NBC had planned to bring the popular BBC and BBC America car show Top Gear to us yanks. Instead, NBC has decided to cut its brake cables in the middle of a brilliant power slide.
The official Top Gear blog announced that NBC won't air their US version of the show as a mid-season replacement in 2009.
This means the show and their hosts, Adam Carolla, Eric Stromer and Tanner Foust, are up to grabs for the highest bidder like a drug dealer's impounded Cadillac Escalade at a municipal car auction.
But the saddest news is just around the corner. The gearhead blog Jalopnik reported that the reasons NBC passed on the show were the production costs and the failure of their dismal Knight Rider remake. Well, I'm sure the cars on Top Gear won't talk, so what's the problem?
I suppose I can see standing with those commentators who see this as a good thing. Better to have it never made than to have it get made and suck, and then to have execs misinterpret the reasons for its failure just as badly as they misinterpreted "durr, it gots carz" as a common poison-pill element between TGUSA and Knight Rider.
Just give us the real show in a non-localized version. It's plenty entertaining and plenty relevant just the way it is. And besides, as much as I love Adam Carolla, some of us like Brit-wit. Maybe even a market's worth of us. What TV exec has managed to miss the fact that Monty Python was so much more popular in the USA than it ever was in Britain?
How come nobody ever told me about this? Wil Wheaton has a TV Squad page full of his own reviews of first-season Trek TNG episodes.
Paul Lynch, who directed this episode, directed several episodes of TNG over the years. He was an Englishman who was always extraordinarily wound up, red-faced, sweating profusely, and infamous for saying "Energy! Energy! Energy! And, and, and, and, action!" before takes. He did this before every take, regardless of whether the scene actually called for "Energy! Energy! Energy!" or not. During production of a later episode, in a scene when Brent had the first line, Paul did his "and, and, and, and, and ACTION!" thing. Instead of starting the scene, Brent looked at Paul, and said, very seriously, "Can I get another 'and' please?" to which Paul enthusiastically replied, Yes! AND AND AND! ACTION!"
This could be in the running for Best Thing Ever. Via Paul F.
On a related note, is it just me—or am I seeing a distressing number of bloggers choosing (or being forced) to abandon well-established URLs just because Movable Type went crazy on them?
Apparently these photos of Obama without a shirt in Hawaii have been causing a stir. At least, judging by the New York Post front covers I saw in the airports: "FIT FOR OFFICE!"
I guess some people might find this stuff unseemly. All I gotta say is... hey, in California, we've been used to knowing what our elected executives look like without shirts for a few years now.
Argh! This friggin' cartoon ("Story from North America") and its insane song have been indelibly stuck in my brain for three days now. The only way to get stubborn memes out of delicate brain fabric is through repeated scouring and dilution, so here it is so everyone can help.
Oh, I forgot to mention, it'll be days before you get it off your hands. Sorry about that.
My brother Mike knows how to put on a show when he makes cookies. How come nobody else poses with the food or does Sports Illustrated action shots of "preheating the oven" or "waiting 12 to 14 minutes"?
Brian Tiemann
