PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Scrubs Season 5

I hadn't seen any Scrubs for a long while. I had started buying the series dvds when they were coming out but stopped with season 4. I decided to wait to pick them up after they had fallen in price. That was precipitated by seeing the pricing pattern that developed over the first 5 or 6 years that dvds were coming out and the desire to spend more money on LEGO. Now thanks to a Half Price Books 40% coupon I picked up season 5 and got to watched it for 6 bucks, plus tax. It's got 24 episodes on three discs and I had seen a few of them before in syndication. Originally the episodes were broadcast from January to May 2006. That was pretty much just after I had given up trying to keep up with shows as they were broadcast. There were too many dvds to watch. I could never remember to watch broadcast episodes at the right times. I just missed a lot of stuff I was often interested in. Of course watching a series on dvd is preferable to broadcast, what with no commercials, which made waiting seem like a good idea. For the most part I enjoyed the 5th season but I really like the cast of actors and the characters they play. It just helps so much to have clever scripts and visuals to enjoy.

Zack Braff and Donald Faison play two best friends who had been interning at the Sacred Heart teaching hospital. In the 5th season they have moved up to attending doctors with Zack a GP and Donald a surgeon. Zach goes through the season commenting on his life and life at the hospital. We hear his internal monologue and see his fantasies. He's got a bunch of interns to take care of plus all the regular stuff that happens in a hospital, some sad and some happy, it's a humourous melodramatic mixture. Then there's Zack's love life. Lots of comedy potential there. He's dating a woman at the beginning of the show and as soon as they buy some property and build a porch they break up over commitment. That pouch later attracts middle aged gay men who like hanging out on it. It's a nice porch. For a while Zack lives in a tent on his porch. It's a show with heavy continutity that moves people through several story arcs of varied lengths that can continue from season to season. That porch is in later seasons and later in the 5th season Zack gets something going with Elizabeth Banks that lasts into the 6th season and beyond. Donald and Judy Reyes are trying to have a baby so there's lots of fun stuff going on there. I just love Donald Faison. He can act, he's really great at physical comedy, and I find him a delight to watch. He has great chemistry with Zack, they are best friends in real life, and their scenes together really make me laugh. Laugh out loud at times.

That's good cause some of the stories are kind of sad. People are always dying from one thing or another. One episode has a woman die, her organs are harvested and transplanted, and the recipients get sicker. They find out that the dead woman had rabies. It's totally unexpected  and sadly everyone dies. It breaks John C McGinley's tough doctor Cox even thought it was not his fault. Rabies is very rare and there was little time to do tests for something you would never expect. John dives into depression and Scotch and stays that way for a couple of episodes before he's back on track. McGinley's created a really complex tomented character that I might not like to hang out with but do enjoy on tv. Sarah Chalk plays another doctor who worked at Sacred Heart but she left last season to work on a fellowship which ends the second show into the season. She winds up going back to Sacred Heart and starts dating a young intern. That will continue into next season before that goes all to hell. There's always pain mixed in with pleasure in the show. You don't get a laugh for nothing with this show. The cost is worth it for the excellent writing and wonderful comedic moments. Hard to do a hundred shows and keep the quality up but they manage to get something good in each week story wise and there are plenty of jokes. I'm looking forward to finishing off the series thanks to a batch of 40% off coupons.

Psych Season 4

I've been getting back logged with all the tv show dvd's piling up. It's hard to pick the one to watch next sometimes, they're all clamoring for my attention. I picked Psych season 4 and had a hoot watching that the last few days. That was the last of the 4 sets that I picked up after the last Black Friday for 8 bucks each. Can't beat that price, huh. James Roday and Dule Hill are back as the fake psychic detective and his funky partner. I've grown accustomed to their entertaining banter and quirky personalities. James Roday's character is still too much of a wild card for personal contact but he's entertaining on TV in nice little 45 minute doses, especially with such great co-stars like Maggie Lawson, Timothy Omundson, Corbin Bernsen and Kristen Nelson. These are all great actors who have brought life to some fun characters. Steve Franks, the show creator, is back as show runner for the 16 episode season which ran on USA from Aug 2009 to March 2010. It looks like they do half the season and take a 2 month break before returning with the rest of the episodes. Steve also wrote and directed some of those episodes. James Roday continues to write, working on three episodes and he takes a shot at directing the season finale. The level of guest stars just continues to rise with Cary Elwes appearing in the first episode. He's a debonair thief that Tim has been after for years. They all run up to Vancouver to try to catch him. The show is set in Santa Barbara but it's really filmed in British Columbia. On the audio commmentaries the cast and crew joke about the amount of Canadian stuff that sneaks into the background of the show.

