TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Kingdom Hospital was the short-lived, Stephen King penned television series that aired back in 2004 (or rather, Stephen King American adaptation of Danish miniseries “The Kingdom” penned by Lars von Trier). This is another case where I missed the first episode. I tried to watch the second episode but there were so many seemingly random things going on that it just wasn’t worth it. I figured that I missed way too much set-up in the first episode and if I saw it from the beginning things would make more sense.

I figured wrong.

As it turned out, Stephen King’s adaptation could have simply been titled “f*cked up fever dreams Stephen King had when he was in the hospital following his accident with as many inside references to his own works as he could fit in to a 13-episode series.” Surprisingly enough, this doesn’t work as well as you’d think.

The premise gives us a hospital, named Kingdom Hospital, in Lewiston, Maine. As it turns out, the hospital was built on top of an old, burned down hospital which which itself was built on top of an old, burned down textile factory. A group of children were caught in textile factory’s basement in the fire and died. As we all know, when children die on a site in a King novel, the site is poisoned forever.

As a fan of King’s works for a very long time, I have a feeling the series was written with people like me in mind… the problem is that a lot of the standard King archetypes work better in print because when you see them in reality they really seem kind of dumb. The crazy psychic old lady that no one listens to, the psychic people with Down’s syndrome, the creepy little ghost kid, the poisoned site: all of these things can be seen in various King works. They certainly don’t seem to work as well on the screen. I think there’s a reason for that: the picture that your mind paints when you’re reading about these supernatural things is invariably more realistic than what you can reproduce on the screen with a television budget. Think about King’s best “to screen” translations. Carrie, Cujo, and Pet Sematary were all very simple psychological thrillers. The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Misery didn’t really involve special effects. Think about some of the worst. It did not translate. Neither version of Salem’s Lot really translated. Maybe on the drawing board a scary monster anteater named Anubis sounded like a good idea but it really didn’t work for me.

Of course, maybe a lot of that could have been saved with a solid storyline that covered all the episodes. We’ll never know as this one really didn’t. At one point the people in the ER break in to song and no one really mentions why. Later a lawyer is admitted and either he is having a dream about people forcing him to sign waivers during a heart attack or the people are actually doing it. In another scene, the anteater rips the lawyer’s heart out of his chest and we never see him again. I’m assuming he died but we don’t really know.

And, if nothing else proves that it was an extending chance for King to just do what he felt like: there was an entire episode based around the hospital “setting right” the Buckner play from the 1986 World Series. In the episode, “Buckner” was brought in to the hospital and given the chance to travel back in time and fix his mistake. If that wasn’t enough, the fact that the hospital gave him the chance to travel back in time was never really addressed.

All said, the entire series was a mess. Nothing led to anything else. Character’s jump in between the real world and the in-between with no real explanation. King fans used a lot of explanations for why this show didn’t catch on. People didn’t “get it”. They broke it up and aired the episode after long breaks. It was none of that. It just wasn’t that logical or good a show.

Recommendation to avoid. Up next: Battlestar!

Fever Pitch was on this past weekend so I watched. All I can say is, moving forward, the Red Sox Nation deserves every bit of ire and bile they get for this movie.

Besides the fact that it’s formulaic, awful, and features only one good part (the part where Jimmy Fallon’s character is forcing his friends to bid on various games in his season ticket package by either giving him stuff or doing things for him… “You want to talk Yankees? Dance for me.”); it also helps perpetuate the stereotype that men must give up everything they like for their relationship to be successful. Way to teach the boys of the future generations to be pushovers, asses.

The Farrelly Brothers suck.

Continuing through my Legend of Drizzt chronological quest, I finally got through the first two trilogies and into the individual books. Before Wizards of the Coast got hold of the rights and repackaged the same work into the Legacy of the Drow and the Legend of Drizzt sets, The Legacy was the first stand alone Drizzt Do’Urden book. The original release was in 1992 under TSR. I had to hunt this book down a little. It’s mine, but I’d lent it out so many times that I had no idea who had it. I tend to be far less crazy about getting books back than I do DVDs or CDs. My favorite part of this book is the original cover pictured to the left. They spent six books already teaching us about dark elves. They live beneath the ground and have ebony skin black as night. On the cover: white guy. God bless TSR.

The little bit I remembered about this book was that I didn’t like it. Even when I first read it back in high school, I remember seeing that it was a “best-seller” and assumed it would be a tremendously awesome book. I remember reading (after having read the two trilogies already reviewed on here) and being tremendously disappointed in it. I wanted to see if I remembered correctly or not so I tried to go into it with an open mind.

Turns out that it held up as one of my least favorite books of all time and I still don’t understand why it was received so well and why some people think it’s one of Salvatore’s best works. I question now whether or not any of the people who reviewed it or received it well even read the preceding six books before picking up this one.

I have the very same complaints with the book in the present day that I did fifteen years ago. Salvatore took one of the most important and interesting characters in the entire Dark Elf Trilogy, Drizzt’s sister Vierna, and completely flushed away everything interesting about her. The first child of Zaknafein (and thus Drizzt’s only full sibling), Vierna’s not-quite-evil attitude was given as one of the primary reasons that Drizzt winds up with strong moral character and the ability to think for himself. She didn’t treat him as awful as her other sisters did and didn’t indoctrinate him properly. Drizzt references this in his “writings” that open the book’s parts. He questions “how would I have turned out if wicked Briza had raised me. Would I have turned out just as evil as she?” At the beginning of The Legacy all of those very interesting questions are flushed away.

We pick up in Menzoberranzan some 30 years after Drizzt has left. We’re given no information on what has happened to Vierna in the interim, but she’s returned to us as just another bat-shit crazy priestess of Lloth. In thirty years she’s gone from kinda-not evil to “I’m going to turn one brother into a drider and hunt down and kill the other one for the glory of Lloth” evil. It made no sense to me how a character who never really exhibited many evil tendencies is suddenly as gloriously evil as her sister Briza.

