MusubiMyHomie

Nope. The 2022 episode that was centered on Peanut Hamper marked the first time Lower Decks eliminated its usual opening titles, and that opening title sequence in the space debris left over from the Titan's attack on the Pakleds looked gorgeous as well.

Really? The only example of "someone choosing ER over Homicide" I can think of is Julianna Margulies, whom I first saw in Homicide's second season before she had her breakout role on ER. Are there other examples?

You're right that the line reflected the behind-the-scenes resentment over ER getting L.A. Law's time slot. I remember reading in 1994 about how Homicide did well in the ratings when it temporarily replaced L.A. Law. I don't want to think about how Homicide would have been more popular had it stayed on the Thursday night schedule. Because then it makes me imagine how an immensely popular Homicide would have resulted in NBC allowing Tom Fontana total creative control. And then that makes me wonder if Seasons 5 to 7 would have been better than the Seasons 5 to 7 we got. Homicide became a different show—it was still better than other hour-long dramas, but this wasn't the Homicide that wowed me in its first four seasons—when it clearly started following NBC network execs' notes, like when it replaced the excellent opening title sequence by Mark Pellington, the director of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" video, with Kyle Cooper's terrible ripoff of the X-Files opening titles (it's definitely Cooper's worst work as an otherwise inventive title designer). One of the things I liked about the flawed reunion movie was that it restored Pellington's title sequence. The character of Falsone just always came off to me as Homicide's attempt to attract NYPD Blue viewers by aping NYPD Blue's most sentimental or romantic storylines, and I wonder if he would have never existed had Homicide been a phenomenon like NYPD Blue and ER.

Carlos Alazraqui, a.k.a. Admiral Buenamigo and all these non-Trek characters:

I just watched Cinematic Titanic's War of the Insects episode again, but from the beginning this time. I wasn't paying enough attention when I watched the last 20 minutes of the episode during the holiday season. I learned I made a mistake: The woman who was standing behind the lead character when he awkwardly spread apart his legs in the climax wasn't the pregnant character. I hate how Primetimer doesn't allow me to go back and edit one of my own posts a couple of months after I wrote it. Shout! Studios transformed MST3K's holiday season stream on YouTube into a "Foreverathon." I watched a lot of Joel-era MST3K episodes on Comedy Central when I was a teen. Yet I never saw the Tormented episode. Thanks to the Foreverathon, I finally saw a huge chunk of the Tormented episode, and Joel, Crow, and Servo's "Sessions Presents" running joke whenever there was a shot of a lighthouse or a beach had me rolling.

I caught parts of Cinematic Titanic's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians episode (just to see if Joel and Trace repeated any jokes from the first time they riffed on Martians, and they never did) and the last 20 minutes of Cinematic Titanic's War of the Insects (a.k.a. Genocide) live show. The latter was interesting because while I watched it, I found out that Genocide later received the Criterion Collection treatment. The cast's interplay with the audience whenever a joke fell flat was fun. The best part of the live show was a moment nobody in the cast wrote a quip for: the lead character's attempt to protect a pregnant woman from being shot at by awkwardly spreading his legs, which resulted in the longest laugh from the audience.

Yeah, it's true that Mariner addressed her as "Mom."

And it was always bigger on the inside than the outside. That could only mean one thing: Jim's trailer is a TARDIS. But because this is Rockford we're talking about here, the TARDIS he wound up with can't go anywhere anymore.

In addition to character actors in their prime and old-ass cars, there's this scene: Jim Rockford ordering Jack in the Box tacos is why The Rockford Files won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.

Thank you for unlocking that oral history. I hate the NYTimes firewall. But I'm always down for behind-the-scenes stories about the making of "Three Men and Adena" and a swipe or two from Homicide alums at NYPD Blue! Oh, really? I like how that last rule of his was broken in Season 6 with a gun battle that made the climactic mansion shootout in Beverly Hills Cop look like a Super Soaker fight.

That show was sheer elegance in its simplicity.