Rachel Leigh Cook is back as a potential girlfriend for James. In real life James and Maggie Lawson have been together for the last 5 years. In Psych season 5 they start their relationship on the show. Back in season 4 James and Rachel date for a while, then she leaves for a few months, returning later in the season. James Brolin stars as the sheriff at a wild west theme park Tim has been part of for several years. There's something goofy going on and Tim asks the guys to help figure out who's sabotaging the park. Ray Wise asks Gus and Shaun to help him with a girl who seems possessed. You can't beat Ray in nearly any role. He's the best. Jaleel White and Kenan Thompson were a couple of the singers in Dule's a cappella singing group. He hadn't seen them in a while and when the fourth member is found dead they find themselves in a mystery. The dead guyleft a clue in a piece of music. Jaleel used to play Steve Urkel on Family Matters and Kenan was onNickelodeon's All That & Kenan and Kel shows. Michael Rooker and John Hawks kidnap James and he gets shot while they are holding him. Police lessons from Corbin help him get clues out to everyone while he's trapped in the trunk of the car. Arnold Vosloo is a convicted murder that James helps out to save Maggie's old flame. Ali Sheedy returns as Mr Yang in the season finale. Turn out the evil psycho killer had a partner and that creep kidnaps both Maggie and Rachel. James has to try to save both of them before time runs out. Don't worry he saves them but Rachel has had enough and leaves. The final episode had a lot of Hitchcock references in it. I know I didn't get them all since I have never been a very serious Hitchcock fan.

I love that picture above. The shows look and style seem to click with me. The series continues to make me laugh and I plan to pick up season 5 when it gets cheaper. I'll want to watch these again down the road.

Psych Season 2

Turns out the 8 dollar investment I made purhasing second season of Psych is paying off great dividends in giggles and outright gaffaws. All our cast are back. James Roday, Dule Hill, Corbin Bernsen, Maggie Lawson, Timothy Omundson and Kristen Nelson. There were 16 episodes in the season that was broadcast from July 2007 to Feb 2008. The dvd came out that same summer. I'm sure it was more than 8 bucks, huh. James, playing Shaun the fake psychic, has solved quite a number of cases for the Santa Barbara Police Department, so they keep hiring him back. Kristen plays the Chief and she gets a credit in the open titles. Tim and Maggie are the detectives. Tim's Detective Lassiter, or Lassie as Shaun calls him, is not so happy with Shaun most of the time. Maggie and Shaun get along together most of the time. There's always that chance they will hook up and the scripts play to that theme a bit. In real life Maggie and James hook up but in the series they don't start dating this season. The first show starts off with Tim Curry guesting as the judge on an American Idol like talent show which has come to the area looking for new talent. Did one of those spurned talents think Tim deserved to die for his nasty ways. Someone's been trying but they've failed so far. The Chief asks Shaun and Gus to help keep someone from succeeding. Gina Gershon also appears in the episode. Was she someone? The second episode has a dead guy turn up with weird slashes on his body and Shaun, in full psychic mode, draws the killer on a large pad of paper. Damn, it's a T-Rex! No one believes him, he's scorned, still he's right. How's that work then? You'll have to catch the episode if you want to find out. Lou Diamond Phillips guests in an episode where he plays an FBI agent. He has an FBI psychic along with him. She's a hottie and Shaun falls for her. Somehow I don't think she'll still want to go out with him after he's had her arrested. John Amos appears as a visiting Uncle. Kevin Sorbo appears in an episode as a Dawg style bounty hunter. Corbin has always looked down at the profession but Shaun and Gus were impressed with the guy 20 years ago. They've got a different attitude after they go up against him. They're all after an escaped prisoner played by W. Earl Brown. Phylicia Rashad and Ernie Hudson play Gus's parents and both of them are suspects in a murder case. Shaun helps Gus deal with that over the Christmas holidays. Shaun becomes a tv star on a locally produced Spanish Language tv soap opera. He was there to investigate a murder and things just fall into place. Amanda Pays, Corbin's real life wife, plays his blind date in an episode. The cast is fun and the scripts have funny things for them to do. All the characters have subplots that work around the main theme of the episode. Some of them are pretty silly and that's one of the things that I like about the show. It's not serious and there are goofy things that happen. From the flashbacks to the interesting effects shots it all works well. It's not over the top like Pushing Daisies but it's stylish enough to create a nice look. Flashy graphics and camera tricks won't make up for a sad script lacking laughs. I found them to be filled with yuks. Yay, for me! The show continues to feature a pineapple in each episode. John Landis and John Badham both directed episodes this season. The shows are still being shot in Canada. That's where the studio work is done and for the outdoor locations BC fills in for Santa Barbara well enough. They don't seem to worry when a bus goes by with a Canadian flag on it or that Gus drives a car only available in Canada. Oh well, that setting is less important than the characters, the murders are really subservient to the character development. Not that there's much growth, Shaun still runs wild, people still let him get away with plenty. I'm still enjoying his antics and will enjoy visiting with him and Gus when I get around to season 3 and 4. The dvd's have a few extras like commentaries on some episodes. There were a couple of featurettes. Some were fairly entertaining.   