Every bit of this plot, from the absurd set-up (Vierna is told if she kills Drizzt she will be given control of the first ruling house, House Baenre, even though she’s in no way related to the family) to the execution (Vierna turns her brother Dinin into a drider for questioning her mission… something Trilogy Vierna never would have considered) to the resolution (Drizzt unapologetically running his sword through her heart) is weak and senseless. Salvatore was probably going for something along the line of “constant religious fanaticism of an evil deity can drive anyone insane” but it fell totally flat. It was also completely out of Drizzt’s character to coldly kill her because she was reaching for a weapon that he absolutely could have disarmed. The Drizzt everyone has been introduced to through this book would have disarmed Vierna, knocked her out, showed her the non-Lloth world of the surface, and tried to save her. Instead he runs through the only member of his family he ever really cared about. I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now. I have always thought a better story would have been Drizzt trying to save Vierna’s and convert her to Shar or Eilistraee. Instead, she’s used as a weak catalyst (when any high priestess from any house could have been used more believably) to kill off major characters and get Drizzt to attack Menzoberranzan.

On top of that, I really hated Salvatore’s use of “a quick death is just too good for you” moment with Artemis Entreri. Entreri catches up with Drizzt, loses again, and thrown into a cavern by Drizzt. Regis goes out to find him — the same Regis that Entreri has just spent the entirety of three books either chasing, torturing, capturing, or killing — finds him completely helpless, and says “A quick death is just too good for you, I’m going to leave you for the vultures.” Really? When he was just a member of an entire force that attacked your home? No one’s going to come find him? Really? I understand that Salvatore was not finished with character, and that’s fine, just don’t use a stupid and cliche way to keep him alive.

The only good thing about this book was the exploration of Wulfgar trying to learn to deal with a strong-willed woman. In the entirety of the Icewind Dale Trilogy, barbarian women are never seen and it’s suggested they live as slaves to the men. At the end of the trilogy, it’s suggested that Catti-brie and Wulfgar are going to get together and by the beginning of this book there’s a wedding planned. Showing Wulfgar dealing with a wife who won’t kowtow to his wishes is a good character exploration. Unfortunately, most of it is thrown away by simple jealousy. With the use of the ruby pendant, Wulfgar is convinced Drizzt is trying to steal Catti-brie from him and it follows the predictable course from there. This was another crazy character turn that made no sense at all. For most of the preceding trilogy, we’re told that Bruenor raised Wulfgar as his son and imparted his values on him. By this book, Wulfgar is less complex and mostly an angry barbarian. Another pretty silly destruction of a character’s background in the need to give him a tragic flaw.

Just like then, I hated this book because Salvatore spent 1800 pages in the Dark Elf and Icewind Dale Trilogies establishing characters one way and completely derailed them in this book. I found myself just wishing this book was over by halfway through because I wanted to move on because I knew the ending was going to be just as unsatisfying as it was the first time.

Solid recommendation to avoid.

I like to think I’m not naive. I realize that when people call David Eckstein a “gamer” they really just mean “white.” I understand that when the NBA pushed Steve Nash to a two-time MVP for a couple of years they were appealing to a lost fan base. I understand when that audience says they don’t watch the NBA anymore because of “that element and culture” they really just don’t like the scary dark kids. So when Willie Randolph asks if there’s an element of racism in the fan’s sudden rejection of him, I’d like to at least step back and think about it.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m sure Willie Randolph knows racism when he sees it. The man was born in South Carolina in 1954. Between that and playing minor league ball in 1972 (less than three decades from Jackie Robinson’s debut) I’m sure Willie has dealt with more than his fair share of idiots. By idiot I mean anyone who judged him based on stupid things and expected him to act one way because of it.

You know, like expecting a manager to go out and kick dirt and throw bases at people to get calls overturned… even though calls never get overturned.

Met fans are little bit of a crazy group. I understand this. They are fickle, over-sensitive, and turn on people quicker than wrestlers. Nothing illustrates this better than last season’s Lastings Milledge saga. When Milledge came up, he was a hero. He got a standing ovation the first time he took the field. By the end of the season he was traded. The media (and the Mets) framed it as “addition by subtraction.” Milledge was a diva and he was black.

Racism or a young player’s bad attitude? Who knows. We know it’s not unprecedented for the Mets to trade away young guys who exhibit diva tendencies. Supposedly that’s one of the reasons I have to watch Scott Kazmir mow through the AL East.

The thing is I’m more apt to listen to Willie Randolph’s views on racism in baseball because he lived it. We don’t know how many Ty Cobbs there were in baseball in the 70s. We don’t know what kind of segregation Willie had to deal with. We don’t know what kind of awfulness he faced in the Carolinas in the 50s and 60s. The problem I have with his statement is this — in his quote to the Bergen Record he says:

Asked directly if he believes black managers are held to different standards than their white counterparts, Randolph said: “I don’t know how to put my finger on it, but I think there’s something there. Herman Edwards did pretty well here and he won a couple of playoff [games], and they were pretty hard on Herm. Isiah [Thomas] didn’t do a great job, but they beat up Isiah pretty good. … I don’t know if people are used to a certain figurehead. There’s something weird about it.

“I think it’s very important … that I handle myself in a way that the [African-American managers] coming behind me will get the opportunities, too … .”

Emphasis mine.

This is the problem I have: if Willie wanted to make a point that African American team leaders are held to a different standard than their white counter-parts; he has to do better than Isiah Thomas and Herm Edwards. Isiah was in charge of one of the biggest disasters in basketball history. He built up a $100 million payroll in a league with a salary cap and ruined the franchise so badly that they won’t recover from his five year tenure for another four years. The team never cleared .500 with him as the GM or the head coach. And Herm? I won’t argue that Herm was treated fairly here; but I don’t think that it had anything to do with race. New York Jet fans are a special breed of crazy and treat EVERYONE unfairly. That’s what they do. People are already calling for Eric Mangini’s head after one bad season. They want to jettison Chad Pennington who’s never done anything but turn in over .500 seasons for them. Herm also can’t manage a football clock to save his life and might still be wanted in New Jersey for the murder of Curtis Martin’s knees. Herm also asked to get out of here because he wanted to coach the Chiefs and add LJ’s knees to his swath of carnage. New York fans don’t care about race. We care about winning. Does Willie think that New York Giants fans treated Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning fairly at the beginning of the 2007 season? There were more articles than I care to count about how the Giants needed to fire Coughlin and trade Manning for someone else. In their first two seasons, Manning and Coughlin went 11-5 (with an NFC East title) and 8-8 with consecutive playoff appearances. They wanted these two guys run out of town because Eli didn’t win a playoff game by HIS SECOND YEAR IN THE LEAGUE. This is what the New York media does. They’re hyperbolic and, when they can’t think of anything reasonable to fix a team, they call for new managers.

