No Love Lost

Letterman and Leno may not be paragons of professionalism, but they sure do personify ‘must see tv’.

Seems like everyone’s taken a side in this NBC late night kerfuffle.   Even me.  For what it’s worth, I agree that Conan O’Brien got the short end of the stick in the affair, but given his reported $45 million settlement, the stick’s really not all that short.  If you ask me.  Or the average American that lost their job last year.  For $45 million, I would gladly let a TV network fire me.  Not just today, but every single day for the rest of the year.  I could definitely think of a few things I would do to occupy all the free time I would have.

But that’s just me. 

Maybe I’m missing the point, but from where I sit, these guys were given opportunities with their Fall ventures that most personalities on a television show- drama , comedy, or even late night- wouldn’t have received.  Just ask Chevy Chase, Joan Rivers, or Pat Sajak.  Their late night shows disappeared so fast, most people barely remember them.

None of this should be surprising.  The entertainment industry has its own brand of meritocracy and it is not and never has been based on talent.  In the era of big cable, cancellations are common.  Some shows go away after one or two episodes.  More than a few never see the light of day.  They might be truly great shows with critical acclaim, fantastic writing, superior acting, impeccable sets, and quality production value, but they are still euthanized before they get the chance to mature, to hit their stride or find their audience.  That’s just the cost of doing business:  there’s always risk.  Actors are let go, sets are shut down and either dismantled or destroyed, crew are released to pursue other opportunities.  Can you remember the last time you heard a TV actor speak out against the network that let him or her go?  It doesn’t happen often because in the entertainment industry, everything (and everyone) is connected.  Anybody seen Isaiah Washington in anything since Grey’s Anatomy?  Most actors choose not to criticize their current network of employment because they’re smart enough to know that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.  And you especially don’t bite a potential hand that might feed you in the future.

Late night is different, though.  A late night host can take public liberties the average employee would only engage in tactfully and diplomatically.  Under duress.  Or with their friends behind closed doors and in hushed tones.  That’s not the case here. Here, the former and current NBC late night hosts are engaged in a free for all, unified in their attack against the very same network that employed, elevated, and issued the paychecks that made them both millionaires many times over.  I can’t say I blame them.  But I don’t have all that much sympathy for either of them, either.

What I do think interesting are the very public barbs and insults Letterman and Leno are hurling at one another.  Of course, there’s history between the two.  If Leno and O’Brien appear to be in a free-for-all with their network, Letterman and Leno are engaged in a scorched earth campaign to utterly obliterate one another.  I am now making time to watch these two shows that I really didn’t care that much about before just to hear what will be said next.  It’s fun to watch, but that odd feeling of discomfort and awkwardness I’ve felt while listening to their monologues have far exceeded anything I’ve ever felt watching ‘The Office’ (the British original, of course). 

I highly doubt Dave and Jay will be hugging it out anytime soon.  Perhaps a beer summit might be in order.  I hear those work wonders.

Tony Soprano is Dead

Not that Tony Soprano. I don't think anyone but David Chase really knows that one’s fate. And Chase ain't talkin'.

No, I'm referring to the other Tony Soprano. The fish. My fish. You might recall me mentioning my daughter's desire to receive a puppy for her birthday last year? Well, I hemmed and hawed, but finally gave in and granted my daughter's wish. Along the way, we acquired a small aquarium and a few fish. I thought of them as training wheel pets as opposed to the real thing, because my opinion back then and now is that fish aren't really pets. All told, we had 4 fish- two goldfish and two mollies. We didn't get them all at once, though. Like Noah, we collected them in twos.

Initially, all was well. The mollies had their places and the goldfish had theirs. There was some occasional mixing, a couple of meet and greets, but not many. Birds of a feather and all that, I suppose.

The weirdness began a few days later when fish started to disappear. One after another. First a goldfish and then, a little later, a molly. Nothing was left behind, not even the tiniest of scales. I think a member of the CSI team would have been hard-pressed to find the slightest trace of evidence.

Except maybe Grissom.

Though we had no proof, my wife and I theorized that one of the fish had gone cannibal. I can't remember who, but we joked that the molly seemed like Tony Soprano and was systematically whacking the competition. The name stuck.

An uneasy truce, punctuated by the occasional frenetic sparring match, emerged between the goldfish and Tony Soprano. For the most part, they kept their distance until the morning I awoke to find the final goldfish gone and Tony Soprano floating serenely in the tank. And why not? Soprano had taken out his last rival and was now running the neighborhood.

Of the two of us, my wife Linnea has the bigger soft spot for animals. Much, much bigger. She's kind, compassionate, and loving towards just about every animal on earth and they respond to that. Their devotion to her causes them to unintentionally trip her because they have to be near her at all times. They give me a wide berth, though. I'm not mean to our pets, but I'm not her and I think they resent that.

Linnea didn't like Tony Soprano, but I did. I admired the fish’s tenacity, his strength, his patience to hang in there and get what he wanted by any means necessary. Linnea wanted him to just die already.

As I've written before, I believe goldfish have a death wish, that they live to die. I suspected that Tony had that same trait. Morning and night, I would steel myself, to check on the molly’s fate. Today's the day, I would think to myself. Today's the day Tony Soprano goes belly up. But when I would check the tank, he'd still be there, floating serenely.

After a while, I stopped checking as frequently. Every day became every other day and every other day became every few days.

And then it happened.

"Tony Soprano is dead," my wife said to me earlier this week.

"What? No way," I replied, already moving towards the aquarium to see for myself.

She shrugged. "Go see."

Soprano was at the bottom of the tank, floating in an odd fashion for any fish. He certainly looked dead, but closer inspection revealed that there was still the slightest bit of life left in him, though he was clearly at Death's door. Each movement of his gills appeared to be a labor. I silently hoped he would pull through the way his namesake did after getting shot in the gut by Uncle Junior, but that did not happen. By morning, Tony Soprano was dead.

I'm still a little sad about Soprano’s passing and I can't quite put my finger on the reason why. In fish years, you could say that Tony Soprano lived a long, full life. He died pretty much the same way Michael Corleone did at the end of The Godfather, Part III.

But that would be stretching it. He was, after all, just a fish.