Wodehouse Playhouse Series 1

I've been a fan of PG Wodehouse since some time in the 1980's. My old girlfriend Karen turned me on to his work. If you haven't read any, and you do read, you should. It's some of the best writing, ever. The stories might not appeal to everyone, they are set in an older England, before the second World War. Light comedies, with bits of romance, lots of odd characters, silly situations and amazingly clever words strung together in delightful patterns that are a joy to read. Wodehouse wrote from the 1890's to 1975 and there are close to 100 books of stories and novels. There's a bit of non-fiction and song related material out there too. His work has been adapted pretty much regularily since he started writing. The BBC has done a lot of it and this 1975 program was one of htem.

John Alderton and Pauline Collins are the two main actors in the first series. They play different characters in each episode. I remember John from Zardoz, where he played Friend, and from the British Sitcom Please Sir! where he played a teacher to a class of misfits. Kind of like Welcome Back Kotter but 7 years earlier and with English accents. John was in plenty of British TV including Upstairs, Downstairs. I didn't watch that when it was new and I still am not interested. I couldn't remember seeing Pauline in anything, she was un Upstairs Downstairs too, but I see from her IMDb page that she was in an episode of The Saint in 1966. I vaguely remember her but it's been a couple of years since I saw that episode. They both do a good job on the acting stuff and they are joined by a fine lot of character actors. The shows were fun for me to watch but I recognized the stories they were taken from. Others might not like them as well. Here's your chance to find out for free. The seven episodes are all available on YouTube as I write this. They look fine. See if you like them. I'm going to go read a book before I hit the hay.

1. "The Truth About George"
2. "Romance at Droitgate"
3. "Portrait of a Disciplinarian"
4. "Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court"
5. "The Rise of Minna Nordstrom"
6. "Rodney Fails to Qualify"
7. "A Voice From the Past"

A LEGO Christmas Special from Monsieur Caron

 

Marc Andre Caron posted a link in a comment in a post of mine and I watched his Christmas short about Santa's sleigh troubles and thought it was fun. You can watch it and be the judge. It's so easy to embed a video, just cut and paste, I don't know why I don't do it more often. Check out Marc's other videos on his YouTube page. Have a Merry Christmas too. If you don't celebrate Christmas, enjoy the days off for the holidays, if you're working. I know I've got two four day weekends coming up and there's a ton of stuff to watch on my shelf. I hope to get some of that watched as well as get some serious lazing about done.

Muppets rock the house.

I thought this was a hoot. Muppets rocking out to Sure Shot by The Beatie Boys.

LEGO - Time Twisters 1997

For some reason LEGO changed the names of the sets to Time Twisters. I'm not sure what the idea was, there isn't much about the series on the internet, but Timmy and the Doc are gone and some bad guys are piloting the wacky vehicles through time an' gettin' their steal on. The LEGO Collector book shows pictures of the last three sets with Time Cruisers logo's on them. I have all three of the last sets and they all have Time Twisters logos on them. It doesn't much matter, they quit the series after these sets came out. I guess they didn't sell that well. I was happy to get them and I'm still weighting the parts versus sets question. I'll leave them as sets for a while. I don't really need the parts.

     

I didn't find any catalogs or packaging that mentioned the names of these two, except for Brickpedia, who call them Professor Millenium and Tony Twister. I'll have a seperate post about all the Catalog mentions that I found on Peeron. BrickLink calls the minifigs Bad Guy 1 & 2. The guys travel with a ghost and a skeletal fashion victim. The bad guys aren't very fashion conscious either, I mean epalettes, with those torsos. That motorcycle jacket torso has been used on 17 minifigs that appear in 22 sets. Wow, huh. No wonder I see so many of them around. I like that ghost minifig. That's the second version of the ghost, the first used bricks for the lower half of the figure instead of white minifig legs. There was a third version in 2006, the last appearance of the ghost, but it was more transparent and I don't think it looked very good. Here's the bit of story that was on the box of 6497 Twisted Time Train.  