Randolph’s treatment has been no different than any other coach’s or manager’s treatment in New York. Fans, especially New York fans, don’t care about race. We don’t. Race is a really stupid distinction in a city of eight million people. We care about 2 things in our sports figures: honesty and winning. If you win enough the honesty doesn’t really matter. There isn’t a person on the planet that New York fans won’t give a chance. We love Darryl Strawberry. If 45-year-old, drug-clouded Doc Gooden came out of prison tomorrow and struck out ten per game we’d love him. One of the reasons A-Rod found it so hard to be accepted here is because he wasn’t honest. For his first couple seasons here he tried to always say the “right thing” and ran everything through a PR filter. That might have flown in Seattle and Texas. Here we’re assaulted with a constant stream of media BS and can smell it a mile away. Two A-Rod stories come to mind. In 2004 he was caught at an illegal poker club and couldn’t apologize enough and made it a point to tell everyone how bad gambling is and that he’d never do it again. It reeked of PR nonsense. Last year, A-Rod relaxed, said what was on his mind, let himself get photographed with manly-looking hookers in Toronto and said “yeah, whatever”, and the fans almost immediately started liking him more. That’s how we work. Be honest or be awesome and lie… either way gets you in.

Another problem:

Randolph excluded Ozzie Guillen from the conversation, but wanted to know why the traits often admired in the calm, cool and collected likes of Joe Torre are portrayed as flaws in Torre’s former third base coach.

Because Torre never did anything but win. Torre was run out of town because the Yankees are owned by an insane man and his two children. Look, Joe Torre is not a firey guy. In fact, there’s a pretty solid chance that he’s sound asleep in the dugout every time he’s wearing sunglasses — but whatever he was doing worked for the Yankees. The Met fans insistence that the team’s problems are part-and-parcel of Willie’s stark refusal to rave like a lunatic at an umpire is dumb. His point is valid: Torre never did it and Torre won a lot. But that’s the difference — Torre won a lot. If Joe Torre, before he won any championships as Yankee manager, blew the division like Randolph’s Mets blew the division last year is there a remote chance he’s still the manager the next year? Overturning blown calls doesn’t get you wins. Motivating your players behind the scenes gets you wins. The Mets are playing unmotivated, sloppy baseball right now. If you don’t put that on the manager… who do you put it on?

Here’s the disconnect between fans and players/managers: players forget losses. They have to. If Aaron Heilman held on to the Yadier Molina home run, he’d be Brad Lidge. Fans don’t let go that easily. For Randolph (and I’m sure for a lot of the players) they’ve turned in decent years in 2006 and 2007… they’re 290-241 as of 05/23/2008. That’s pretty good. In New York, though, your 50 games over .500 record doesn’t matter because the last two years have ended in heartbreaking fashion. We live in a city where we’re conditioned to only care about results. As a group, most of us are even OK with the way 2006 ended. It sucked, but it was a good season. Last year, however, was unforgivable and no one on the team seems to get that. The players and the manager are looking forward, as they’re conditioned to do, while fans are looking at all the same warning signs that cost them 2007: a shaky bullpen, starters that can’t go 7, sloppy defense, the complete inability to collect timely hits, a mentally broken Jose Reyes, a David Wright who’s beginning to realize that his team cost him the MVP last year, a Carlos Delgado who is standoffish to the media’s questions about him falling apart even though he’s actually falling apart, and a Carlos Beltran that disintegrates under pressure like Trevor Hoffman. Met fans don’t about the 2006 season anymore. They’re concerned about watching the same team that fell apart in 2007. They desperately want proof that they’re not.

The difference is completely outlined in this quote:

“My track record speaks for itself,” Randolph said. “We had a horrible meltdown last year, but prior to that we were the best team in baseball.”

There’s not a Met fan in the world that cares about how the team was really really good until September 15th. This has nothing to do with race. The resurrected zombie corpse of Connie Mack could have been in charge of the Mets last year and neither his preceding 3,700 wins nor the miracle of his resurrected zombie corpse would have mattered. The fans are not over last season as evidenced by Shea Stadium’s poisonous environment. The fans are on edge. They’re sensitive to failure. They’re paying record prices to go out and watch a $140 million payroll lose. This is not an indictment of Randolph’s race; it’s an indictment of an underachieving roster coupled with a touchy fanbase.

It’s reached the point where I don’t know if the relationship is fixable. The way for Randolph to address the fans would have been something along the lines of “Yes, I know we are getting off to a slow start, we just need fans to remember it’s a long season and we’re going to be in it all the way. Everything will settle down eventually.” Joe Torre had to do this on WFAN and YES for the last three years. Randolph’s (and all the Mets’, for that matter) bull-headed insistence that nothing is wrong has fueled the problem. Part of being a good manager is properly massaging your fans via the media. Randolph hasn’t done that; instead he laid down the one gauntlet that’s really hard to pick back up. The Wilpons have backed away from him. Minaya has backed away from him. And now following a terrible performance against the Nationals, followed by a four-game sweep at Atlanta, and now travel to a ballpark in Colorado that has been terrible for them (22-37) since its opening — things aren’t looking good for Randolph’s future here… especially with Lee Mazzilli sitting in the SNY studio with nothing to do but slide in.

It’s too bad, really. I like Randolph. But he seems over-sensitive this season to the scrutiny of the New York media. You’d think he’d understand it; he’s been in New York his entire career. He had to understand that the only option the fans would accept this season was a strong performance out of the gate. And that’s not to say that the Mets’ start was unacceptable. It’s not. One game under .500 and 3 games back before Memorial Day is completely OK. He should be saying that things will probably be better when Pedro comes back. He should mention that Johan Santana carries a 4.02 ERA in April and May but a 2.63 ERA in June. He should be talking up the fact that Johnny Maine is throwing the team on his back after losses and pitching 8 inning gems. It would be completely reasonable for him to tell people to settle down and, honestly, most of us would probably be OK with that.

