives almost weekly it seems. The Jennings
are Russian sleeper agents at a time (the early eighties), when the
Cold War was about to shrivel up, but was in its hey day. However, we
knew all of that after last year's stellar first season for this show
didn't we? So, how did The Americans get a boost up in year two?
Well, complexities started to develop in the "who's scammin' who"
relationship between FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) and
Russian Mata Hari Nina (Annet Mahendru). Was Beeman using Nina,
wanting each and every last bit of information before dropping her?
Or was he a man in love, willing to commit treason and do what it
takes to steal away with the solution to his dissolving marriage? And
was Nina still thinking of Stan as succor, or at the behest of new
Soviet spy Oleg (Costa Ronin), tempting Stan into doing bad, bad
things? Stan could represent safety for Nina's family in Russia and a
new life in the decadent, and appealing, USA. For Oleg, played with
playboy insouciance by Ronin, the Nina/Stan relationship COULD
represent a coup for the newest member of the consulate brain trust.
Or was all of this action being forced to a head generated by Oleg's
own interest in being Nina's saviour? Of course, the whole year was
not Stan and Nina all time. There was a couple of down turns as Paige
(Holly Taylor) got caught up in religion, a taboo behaviour in Mom
Elizabeth's eyes. Didn't help Paige's cause either when her
supportive father caught her lying. Multiple times. That Philip
didn't shoot the pastor who was Paige's spiritual guru, surprised the
heck out of me. Still think it might happen. And of course, the other
issue in the series was the lack of Margo Martindale in all but a few
episodes. Martindale's Claudia actually hardly seemed her mommy
dearest tough self. She seemed to CARE about the Jennings and the
Connors, who's murders set the tone for a year-long mystery. Who
killed the Connors and their daughter, agents all for the Russians?
The answer closed out an exciting season.
6 The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (LY - 2nd)
At it's best, The Daily Show was no
worse than the second best show on TV this past year. But there's
been some attrition in the supporting troops. John Oliver's departure
to HBO and his own show (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver) hurt a
lot. Oliver showed he was ready to graduate, of course, guest-hosting
for Stewart when he was off movie-making. But he's a featured player
that hasn't been replaced yet. Jason Jones and Samantha Bee are still
around, but they seemed to have topped out with their talent. Jessica
Williams looks to be the go to up and comer now. Gratefully brought
on to replace Olivia Munn (my annual mention of how disinterested I
am in seeing her on my small screen), Williams also doubles now as
the black voice. Well, the on-going voice. Larry Wilmore still trots
out every now and then to calmly destroy whatever idiot racist idea
that has reared its ugly idiot head. But Williams is out there most
nights. The real missing part is Aasif Mandvi, although he does show
up a bit these days. But mostly he's off doing the movie thing. Even
writing one. Will Michael Che and Jordan Klepper bring back memories
of Oliver and John Hodgman? Too soon to tell. And it's maybe the
reason Stewart is taking more of the face-time than is usual. But how
bad is that? He's still the best interviewer on TV. Viewers USUALLY
get informed of something they didn't know. Or they just laugh. Cuz
laughing is what the show is all about. And crying. Crying for the
America that could be, but isn't because evil, stupid people still
have too much say in the running of the country, from the President
down to the local dog catcher. And when I say stupid, I mean idiot
savants who's one talent is getting elected and/or getting into the
public eye. I've got a list if you've got another hour to stay here
reading. No? Okay. But in the meantime, keep watching Stewart to get
your needed dose of the news. It surely isn't coming from any other
news organization these days. And with that, I think I am going to
cry myself to sleep.
5 Growing Up Fisher
Can J.K. Simmons do any wrong? If such
a show exists, it certainly isn't this little spring series gem about
the Family Fisher. Simmons' Mel heads the fractured Fisher clan, Mel
having moved out to a bachelor pad after being divorced from his
stuck in adolescence wife, played with the usual goofiness by Jenna
Elfman. Oh, and Mel comes out as having been blind since puberty.
Which comes as a surprise to all of his clients (he's a lawyer) and
everybody outside of his family that knows him. It's a really sweet
little comedy with a likable family with some quirks. As mentioned
Mel's blind. And he loves both the perks and the occasional hurdles
he has to overcome, being JUST a tad hyper-competitive. Like REALLY
competitive. But always with heart, always with the underdog (unless
it's a client) and always with his seeing-guide dog Elvis along for
the ride. As mentioned, Jenny plays wife Joyce as barely older than
daughter Katie (Ava Deluca-Verley). And here's the really nice thing.
