I watched one of the lesser Quantum Leaps late last night.
This is 8 1/2 Months, the one where Sam is about to deliver a baby with the help of a kindly old doctor. I don’t remember this episode. I’m trying to imagine the pitch at the creative table. “Let’s see what the imaging chamber does with vastly different biology. And spice it up with an Oklahoma dirt version of Steel Magnolias!”
There’s a poor man’s Susan Sarandon, a poor man’s Olympia Dukakis and more ’50s “I hear tell she ain’t got no horse sense” vernacular than you can shake a colorblind cat at. The best part is when Al, Sam’s faithful friend in the future who appears in the form of a hologram who serves as his guide, shows up. This is the actual dialog.
Sam: “I can’t have a baby!”
Al: “I know, but Ziggy’s not so sure.”
Computers.
Also, the baby, in utero in the 21st century, is bonding with Sam in 1955. Not everything in the third season was genius.
The great Anne Haney guest stars. Because this is the 1950s she is there trying to coax Sam into giving up the baby so that it can be sent off to some quiet home that is better suited for it than an 18-year-old girl, or a middle-aged, time-traveling, brilliant-scientist-with-an-amnesia problem. Haney’s character could not close the deal though, because Sam has been operating all this time that he’s leaping into these lives to put right what once went wrong. It wasn’t for a few more seasons that we realized he was dead. And these must just be really excitable neurons firing off at the end.
Imagine if there had been popular message boards around when this TV show was on the air. Or if JJ Abrams was involved.
If/when they re-launch this series, I’d watch this episode again. I’d sit through it, I’m saying, but only if JJ Abrams isn’t around to make the foggy mist from the trees turn into the evil alien that is ready to fell us all, and also, there is a massive conspiracy that only Al can uncover, if he doesn’t get unplugged.
I hate relaunches.
Anyway, Anne Haney would get her revenge. She showed up again eight months later (in realtime) as a different character set in Arkansas two years earlier (the drought episode). This made sense on Quantum Leap and quite possibly nowhere else.
And then, finally, after we’d met the father-to-be — he worked for Sam’s dad in the oil fields, but was going off to college in the fall, he was all “I’d want no baby!” — we have the moment of truth. At the pitch table with the writers this was great. “OK, then we’ll have Sam go through all seven stages of grief to acceptance. It’ll be a comical ride from the front door of the hospital into the delivery room. And we’ll show stirrups again! And then Sam, who is intent on keeping this baby, will finally be resistant about having the baby, because, you know, he’s got boy parts, except he’s a woman in this episode.”
And someone says “Wait. He — ”
And then the first guy again, says “They’re watching NBC. They’ll go along with it.
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
Now Al pops back into the delivery room to tell us that the baby has disappeared in the future. Sam is in stirrups in the past. Puuuuush!
The doctor, played by Parley Baer, who is a poor man’s Barnard Hughes, who played the curmudgeonly old doctor in Doc Hollywood, says “I see a head … ”
And Sam leaps.
I plugged Hughes, who has 101 titles on IMDB and Baer, who has 270 titles, into the Oracle of Bacon. They have at least five different one-step-removed connections from one another, including Coreys Haim and Feldman. Why either of them felt the need to work after that, I don’t know.
The gentleman that cuts my hair some times remembers me better than other times. He sees a lot of folks, of course. Today was one of those days where it all clicked. He remembered I taught journalism and wanted to know what I thought of “that Selena woman.” You know how you can change the subject when something like that comes up? “Fox News!”
So we talked about something going on in the Aurora shooting case, where a reporter is refusing a judge’s orders and may be going to jail. We did not have to talk about that Selena woman. Just as well.
(My answer would have been “I was never that strong of a creative writer, and so I am not really the best person to ask.” Because when everyone else is saying everything there is to say about a particular topic, what’s the point?)
So I left with a nice new hairstyle and we talked about photography in class this afternoon.
I have to pack a bag. Here, have some things to read.
How mobile has changed daily news consumption and why you need to understand it:
Mobile devices have extended the time frame during which publishers need to pay attention to the content they are putting in front of consumers, but it has also massively increased the complexity of news consumption throughout the day. That makes delivering the right content in the right way at the right time far more challenging.
If you are in the communication business and you aren’t by now paying attention to mobile growth I’m not sure what will convince you.
Journalism’s decline boosts j-schools
“There is something new to learn [at journalism schools] for the first time since the advent of broadcast journalism in the 1950s,” said Steve Shepard, founding dean of CUNY’s school, which enrolled its first class in 2006. “And it’s much harder to learn it on the job—if you can get a job—because there’s much less mentoring going on compared to my day.”
[…]
Professors acknowledge that they’re sending students out into a tough, unpredictable environment, but say that is part of their education.
Master a skill set, learn more about another one. Consider a double major. Redouble your best writing and editing efforts. Realize the first job probably isn’t going to be The Job. Show them what you have and demonstrate your potential. Work hard. Do good work. Build your portfolio.
That’s the way of it.
Press angry over Obama’s lack of access:
Newspapers and reporters are being left out of the equation, even such established publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Reider reports that Obama “has turned to regional reporters and TV celebrities who are less likely to challenge him.” Obama’s go-to interviewer is Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” who in January conducted an interview with Obama and Hilary Clinton. The interview was heavily criticized as being “soft.” This is the complaint of many of Obama’s interviews. He is effectively bypassing reporters who ask the tough questions.
First of all, that’s a poor headline. President Obama is accessing things just fine. He’s just not giving the press corps the time of day.
Second, not many people in that particular room are asking “tough questions” these days when they do have the opportunity.
You can look at that in one of two ways. You could scream “Libruhl meeeedia!” Or you might consider that these people are on edge because a.) they have a job to do and b.) when the time comes to talk to someone more important than poor Jay Carney they are chilled because they don’t want to be shut out in the future because c.) see part a.
Also, the president has his audience, he has an embarrassment of riches of media that aren’t in the White House press corps that are just thrilled to have him on the Morning Zoo. And the president also has a communication office that can these days speak directly to his constituency. He doesn’t need the media right now.
That’s the same thing I’ve been saying about athletic departments for four years now, by the way. If you have a devoted following and the tools to go directly to them, sans filter, you’re going to take advantage of that opportunity. The journalists tasked with covering that particular beat are going to be marginalized.
I don’t like it. (It is fraught with danger.) I just see it.
Peektures. Margaret Thatcher came to Samford during the university’s 150th anniversary. She’s here with then-president Thomas Corts.
They are standing in front of the library and Dr. Corts appears to be point out some feature of the administration building, Samford Hall.
I wonder what she was thinking.
How did we get into space and the moon? Really big ladders, of course. And, also, a tall chalkboard.