I’m still hoping Randolph can recover from this and turn it all around. I stuck with Tom Coughlin through the media nonsense and was rewarded. But in my privileged white opinion, the fan’s treatment of Randolph has very little to do with race. It has to do with watching a .500 team that should be a .600 team play sloppy baseball.

Fix that and you could be purple.

Chronologically written (and actually read by me) before The Dark Elf Trilogy, the The Icewind Dale Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore is the 2nd of the Drizzt trilogies or books 4, 5, and 6 of the Legend of Drizzt series. This trilogy was the series that introduced Drizzt and his compatriots Regis, Catti-brie, Wulfgar, and Bruenor to world.

Reading through this series now it’s not hard to figure out why Drizzt turned out to be the breakout character of this series. Everyone else is honestly kind of one-dimensional and boring. The idea that no one expected this character to be hugely and absurdly popular — and create a generation of fanboys who demanded to play dual-scimitar wielding rangers in their weekly game — is probably one of the reasons TSR is now a sub-subdivision of Hasbro. Take a look at the major characters who are introduced in this series:

Bruenor Battlehammer: The king of this dwarf tribe. He’s a surly, angry, drinking dwarf with a soft side who took in a human girl (Catti-brie) after a goblin raid killed her parents. He also takes in another human boy (Wulfgar) after the barbarian tribes failed attack on Ten Towns in The Crystal Shard (book one). Bruenor, other than his penchant for taking in humans, never does anything to break out of the surly dwarf archetype that exists everywhere from Lord of the Rings on down. In fact, when I mention Bruenor, picture Gimli.

Catti-Brie: The aforementioned human girl whose parents were killed in a goblin raid. How exactly she came to be in Bruenor’s care is never really addressed, just know that she’s 18 and Bruenor is the only father she knows. We’re first introduced to her at the end of the Dark Elf Trilogy and she’s only 13. She is the first human who doesn’t treat Drizzt with mistrust. Her trust and Drizzt’s subsequent rescue of her earns him Bruenor’s trust. Five years later she’s beautiful young woman and a potential love interest for Drizzt. She’s also one of my least favorite characters in any book ever. For whatever reason this character has always seemed a bit lame to me. She always seems like she’s floating around the exterior of the story and inserting herself into everything. Somewhere in the course of this trilogy she goes from “girl who barely carried a shortsword around and was terrorized by an assassin” to “girl who finds a magic longbow and all of the sudden morphs into the worlds most dangerous markswoman.” I’ve never really bought her.

Wulfgar: The first parts of book one involve the barbarian tribes attack on Ten Towns. Bruenor captures one of the younger boys instead of killing him and indentures him to five years of servitude. He raised Wulfgar as a son. Advance five years in The Crystal Shard and Wulfgar is a 6′10″, 300-lbs of muscle fighting machine. Jeez, are he and Catti-brie going to fall in love someday?

Regis: The halfling thief. He’s the hook for both book three, The Halfling’s Gem, and the conduit through which Drizzt will be introduced to his Moriarty. I’d like to think that Regis has points in these books other than to be a troublemaker that leads the friends’ adventures… but he really doesn’t. After this series, he’s rarely around at all. Regis’s most important role in any of these books to force Drizzt to meet his nemesis.

Artemis Entreri: Entreri is supposed to represent Drizzt’s dark half. A man who grew up on the tough streets of Calimshan, Entreri is every bit the fighter that Drizzt is. This is important because we’re supposed to understand that Drizzt is the most impressive fighter to wield two weapons that anyone has ever seen. Entreri is every bit as skilled as Drizzt, but sees himself as superior because he is not hindered by personal relationships. His judgment is never clouded by care for someone else. This character would be better if Salvatore didn’t spend pages and pages of text beating you about the head about how you’re supposed to understand that this guy is Drizzt without the soul and, later, what Drizzt would have become had he not been raised with values by Vierna and Zaknafein.

Most of these characters, other than Drizzt, are kind of boring. In fact, the only reason I don’t doubt that Drizzt wasn’t supposed to be the central character in these books is the complete lack of mention of why the hell there was a drow on the surface. Once we get in to books after this, the roles of Regis, Bruenor, and Catti-brie are far diminished in lieu of the far more interesting conflicts among the drow.

The 2nd half of The Crystal Shard deals with an artifact of the same name and a wizard who gets his hand on said artifact and wants to use it to conquer Ten Towns. The artifact is a tremendously evil item of power that had drawn the balor Errtu to the surface. Unfortunately, a bumbling human wizard had found it first. The artifact uses the human as a vessel and Drizzt and crew vanquish everything.

The 2nd book, Streams of Silver deal with the friend’s adventure across the surface and the rampant racism that Drizzt has to deal with once he leaves his comfort zone in Icewind Dale. This is also the first real mention of Entreri as we find out that he has been tasked with capturing Regis. Regis has a fancy ruby pendant with hypnotic powers that he stole from the master of the Calimshan Thieves’ Guild. This book pretty much contains the entire sequence of events that makes me dislike Cattie-brie. She spends a good portion of this book as one with no skill with a weapon who is terrified of Entreri. By the end of the book, she’s found a bow and is shooting arrows through everything that comes near her. There’s no progression. She just goes from Princess Zelda to Bullseye. It seems like Salvatore had a character map for her, then decided he didn’t need a damsel in distress and just went in another direction without actually retconning what he’d already wrote. It never quite worked out… even though Catti-brie remains as the crazy archer of doom, it never quite rings true. You always have that image of her terrified of Entreri.

The 3rd book, The Halfling’s Gem, deals with what happens after Entreri catches up with the friends. He catches Regis and begins the long trek back to Calimshan. Wulfgar and Drizzt chase after them culminating with Drizzt meeting his dark half in battle.

If the theme of the last trilogy was theology’s effect on society, the theme of this trilogy is the effect of racism on the individual. Most of the good parts of the trilogy are written from Drizzt’s point of view and the fact that, no matter what he does, people will always judge him first on the reputation of his people. One of the biggest internal struggles he faces is when he is given a mask which allows him to appear as a surface elf. Not nearly enough time is spent on this. Drizzt is given the opportunity to literally change his skin but chooses to continue allow the ignorant to judge him how they will. The assumption being if they will judge me on my skin and not my actions that they are not people he would care to associate with.