Katie isn't a horrible older sister to young Henry (Eli Baker). At
least as narrator Jason Bateman retells it. Yes, this yet another
descendant of the Wonder Years form of story-telling. But it works.
Henry is just a kid. And like his dad, he seems to have a lot of
heart and the goofy charm that he inherits from his mother. Even the
background players appeal, with Lance Lim playing Henry's best friend
Runyen, an oriental Fonz in the making. There's Isabela Moner as the
light of Henry's life and Constance Zimmer as Alison, the patient,
attractive neighbour who seemingly will hang with Mel despite
whatever befalls them as they try to finish a first date. Several
times. Simmons makes all this work with his believable portrayal of a
blind man, one of the tougher acting roles there are. But the whole
cast is just so darn likable that I will be mad the show got
cancelled on their behalf. Grrrrrr!
4 White Collar (LY - 4th)
We have almost reached the end. The
little manufactured nuclear family that is top FBI agent Peter (Tim
DeKay), his wife (Tiffani Thiessen) and his surrogate son, the
many-times convicted Neal Caffrey, played with charm and scamming in
his heart by Matthew Bomer, have run out of caper stories to retell.
Oh, but what a run it's been. A little mini-season that starts soon
will run out the string, but barring some unforeseen disaster, White
Collar stayed on top of its game til the end. Sure, there was no
Hilarie Burton and too little of Marsha Thomason, with baby-making
interfering. But Bridget Regan stepped in to become a major force, for
good and bad, in Neal's life. Ahhhh, the dreaded femme fatale. Neal
spent a LOT of time doing the good work of the FBI after making sure
Peter was clear of last year's murder charge cliff-hanger. Then it
was all about getting out from under Curtis Hagen (Mark Sheppard),
seemingly with the help of Regan's Rebecca Lowe, or whatever her name
was. All the while, Peter was struggling with leaving Neal behind as
he and Elizabeth were pondering the move to Washington DC. Of course,
to the rescue came Mozzie, the beloved best friend and einstein
between bouts of paranoia, played by Willie Garson. Too bad he exited
stage left just before Neal got snatched in the season's
cliff-hanger. A satisfying season for White Collar with some pretty
good puzzles to solve, thanks to Rebecca. The showdown at the fort
was a major highlight.
3 Orphan Black Canadian/British (LY - 18)
Can a show drown in hype? I had that
fear about Orphan Black which got discovered en masse last year
(after I wrote about it, sniff, sniff), mostly due to Tatiana
Maslany's incredible ability to play multiple roles, many of which
were in the same scene. I didn't comment on that in my mini-review a
year ago and I'm disappointed in myself for that. Maslany was great.
But without the wizardry of the director and the head of
cinematography for the show, the experience would simply not have
been the same. Now, older (indeed 366 days older) and wiser (I've
seen a special or two), I'm prepared to anoint the production crew of
Orphan Black the greatest ever. Some of the camera tricks, despite me
knowing the craft behind the magic, were spectacular. Now, was the
show itself worthy of all the press? In a word, yes! Maslany added a
few more clones to play, but the second series did focus in on the
core three clones. Well, four when you include the scenes devoted to
wacko Bulgarian clone Helena. Her scenes, mostly in an equally wacko
religious sect headquarters, were all a waste of time. The core three
of Beth, Alison and Cosima had a story to live through.
Cancer-stricken Cosima needed the help of her 'sisters' to help find
and then procure the cure for her special strain of problem. That
left Beth and Alison to do the heavy lifting, even though Beth ran
into a transgendered BROTHER clone Tony and Alison had a small
problem with too many people (we're including hubby here) finding out
about her murderous recent past. All along, we had Beth's daughter
proving she might be the brightest of the lot. Always there to be a
brave little girl and having the right word, the right code, the
right whatever to move the plot along. Skyler Wexler did an excellent
job as young Kira. It was quite the effective stew until the showdown
at the end between Beth and evil fellow clone Rachel Duncan. I can
just see One-Eyed Rachel being next year's big bad, even as we've had
two seasons of Rachel being a big bad in the making, operating mostly
from the shadows in the first season. I am really looking forward to
what the creative team does for season three.
2 The Musketeers British
When I was old enough to appreciate the
charms of Racquel Welch, she appeared in The Three Musketeers, a
movie adaption of a particularly loved novel. I had probably re-read
Alexandre Dumas's classic three times by the time the movie came out.