Beware, the LEGO SYSTEM Time Twisters are travelling through the LEGO universe in search of treasures to power their time machines. Will they be successful or will the Time Cruisers catch them. With building sets from the LEGO SYSTEMS Time Twisters collection, only you the LEGO MANIAC, will determine who will rule forever!

That's a lot of responsibility, ruling forever, I doubt these guys are up to it. Here's a look at the last three sets. I actually have all three and have built them a couple of times to look at and move around on some flat surface.

6495 Time Tunnelator

Great name, huh. The $10 set with 80 pieces appeared in two versions, 6495 and 6499, the latter came with a big plastic time machine. I got the 6499 version and haven't ever seen the other. I assume the back of the boxes are different because the 6499 version shows the time machine in use. That's it below and that kid looks pretty happy to have one. I don't think I'm that happy to have one, it's kind of dumb looking, but I'm not being paid to like it either. Mine's packed away in a box on the hope that it might come in handy someday. Only some small hope of that. The ship is the same in both version of course. It's got a nice action feature, the rolling wheels spin the propeller and flap the wings, and Bad Guy 1 is off on his nefarious voyages.

  

I do like the flapping wing action. Those plastic wings don't appear in any other set. The rest of the parts are a pretty good assortment of useful parts. There are a couple of bats in the set. 1997 was the year they were introduced, from the looks of it in the Fright Knight sets. Did I mention I like the bat. He's a great looking piece and right up there in the top 5 of favorite LEGO critters. A pretty silly set all in all but one worth having for the fun factor.

6496 Whirling Time Warper

 

The second set of the trio is a bit larger, 152 parts with a list price of $22. The price sticker on the one I have says $16.79 but it doesn't tell me what store it came from. It's rare for me to leave the sticker on a toy package. I usually remove stickers, from boxes I plan to keep, as the label might stain the box as the glue dries. I don't always think about the possible resale down the road, more I like to keep the packages nice for me. I do the same with books too. The set's got two minifigs, Bad Guy 2 and his ghost pal, who jaunt about in the Whirling Time Warper. It's got some down right silly movement to go along with the silly name. The wheels turn and the propeller spins, the top hat wearing skeleton heads pop in and out of the blue cones, the wings flap and the trans blue cylinder rotates tumbling all the jewels inside while spinning the blue disc with the black spiral printed on it. They really pack a lot of action into such a tiny vehicle. See a short commercial for it on YouTube. There are a good mix of parts, none of them particularly large, but for one. Buried in there is a huge bathtub from this Belville set from 1996. That bathtub would be used in another Belville set in 2002 and none since, yet for some reason I have 4 more of them in my part stock. I have several of those blue spinning discs and the trans cylinder halves behind the blue disc. I wonder if I might have bought more than one of these for the parts. I have only the one box and one instructions but it's a good bet that I could have tossed the rest. It would be a good set to stock up on for the nice mix of parts. The ship doesn't look much better than the rest of the series but it scores better for the nice mechanical workings.

6497  Twisted Time Train

 

They saved the best for last. The Twisted Time Train has 300 parts and a list price of $38.50. It's my favorite set of the series, the three part train is really goofy, and there's lots of moveme nt as you roll it along the floor. The set has one of those boxes with a flap, that's the image from it on the left. When you lifted it up you could see a clear insert in the box that shows off the n ice shiny chrome parts and minifigs you can have if you buy the set. Remember when they used to do that. Sadly I don't have the parts holding insert. Much as I like the fancy packaging it does raise the price of the set. I'd rather have simpler packaging and more parts for the dollar.

 

Both the Bad Guys appear in this set as well as the ghost and the skeleton with the blue hat and black bandana. Like the professor in the Back To The Future series they have a train to ply the time streams. Not sure which train is sillier, this one or the one in the 3rd movie, but the LEGO train has that spinning skeleton  in a blue hat and a bandana. That's got to count for something, but I'm not sure what. The engine's wheels make the smoke stack go up and down, the skeleton turns on his stand and the wings flap on the middle car, and the ghost rotates on the last car while the wheel turning helps rattle his chain. It's got that nice curved stair case that only came in black in three sets, this train and two other castle sets from 1993-4, but came in other colors in Fabuland and Belville sets.  It's a great parts pack, especially if you get it on clearance, and one that I would have bought several of. There are some comments on LUGNET about the set being on sale at LEGOland for $4.99. That would have been great to get some of that mark down action, huh. Oh, well everyone's got their story about that cheap find.