It’s coming across that I don’t like this series… that isn’t true, although Salvatore’s writing style can also get grating after a while. I do like it but I also know I like the stuff that comes after it better.

If you want to read any of Salvatore’s future Dark Elf works, this trilogy is necessary to get the history and backstory of a lot of the relationships (the rest are addressed in the Dark Elf Trilogy). Other than that, they’re fun one-off fantasy books and nothing more.

After the sweeping yesterday, the Mets are now 126-193 against the Braves. Since the Braves moved to Turner Field they’re 78-109. At Turner Field, they sport a Generals/Globetrotters-esque record of 31-62.

So I guess that means don’t bother getting worried over games they’re pretty much pre-determined to lose?

For all of the praise I heaped on Season One of Prison Break you’d think that season two would continue to deliver The Goodness (tm). Turns out, not so much.

I guess when you have a show called Prison Break, and the end of season one is actually breaking out of prison, you have to fill time with things other than the prison break… which is difficult in a show called Prison Break.

At the end of Season One, Wentworth Miller’s Michael Scoffield had convinced D.B. Cooper to tell him the location of his five million dollar stash and had either recruited or picked up seven other escapees. SPOILER ALERT: they escaped and made it to the airport. Unfortunately, the plane that was waiting for them took off without them. Season two, or as I’ve taken to calling it: “Everything that could remotely go wrong does go wrong and everyone who isn’t in prison is unimaginably stupid and don’t analyze this storyline too long or your head will literally melt off your body”, picks up right after this moment and follows the manhunt for the “Fox River Eight.”

There are two really bright spots in the otherwise predictable and annoying second season, so I’ll address them first. The addition of William Fichtner as FBI agent/profiler/manhunter Alexander Mahone was very well done casting. Fichtner plays the obsessive/compulsive Moriarty to Scoffield’s Holmes. Mahone is an expert on chasing down escaped convicts and uses Scoffield’s own obsessive need to plan against him. Mahone figures out that the entire escape plan is tattooed on Scoffield’s body and uses that to get ahead of him and track him down. As it turns out, Mahone is haunted by the demons of an escapee that he killed and The Company manipulates him using that and his family.

The second is the expansion of Paul Adelstein’s Paul Kellerman from “Random Goon In A Loosely Defined Conspiracy” to “More Well Defined Goon In A Loosely Defined Conspiracy.” In the first season, Kellerman was one of the Vice President’s government sponsored hitmen in the guise of a Secret Service agent. In the second season, Kellerman goes rogue after The Company tried to force him out of President Reynolds’s life. It’s hinted that the two of them either had a relationship or that she dangled the promise of a relationship in front of him to keep him in line. After The Company cuts his contact off, and he gets angry about it, they decide he’s a liability and try to have him eliminated. This turns him in to a badass traitor.

As for the rest of it… season two was kind of boring and predictably bad. The conspiracy, just a minor storyline in season one, comes to the forefront in season two and the show suffers. When you have a shaky conspiracy storyline as the hook that kicks off the action, that’s one thing. When you start to go in to that conspiracy, one that’s apparently so deep it reaches to all levels of government and is powerful enough to stage a suicide that covers up the MURDER OF THE GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS — and this is after the previous season in which Vice President Reynolds POISONED THE PRESIDENT with no repercussions — ya need to make a sanity check. Seriously, we’re talking about the murder of two high profile government people in the span of like four weeks and no one’s asking questions?

The season also suffered from what I call Ben Stiller Movie Syndrome. If you’ve ever seen There’s Something About Mary or Meet The Parents, you’ll understand this. All of the Ben Stiller movies (where he’s not playing a wacky Zoolander character) are based on one running punchline: his character’s unlucky. It’s funny for maybe the first half-hour of the movie. By the mid-point, it becomes obvious that anything wacky that could go wrong goes wrong. By the end of the movie, it’s like: “we get it. He’s unlucky.” That’s season two of Prison Break. All of Scoffield’s carefully laid plans are generally foiled by mundane things. He leaves his car at a parking meter and it gets towed. Mahone figures out one of Scoffield’s tattoos because he happens to look down in his car’s rear-view mirror at exactly the right time. To an extent, I understand why this happens and, really, these are just minor nitpicks at the gaping, overall problems with Season Two.

One of them in particular, and the hardest one to deal with, is the enormous problem with the show’s time line. The first season covers approximately six weeks from Scoffield’s incarceration in late April to May 27th 2005. The second season, when you look at dates, only covers about three weeks of show time. This wouldn’t be a problem if not for some of the insane plot points. For instance, a couple days after the escape, Billick is fired from Fox River for allowing inmates to pay him for certain privileges. The next day, Geary (the guy who turned Billick in because Billick had him fired) and Billick decide to try to get in on the $100k/head Fox River Eight manhunt. They find Cooper’s five million dollars and Geary turns on Billick, knocking him over the head with a tire iron and escaping to a hotel with the money. While Billick is in the hospital, he leaves Geary a threatening voice mail with the general idea “if I ever find you, I’m going to kill you.” While Billick is in the hospital, T-Bag finds Geary, kills him, takes the money, and frames Billick. While Billick is getting discharged from the hospital, Geary’s body is brought in. Billick is then arrested for this murder that he apparently committed while getting stitches.

Now, from the time Billick got knocked out until the time he’s out of the emergency room is, what, eight to ten hours max? Is there any of that time he isn’t accounted for? And he’s convicted of the murder and sent to prison by the end of the next day? And none of the detectives see any problem with this? Like, I don’t know, the time of death was when Billick was sitting in a hospital? That, I don’t know, he wasn’t on any of the cameras that high end hotels tend to have but, surprise, one of the Fox River Eight was? Their evidence is a voice mail and the fact Geary was pointing at Billick’s name on a receipt? And that’s enough to get him incarcerated at Fox River by end of business the next day?