I, to this day, love anything with the Three Musketeers of Dumas
fame. And that includes this ten episode BBC series from England. You
all know how the story goes. D'Artagnan decides to join up with the
Musketeers, stumbling onto Athos, Porthos and Aramis on the way to
Paris. There are the usual mis-communications in the meet-cute, which
are all dealt with in short order. Once in Paris, the blue-clad
Musketeers and D'Artagnan find themselves doing frequent battle with
the Cardinal's Guards, the red-clad personal force of one of
history's ultimate villains, Cardinal Richelieu. The Cardinal has
always been played as deliciously evil and power-hungry. Frequently
taking moments to work with twirling his mustache and stroking his
beard. Signposts of villainy all. But in this series, we have none of
the gloss and panache of previous movies and TV moments. The colours
are muted, the scenery a muddy brown when it isn't grey. The Guard's
wear red, but it's hardly fine livery. The Musketeers favour blue,
but can be found in black or brown just as easily. Paris LOOKS like
17th century Paris, including the palace, which regardless
of time and place, looks incredible. Which brings me to the ladies of
the show, including Queen Anne played by Alexandra Dowling and
D'Artagnan's friend, the unfortunately married Constance played by
Tamla Kari. In both cases, the ladies frequently remind you of the
phrase, “Heaving breasts.” The corsetry does wonders with the
very beautiful women. The foppish king Louis played by
Ryan Gage
is mercurial at best, sometimes dangerously so. And Peter Capaldi,
the future Dr. Who, plays Richelieu as almost more of a patriot then
a really bad guy. At least for the first half of the series. He falls
back into master manipulator after that, which brings me some
comfort, and I hope he'll be back in the second series of the show.
What about the four gentlemen at the lead of the show? Luke
Pasqualino plays
D'Artagnan
as a callow, but willing,
youth who matures greatly over the episodes, as he should. Athos (Tom
Burke), Porthos (Howard
Charles), and Aramis
(Santiago Cabrera)
are more than good actors voicing French characters in British
accents. The decision to have a black actor (Charles)
play Porthos and have his
slave heritage worked into the story gave the series depth. Burke's
Athos is very complex and serves as the captain in waiting for the
group. Aramis is the playboy, who suffers greatly in one episode for being so. Look,
I love the Three Musketeers, good or bad. Luckily for you, this is
GOOD Musketeers.
1 The Good Wife (LY - 10th)
So we come to the end of this long,
long post. The best show on TV this last year was The Good Wife,
taking the throne for the second time in four years. The first half
of the season was spectacular. Then came an incredible change of
course that everybody, including the writers, had a bit of a problem
handling. So, the last few stories were a bit of a drop off. But wow,
the level of the second half might STILL have been good enough to win
The Good Wife the top award. If I'd known Michael Fox was going to
make a return to the show as sneaky, snake in the grass litigator
Louis Canning for a long run, I'd have been rhapsodic. And his run
was almost the least of what went right on the show. What went right
initially was the splitting of the Lockhart, Gardner firm by the
departures of the third-years, helmed by Alicia Florek (Julianna
Margulies) and Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry) to form their own firm. This
had the effect of melting Josh Charles' Will Gardner's mind. He
actually turned heel, if not outright villain. Suddenly, the BAD guys
in Chicago were the good guys we rooted for over the previous four
years. Wow! The scene of Will sweeping his desk of everything in rage
brought on by learning of Alicia's duplicity, was one of the most
powerful moments of the year. That set the stage for LG (the newly
named Lockhart, Gardner) now to do all out battle with Florek, Agos
in court. Above board and frequently below. It was theatre of the
highest art. Then it all came crashing down in a courtroom with a kid
who shouldn't have been there, an inattentive guard and his gun. A
life snuffed out, a war ended by the intrusion of violence, not
common sense. Will lay dead in the courtroom and then in the
hospital. Two episodes where all the characters had to confront their
feelings about Will (and the producers had to point out in several
media sources, that Charles was the one who wanted to end his run in
the show. It got to the point where Charles had to issue a letter.
All to becalm a viewing public that was calling for heads!). Then it
was back to lawyering and politicking. Eric Bogosian came in, playing
slimy Nelson Dubeck, to go head-hunting in the vote-fixing scandal.
He was hunting big game. And while he sniped from the periphery,
Canning showed up to become the new Will Gardner. Too much too soon
for Diane Lockhart. It quickly became her and Kalinda (still wonderful Archie Punjabi) against
the assembled force of Canning and
scumbucket David Lee (the always great Zach Grenier). Meanwhile
Alicia was becoming more and more disengaged with the law and her new
firm. Leading to an explosive final cliff-hanger for the year. Wow,
again. Hmmm, what did I overlook here? Oh yeah, there was the
season-long (or thereabouts) NSA surveillance on the lawyers. And
their Alice in Wonderland attempts to halt it. Appearances from old
faves. Yep, this was the best show of the year. And it wasn't even
close.
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