Toy ads from Netherlands Comic books of the 1980's

  

I got a bunch of ads from the Danish Donald Duck comic series. They are from random issues in the 1980's. I was interesting because some were LEGO ads. These are all toy ads that I thought had odd art or goofy toys or were of some other interest to me. Odd art in the HeMan ad. Not a cartoon or toy that I was a fan of. I understand there are people who love these guys. Same for Construx, not a toy that I thought much about. Thought the space ad was marginally interesting. The Power Monsters have claws on their wheels. That's just goofy. I bet the kids liked it.

 

I don't remember the Playmobile space sets. I could have missed it or they were only out in Europe. I never bought any Playmobile but I've always liked their nice figures and colorful playsets. The train looks nice too.

Will Hayes in Ask A Policeman

I had watched Ask A Policeman a few days back and tonight I watched a second Will Hayes movie called Convict 99. I hadn't ever heard of him before I ran across these two British comedies over at the Internet Archive. Growing up in Canada meant I had a steady stream of British fare to watch on my tv. I grew to like the dry wit as well as some slapstick, though I do draw the line at Benny Hill. Still not a fan. There's some of both comedy styles in Ask A Policeman. Hayes is more of a straightman while Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott fill in the noisey activity around him.

 

In the pic on the right we have Moore, Hayes and Moffatt. In Ask A Policeman they play policemen who live in a small quiet town called Turnbotham Round and for the last ten years they have had no crime. Not that they went looking for any, either. The local Chief Constable plans to evaluate the need of a station, what with no crime. Will and his constables plan to create some crime but they suck as being criminals as much as they do at being coppers. They eventually stumble onto some real smuggling and there's a dumb but half way funny ending. I guess the story is pretty dumb in both movies but there are bits and pieces that I enjoyed, some of which made me laugh out loud. Convict 99 has Hayes get hired as a prison warden while he believes he's going to head a bad boys school. He accidentally gets tossed into the prison population for a few days. He decides to clean up the building and make it a nicer place for the criminals to stay in. Moffatt plays goofy guard and Moore plays a squirrelly prisoner who's been unsuccessfully tunneling out of the prison for 40 years. They aren't great pieces of cinema but there's a larf to be had. AAP scores a 7.4 on the IMdb and C99 scores a 6.9, you'll have to be the judge if they deserves that. There are a nice bunch of character actors in the films. Glad I found them. Might watch them again in a few years. Who knows?

She Wolf of London

I watched the 1990 series She Wolf of London over the last week. It was fairly entertaining for a monster of the week sort of show. Kate Hodge plays a college student who comes to England to study under a mythology professor played by Neil Dickson. In her first episode she's camping out on the moors and a werewolf attacks. It's why I don't camp. I enjoy the peeing on a bush part but the rest just isn't up to snuff. Luckily for me I can pee on a bush in my backyard. Luckily for Kate the bed and breakfast where she's staying is also Neil's home, his amusing parent's, odd aunt and young cousin live there, and there's a great room in the second basement that Kate can be chained up during the full moon. Luckily for the viewer she manages to get out during the full moon. The werewolf doesn't appear in every episode but when she does she's played by Diane Youdale, a Brit tv personality who got pretty famous there on the Gladiator tv series. Her werewolf costume isn't very good. This version of the werewolf doesn't have any hair on her shapely legs. The face piece is pretty uninspired. Luckily for us most of the bad guys fair better with their costumes and make up. There's a good selection of evil doers and monsters, we have ghosts, zombies, a bog man, trolls, wizards, witches, demons, even a trip to a convention for an old science fiction tv series. Some of those fans were the scarest part of the episode.

Sadly some of the stripts were as weak as the werewolf costume was silly. That's probably why the series only ran 20 episodes. The first 14 were filmed in England, sometimes in small villages in the country side, and sometimes in London. Lots of nice old buildings to see. After some of the backers left, the last 6 episodes were filmed in Los Angeles and the series suffered a name change, to Love and Curses, with the 15th episode. Kate returns to LA in that episode after her friend is murdered. Her problem was cursed trolls looking for a place to stay in LA. They didn't go through a real estate agent to get that house and they used a sledge hammer for the down payment. Whap to the noggin. Neil is being phased out of the University so he tags along. He'd written a book that got optioned for a movie in a previous episode and that leads him to his new job as a host of a tv series on the supernatural. During SWOL a romance builds between Kate and Neil but nothing much happens, especially after they find out Kate turns wolfie if she get too excited. Goofy, huh. Rather like Moonlighting, but with monsters. It has something in common with Buffy and Angel and even The X-Files, especially the humorous episodes of those shows, but it's even more goofy. Occasionally it made me laugh. The dvd came out with all the episodes on 4 discs last Feb. I'd watch the series again. It was fun to watch.