This leads to another problem with all of the season two. The gaping stupidity of everyone who is not either a member of the Fox River Eight or a person chasing them. The prime example of this is T-Bag’s ex-wife. She was the one who turned him in and had him sent to prison. He tracks her down. You’re telling me this woman, whose children were threatened and was told, by T-Bag, “don’t you think when I get outta here I won’t remember what your front porch looked like” is going to stick around her home while he’s still on the loose? Or, at the very least, she wouldn’t have some sort of protection or system set up with a friend that says “If I don’t call you every day at 8:05 pm, there’s a problem and call the cops?”

And this is before you even get in to the conspiracy storyline that still makes no sense 44 episodes in. However, they did add a spooky old white man to be the face of The Company. The spooky white man does not talk, but instead writes down his questions and answers on pieces of paper which he then, presumably, destroys. This way his conversations can never be recorded.

I found the 2nd season of Prison Break to be a huge disappointment. I also found it amusing that, by the end of the 2nd season, most of the primary lead cast had been put in a Panamanian prison. So, I guess they plan to go back to the basics in season three.

Recommended if you want to play “find the plot hole.” Otherwise avoid and watch season one again.

My love of Netflix has been well-documented on this site. You can imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered that Netflix also had wrestling DVDs. The first one to find it’s way to the top of the queue (probably added about six months ago…. I have a long queue) was The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior. We’ve reviewed the bejesus out of these DVDs on on The Wrestling Site so I’m not posting it there, though I’ll probably put it up on The Wrestling Blog… where you should absolutely go read and comment if you watch wrestling.

I was a huge fan of The Ultimate Warrior when I was a little kid. He was always number 2 to Hulk Hogan, but he was a close number 2. I’m not sure, exactly, when the WWF really started marketing to little kids but The Warrior must have been one of the early successes. The music, the facepaint logo, the bright colors, the cartoony demeanor; everything about the Ultimate Warrior screamed marketing. It worked. Unfortunately, it turned out the guy was batshit crazy.

I’m trying out this review format… no idea if I’ll stick to it or not.

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- The earliest point made on this DVD is how crazy the Warrior’s interviews were. Back when I was a little kid, I didn’t really notice. Here, he rambles on about nothing and says random things about the heavens and Gods and Warriors. While I’m sure they cherry-picked some of his more insane moments, I can’t tell you one coherent promo he ever did. I mean, my memory from back then is spotty and all but I can’t remember one single big warrior moment that didn’t involve a two-minute squash. The best line they managed to find: “I found myself on a spaceship in th heavens fueled by the souls of the Warriors.”

- The sad part of this whole thing: I can even understand the character he was going for. He made insane references to a long line of Warriors and he could draw power from the gods and the spirits of Warriors past. He fancied himself the latest in a long line of spiritual Warriors. He was the Slayer.

- Sweet Jesus, I forgot the pop he got when he beat the Honky Tonk Man. Because of all the craziness that eventually destroyed his career, I forgot just how huge his random “come out and squash people” gimmick made him. Considering this was exactly the push that WCW gave to Goldberg, you’d think I’d remember.

- They touch upon the Rick Rude feud and pointed out that the only two good feuds the Ultimate Warrior ever had were with two guys (Rude and Randy Savage) who could bump their tails off and meticulously plan matches out ahead of time. Considering these are the ONLY two Warrior feuds I remember, I’ll have to figure they’re right.

- Heenan tells a story about the series of house show matches Warrior had with Andre The Giant. Apparently Warrior came hard with clotheslines on Andre on consecutive nights (which they show). On the third night, Andre put his fist out and knocked the Warrior senseless. Sadly, they don’t Andre’s stiff shot, but only show the Warrior looking dazed after it. Pretty crappy moment in the normally stellar WWE production here as they don’t show the one part of the story that everyone would actually want to see.

- I remember that the Warrior had some crazy hair, but sweet Lord did he tease his hair up to White Trash Church levels for Wrestlemania VI.

- BTW: For all old WWE videos I play a game called Crazy Or Dead. On the Warrior DVD crazy is dominating dead.

- Heenan makes the point that the Warrior sometimes seemed to think the WWE didn’t give him enough. Meanwhile, they handed him the IC title within two years after his debut in a squash match, then put him over Hogan. What else could they have possibly done to make happy?

- This is the first time I’d ever heard the story that Warrior held Vince hostage for more money before the Match Made In Hell… which explains a whole lot. How Hogan and Slaughter didn’t murder him in the ring is even more amazing. Vince’s story of just desperately waiting for the match to be over so he could savor firing Warrior is funny… because you can just picture it. Vince seething backstage, kicking puppies, just waiting to throw the guy out on his ass. This might actually be where Vince finally coined the term “YOU’RE FAAAHHHHRED”. As a note, there are two guys we know of that have done this to Vince. Warrior and Jarrett. How’s that workin out.

- The singlet with the muscles painted on it era… I’d forgotten about that!!!!

- Holy crap did I forget how much I was freaked out when Ultimate Warrior’s head just randomly started bleeding during an interview.

- I’m glad they addressed the horror that was the Warrior’s WCW run. In other news, I can’t believe it was only two years between the time he left the WWF and came back to WCW. It felt like 10.

- Hogan apparently had a huge problem when Warrior saying that Warrior had beaten him in the past. I don’t know why this was a problem… pretty much anyone watching knew that. Much more awful was the 10 minutes of rambling nothingness that followed it.

The Matches

Terry Gibbs vs. The Ultimate Warrior (Green Bay, WI: 10/24/87): This is Warrior’s debut on Wrestling Challenge. I also didn’t know that the WWE now bleeped the “F” out when guys say “WWF” in old match interviews. The rules to this lawsuit are so odd. The Attitude logo has to be blurred, they bleep guys from saying “WWF”, but the old WWF block style logo is still OK? This is a typical 80s style squash match that you’d expect on Wrestling Challenge. F-

The Ultimate Warrior vs. The Honky Tonk Man(c): Intercontinental Championship Match from SummerSlam (New York, NY: 8/29/88): They also blur WWF out of “WWF Intercontinental Champion” in Honky Tonk Man’s on screen intro. I would understand all this more if they blurred out the block logo on the turnbuckles, too. But they don’t. I’m dwelling. I actually remember watching this match… how I got my mom and dad to drop money on SummerSlam, I don’t know. The crowd in this match is amazingly hot because of how much people HATED the Honky Tonk Man’s title reign at this point. A year long title reign comes to a crashing end in 30 seconds. A+ for the booking, the surprise, and giving fans what they wanted. F- for the match.