I was a teen when this show first aired on NBC from 1991 to 1992, but I never watched it until now, and I'm enjoying it. Lionsgate, which currently owns the show, has posted Eerie, Indiana's entire run on YouTube for free with ads. I watch everything on YouTube with an ad blocker, so Eerie, Indiana is commercial-free, thank fuck. It's basically Kolchak: The Night Stalker—[Tim Robbins in The Hudsucker Proxy voice] but for kids!—and with a new-to-the-neighborhood teen paperboy instead of a washed-up, middle-aged reporter in a wrinkled seersucker suit as the hero who uncovers supernatural crises and tries to put a stop to them. I'm not familiar with the Roger Corman era and the Howling era of Joe Dante, but I like the original Piranha and a lot of his movies from that whole stretch that lasted from the first Gremlins to Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Dante didn't create Eerie, Indiana, but he directed five episodes and was its creative consultant, so a lot of the suburban horror comedy vibe I like so much about the first Gremlins, The 'Burbs, and the "Kirsten Dunst in peril" section of Small Soldiers is present on this show. I finished watching the entire run of Deep Space Nine for the first time last year, so because of that, I'm looking forward to the episode later on in Eerie, Indiana's run where the late Rene Auberjonois guest-starred as the Donald—a Satanic antagonist whom the writers based on none other than Donald Trump. I just watched the third episode, which Dante didn't direct, but it's my favorite episode so far. It's about a sentient ATM that bonds with Simon, Marshall the paperboy's lonely nine-year-old best friend—played by future Picket Fences cast member Justin Shenkarow—by gifting him so much money that it ends up bankrupting the town of Eerie. I ran into an old blog that reviewed every Eerie, Indiana episode in detail. It's called The Eerie Examiner, and I like that its reviewer, and not just me, noticed a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sight gag in the ATM episode about how sleazy and creepy Gregory Itzin's character—Mr. Chisel, the boss at the bank that's experimenting with sentient ATMs—is when he's not in public: After the ATM episode, I heard an audio commentary Shenkarow recorded about the episode for a podcast called Ready 2 Retro. I wanted to hear the commentary simply to get clarification that the actor who starred as Marshall's dad did a dual role as the dad and the Max Headroom-inspired ATM—Shenkarow confirmed that he played both parts—and I was pleased to hear that Shenkarow has fond memories of Eerie, Indiana and that its set wasn't a rotten experience for him. (A lot of these sitcom sets can be rotten experiences for child actors.) I wasn't too thrilled to find out from the commentary that Shenkarow turned into an NFT bro though. I don't want to see someone revive Eerie, Indiana because Hollywood is too dependent these days on old IPs—Eerie, Indiana has already been revived twice in the forms of a much cheaper, Canadian-made sequel show that was set in an alternate-universe Eerie and a series of YA novels—but if the show gets a reboot, it ought to do an episode about how evil NFTs are.

I recognize her! She's Mary-Margaret Humes. Because I'm a comedy nerd and a Gen X-er, I know her best as Mel Brooks's love interest in History of the World: Part I and the mom on Eerie, Indiana. Meanwhile, millennials and former WB viewers know her best as Dawson's mom on Dawson's Creek. Watching the above screen tests made me go rewatch on YouTube really late at night one of my favorite Moonlighting episodes, "Camille," the episode that introduced me to "Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly" by Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels. I fell in love with that track because of that Whoopi Goldberg/Judd Nelson episode. An episode of a private eye show dividing itself into pre-Frasier chapter title cards in black while blasting snippets of "Devil with a Blue Dress On" was stylistically ahead of its time back in 1986. Hart to Hart wasn't doing that shit in 1984 (its final year). Neither was Riptide, which spoofed Moonlighting for one episode after its ass kept getting whupped by Moonlighting in the ratings race. "Camille" has aged remarkably well. I think I've rewatched "Camille" more often than any other Moonlighting episode. That's because of how often Moonlighting went into reruns on ABC due to the production delays and the behind-the-scenes beefing, and ABC would re-air "Camille" a lot when I was a kid. Lifetime also re-aired "Camille" a lot when it acquired the reruns. Doug Benson appeared a few times on Moonlighting as an extra, so one of the best parts of this rewatch of "Camille," which I hadn't watched since Moonlighting's run on Lifetime, was spotting him as one of the Blue Moon employees. And then in a weird postscript to the rewatch, the next morning, I found out that Peter Werner, the director of "Camille," died the previous day.

I'll never forget that scene. It went exactly like this: And I just realized this now: Andre Braugher was also doing a shout-out to Glory, one of his earliest movies, as well as the first place where I saw Braugher act. Twenty-seven years of being a fan of that Pembleton line, and I never noticed that until now! That's one of the many reasons why the first four seasons of Homicide were terrific. They were full of things you don't catch until about 27 to 30 years later.

Disney XD still exists? (I'll never forgive them for cancelling Motorcity.) I remember EMH: good animation by Film Roman, Dong Woo Animation, Lotto Animation, and Noxxon Enterprise and some solid serialized storytelling under the supervision of head writer Christopher Yost before Jeph Loeb, a hacky, racist shitbag I detest, took over and ruined EMH. Under Loeb and the writing team known as Man of Action, EMH switched to doing standalone episodes, and it was less satisfying. Some of EMH's casting choices were better than the MCU's. Pepper Potts was voiced by Dawn Olivieri, who's now on Yellowstone but was best known back then as the frequently naked ex-wife on House of Lies. I prefer her over Gwyneth as Pepper. And Brent Spiner was great as the Purple Man.