The Ultimate Warrior(IC) vs. Hulk Hogan(WWF): Title vs. Title from Wrestlemania VI (Toronto Skydome: 4/1/90): I think it was Scott Keith that said this match was meticulously scripted before the actual event which is why two guys who are notorious for delivering awful matches were able to put together such a good match. I think I convinced my parents to get me this PPV, too. If I remember correctly, I even wrote a 12-year-old’s review of it in a spiral notebook that I forced my mom and dad to read. The Warrior’s hair is just unruly feathered and teased for this match and he is still breathing heavy even after Hogan’s 3-minutes of entrances and posing. Shoving and lockups to start with each guy getting some posing time. Test of strength follows for Warrior to finally regain his breath. Solid cardio there, steroid boy. Hogan gets to play come back first but with no clear-cut heel, no one gets to do the kick to the gut break, so Hogan ends the test of strength with a wrestling take down for a pin. Nice. Exchange of criss-crosses and scoop slams. Hogan goes out of the ring and “blows out his knee”. I remember Jesse making the comment here that the knee must have “popped back in to place” or something as Hogan completely no-sells the injury a few seconds later. Hogan control wearing down the Warrior with some headlocks and suplexes. Warrior eventually fights his way out with your standard elbows to the gut and go to a double clothesline. Both guys come up but Warrior is feeling it, shaking the ropes. Warrior takes control with clotheslines. Warrior Irish whips Hogan into the corner and follows with chops(?!). More whips into the corner and a vertical suplex gets 2. Bearhug follows as Warrior proceeds to kill the crowd’s energy with another rest hold. Hogan, surprisingly, is not knocked out by the bearhug and fights out. Warrior shoulderblock takes out the referee and Hogan gets a pin… then Warrior gets an uncounted pin. WTF is the point of a ref bump if both guys get an uncounted pin? Ref comes back to get a 2-count for the Warrior. Hogan follows with a roll-up that gets 2. THEY TAKE IT OUTSIDE… for not much action. Back into the ring, the Warrior looks like he was about done 10 minutes ago. Warrior goes for the gorilla press and his arms are shaking to the point I’m surprised he didn’t kill Hogan. Press and splash only gets two and it’s HULK UP TIME! Big boot but Warrior avoids the leg drop and gets the the splash for 3. Hogan kicks out at 3.2. No one is going to confuse with with Steamboat/Savage, but it was good considering the parties involved. How Warrior threw all this away so quickly after the WWF gave him this tremendous stamp of approval is unbelievable. Extra points for the appearance of the Skydome’s mini-ring styled ring-carts. B-

This match comes off very oddly and it took me a good three or four minutes to realize that Jesse Ventura’s commentary had been completely edited out of this match. Once you notice it, it’s impossible to ignore it. Gorilla’s commentary comes off weirdly because he’s interacting with someone who isn’t there. I remember reading about some sort of rights issue with Ventura but didn’t realize they’d taken this step. It hurts the match. Are newly produced Wrestlemania VI DVDs just Gorilla? What do they do if Jesse is on-screen?

Ravishing Rick Rude vs. The Ultimate Warrior(c): WWF Championship Steel Cage Match at Summerslam (Philadelphia, PA: 8/17/90): Surprisingly, the first appearance of “dead” on the Dead or Crazy. The rules are pinfall or submission. Commentary here is done by Vince McMahon and Roddy Piper. My favorite part of Rick Rude’s pre-match speech is that the WWF camera guys would invariably find the sketchiest, most inbred looking guy in the crowd and show him while Rude was delivering his speech… then they’d desperately pan the audience for any remotely cute women. Wrestling hot is much the same as army hot… all women get a base +4. Rude starts the match by bumping his ass off. Piper: “What’s it mean when he starts pumping his arms in the air and prancing like a pony” — Warrior misses a flying forearm and hits the cage — Piper: “It means he’s gonna miss. I see.” Bwahaha. Rude takes advantage by trying to climb the cage, but Warrior grabs an ankle. Rude’s bladed already 2 minutes in. I forgot that the old WWF-style cages were the original place to perfect the “agonizingly slow ladder climb.” Rude is in control now shoving the Warrior’s face into the cage. Rude hits the Rude Awakening and instead of pinning or escaping the cage he decides to climb to the top of the cage for a flying fist… which he hits. Heenan is screaming for Rude to get out of the ring. Rude to the top of the cage again but he went to the well once too often. Warrior turns the tide and goes for the door but Heenan slams the door on his head. Rude goes for the pin and we get our first patented Vince McMahon “1-2-3no!!!” of the evening. As bad as Vince was, he’s still not as bad as Michael Cole. Rude goes for the door and it turns into a Rude tug-of-war between Heenan and Warrior. Warrior pulls Rude’s tights off exposing that delicious rump. Heenan gets pulled in and Warrior abuses him. Warrior thrown him out. He does his little press-slam dance again. Piper: “I still don’t know what that means.” Vince: “He’s pulling his power from the heavens and all the Warriors in the arena” — Warrior gets knocked down — Piper: “Well where’s it going, then?” Warrior hulks up and gets the three clothesline and press slam and escapes the cage. Surprisingly awesome match which was entirely on Rick Rude being able to control the pace and Heenan and Rude bumping their asses off for the Warrior. B+

The Ultimate Warrior vs. The Macho Man King Randy Savage: Retirement Match from Wrestlemania VII (Los Angeles, CA: 3/24/91): Dead comes surging back to tie with crazy as both Sensational Sherri and The Lovely Miss Elizabeth are involved in this match. Did the Ultimate Warrior start the airbrushed clothing fad amongst white trash or did he just take advantage? Staredown to start. Savage bumps a few times for the Warrior before taking quick control with some forearms. Warrior shoulder blocks Savage and he rolls out of the ring. Sherri distracts the Warrior giving Savage a chance to come back with a double-axe handle. Warrior shrugs it off and takes control. This match is NOT no-DQ so Heenan rightly points out that Sherri has to watch herself such that she doesn’t get Savage disqualified and costing him his career. Savage takes control back with a clothesline and goes to the top. He dives off for a high cross-body and gets caught by the Warrior. Warrior puts him down and paintbrushes him. Insulting. Savage gets a chair and tosses it into the ring. Warrior punches Savage down and has control until Savage ducks away from a corner splash which sends the Warrior out of the ring. Sherri gets some cheap shots while the ref reprimands Savage. Then savage comes out of the ring and does some semi-illegal stuff, which draws more reprimands, which gives Sherri more time to get in cheap shots. Good stuff. Something lost in modern wrestling: no one is willing to admit that the other guy is stronger than him in a fake match with a pre-determined outcome, so no guy is willing to do what Savage is doing here… which is essentially saying: “I know you’re stronger than me but I’m going to stay away from you as much as possible and confuse you and hit you from ten different directions and have my manager take cheap shots.” Savage grabs a headlock. Warrior fights out for double clothesline. Sherri distracts the ref while the Warrior grabs a small package for about a 10 count. Ref bump and it’s time for chaos to ensue. Sherri goes to the top rope but Warrior ducks and she hits Savage! Warrior chases her outside the ring and back in time for Savage to grab a roll-up as the ref comes back. 2 count. Savage finally takes some semblance of control and hands out two top rope clothesline. Scoop slam gets two. To the top rope. Five Savage Elbows to the throat get two (god bless retirement matches). Savage looks horrified. Warrior hulks up. Clotheslinegorillasplash gets two. Warrior pleads with his Gods and yells at his hands. Warrior continues talking to hands and decides that the Gods have told him to retire. Instead of letting him get counted out, Savage attacks. He drapes Warrior over the rail and comes off with an elbow, but Warrior recovers. Warrior sends him back into the ring. Warrior shoulderblocks Savage out of the ring twice and gets the one foot pin. Again, God bless retirement matches. Sadly, they cut out the end of the match where Savage turns on Sherri and re-unites with Elizabeth, closing his WWE career with a face turn and a happy ending… but I guess that wouldn’t really be appropriate on an Ultimate Warrior DVD. Once again… Warrior puts on a great match with a guy who could control the pacing, plan the match, and bump his ass off. A

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Obviously solid DVD from the WWE.

I actually watched season one of Prison Break two years ago. It was the second television series I ever Netflixed. The plan was to watch all the season one episodes as I was DVRing season two and then I’d catch up. As it turned out, that DVR decided to randomly delete itself and I lost all the saved things. I got annoyed and really didn’t feel like watching all the episodes on MySpace so quite some time ended up passing before season two bubbled to the top of my Netflix queue.

The Good

• The set-up for this show is great. Brother on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Other brother is crazy OCD planner who creates a meticulous plan to get himself sent to prison to break his brother out. He tattoos this plan on himself — including the blueprints to the prison — hidden in this tremendously intricate design of religious imagery. He has everything planned out, from who he’s going to ask for help in the prison to where he’s going to take his brother when he’s done.
• I like heist movies and season one is basically a 22-episode heist movie. With an entire season, they can tell the heist story much more intricately than any movie could. We get every aspect of the escape plan, including the guys who Michael planned on including and the guys who just happened to find out about it. I love the way the entire escape plan was executed
• Wentworth Miller’s Michael Scoffield makes this entire season. He plays the brooding character to a tee. For most of the season, he rides the border between possible psychopath and loving brother perfectly. He believably charms the skirt of the prison doctor into leaving the door open for their escape. He charms his way into the warden’s office using his past as a structural engineer. He’s good enough at it that you can suspend most disbelief at the chain of events that leads to the escape.

The Bad

• For the great way the story was constructed, it does force you to make a couple pretty huge leaps of faith. First, that Michael is put in a cell with a guy who is so desperate to break out that he’s willing to gamble on a huge sentence extension when he only has six months left on his sentence. Second, D.B. Cooper just happens to be Fox River Penitentiary and is willing to hand Michael the five million dollars he’s had hidden forever. Thirdly, you have to buy into the very loosely designed “conspiracy” that put Lincoln on death row in the first place.
• The conspiracy. I could do without it, really. It’s a very sloppily put together conspiracy that reaches all the way to the presidency. Basically, a shadowy “The Company” pulls the strings of the government and somehow their stock price was helped by the assassination of the Vice President’s brother. Instead of framing a guy with no family or friends (you know, a la Oswald) they decide to frame a guy who has a brother, girlfriend, wife, son, and father who all are working themselves to death to get him freed. You’re making this leap of faith that The Company can stage an assassination using any person in the world that they want and they pick this guy who has a family with apparently limitless resources. Not the best decision, really.
• While I understand why they do it, the whole “every corrections officer that works in every prison is a slimy asshole” thing gets old. I understand that when you’re writing a story about prisoners that the COs are the foils and, therefore, to root for the prisoners you have to make the COs the bad guy… but come on. I’m sure that every corrections officer in Illinois is not shady.
• Additionally, Michael just happens to fall in with four guys who are really great guys but who happened to either be very desperate or were set-up? Michael is in prison for his plan, Lincoln was set-up by the government, Sucre was trying to provide for his girl, Haywire is crazy, C-Note was set up by the army, and Tweener was sentenced to five years for stealing baseball cards. Of the escapees, only Abruzzi (mobster) and T-Bag (serial rapist/killer serving multiple life sentences) and they can’t even resist giving T-Bag a checkered past where he was the product of a…… let’s say “checkered” family life. I’m believing that 7 of every 8 guys in prison is there for noble reasons or because they couldn’t help it? Really?

The Rest

If I seem like I’m complaining a lot, don’t be put off… I really liked season one. Mostly these are minor nitpicks about the characters. Some sloppily designed plot-holes aside, I think this was one of the better 2005 debuts. Most of the casting was spot on and Robert Knepper’s performance as T-Bag should have earned him some kind of supporting actor award by now. He toes the line between creepy, horrifying, and pathetic with amazing skill. He somehow manages to portray a character that you desperately want to see die but occasionally, despite your best intentions, find yourself feeling sorry or almost rooting for.

Season one earns a strong Netflix recommendation.

Why don’t Randy and Simon just get down on their knees and blow Archuleta? If anyone else had sung two awful, schmaltzy ballads in the final four they would have been blasted us unmemorable and boring. This kid gets “you blew away the competition tonight.”

Die.