Proud old man

This is an excerp of a letter I just sent to the CBC about a Fifth Estate piece I saw in late night TV. This is in light of having chatted recently with a friend about a mutual young acquaintance who seems so far from ever becoming a noble character that I saw in Bob Edmonds the hero of the documentary.

I just watched the piece about clerks who steal from lottery winners, I was so thankful that you brought such an important case forward. You are right, it could have been me or anyone else who has been cheated out of the winning ticket…really makes you wonder why this report has never been made before - good work!
Though I have to admit that what got me to write this note was actually not just a pat on the back of the great people at the CBC (you guys always have my support and I am sorry I don't say it more often to you...but alas such is the modern world) What impressed me most about this piece was Bod Edmonds himself.
He struck me as a genuine 'good guy' a concerned citizen, a man with a good heart and a strong sense of right and wrong. He is an old man from an older time where virtue was still a practice not just a value. It broke my heart when I heard how much he had to go through with his OWN family who doubted his conviction to correct this wrong. I felt what this man had to go through to get this story on the air was truly a feat fit of demigod...what I'm getting at is that this man seems like a hero to me, a real Canadian hero. He demonstrates and lives by a very strong code of honour (he could never put a mother of three children behind bars no matter how vile she behaved towards him). What really makes him a hero is his sense of modesty. In Bob Edmonds, I see a man who took on Goliath and won, who had his conviction tried and tested but did not brag about his accomplishment.
I hope I can grow up to be a man like Bob Edmonds one day.
Keep up the good work CBC in profiling our great Canadian heroes in the most obscure part of this country, because often great Canadian Heroes are the one who sit by us in the bus not just the high profile personalities that no one can live with. They are genuine and humble and want only what is best for everyone, and they keep their demeanour even in the face of great adversity.
Bob Edmonds, though I can't be of comfort to you during those moments when even your children doubted you much less one of our Crown Corporations - I am very proud to be living on the same planet as someone has your genuine honest goodness. If you were up for a Canadian Hero award, I would vote for you!
All the best to both of you (CBC and Bob Edmonds) for showing us how we can all be great people and citizens.
Viken mekhtarian, a very proud Canadian.

Heroes and Studios

...the new TV season is upon us and I have found a few good things.

As you know I am not much of a TV watcher, what with my irregular schedule and swimming - which takes up prime time – along with my intolerance of mediocrity, I rarely spend more than a few hours a week in front of the Tube. Though I have, like many of you, had TV as my unpaid babysitter as well as my English tutor when I was a kid, I have outgrown that need and rarely watch live TV for anything more than the news. Except of course for my favourite shows: The Simpsons (inevitable), The West Wing (now defunct), Lost (which I'm looking froward to), most things on CBC - especially the specials - and sometimes the Friday night Anime Line-up on YTV though not so much anymore.
West Wing was by far my favourite and I was very sad to see it end last March, that's why there was an opening for some good TV - something dramatic, smart and cutting edge...

I found two new shows that I think are noteworthy this season.

1 - Heroes – Mondays at 9 on NBC: this show is about a few average folk who develop supernatural powers. One of them can fly, the other can see into the future a third is indestructible – you get the picture... Set in modern urban America, it has a very multiethnic cast - including one guy in Japan who can teleport (but the first place the teleports to is New York! sure saves money on location huh?). Heroes also has that mysteriously eerie narrative which had become quite popoular now: it's a bit of a trend recently for TV shows to work in the realm of the supernatural and esoteric storylines where the audience is never told exactly what is going on but is pulled along on a wild ride: just like LOST - my other favourite show - though I am getting quite upset that they don't have any queer content in it AT ALL, I mean what are the odds of not having any queers among 45 survivors on a flight from Australia?. Heroes is quite captivating and has some WOW moments, though I am afraid that their characters are sketched a bit weak. Unless they beef up these characters, the show will go by the way of CSI franchises...all show and no content.

2-Content is what Studio 60 which follows on Mondays at 10pm on NBC, ...a behind the scenes of a late night comedy show - a thinly veiled Saturday Night Live - where the writers and producers have to put on a new show every week – very post modern really but not as self reflexive as the Garry Shandling Show. It stars Matthew Perry as the head writer who along with a new brilliant and ballsy babe network president and an executive producer, who is a recovering drug addict played by Bradley Whitford of West Wing - see the connection?... are brought together to run this TV icon right after the show's previous producer has a breakdown in front of the cameras ( he goes off badmouthing how shallow Television and all of America have become...you know the speech: the struggle of money and art, the self depecrating stupidity of Reality Television...). The show is a sexy behind the scene of the Hollywood elite wherefast paced corridor chatter (very much like The West Wing) over the top glitz and a stellar cast of guest appearances – Rob Reiner, Felicty Hoffman are de rigueur. The only weak poing with Studio 60 are some of the supporting actors - though the stars of the show are amazing, the stars of the make believe show leave a lot to be desired: I can't beleive them to be stars actually.

My bet is that both Heroes and Studio 60 will live to blow the candle on their second season cake though I am more interested in seeing what happens with the latter. I fear Heroes is going to go by the way of cheesy television like the CSI franchises: cookie-cutter short shallow mysteries. The writing is weak, the characters are just a bit too two dimensional and the scenes are not constructed for their dramatic maximum…but even with that it will be better than most of the mediocrity on the air nowadays. That having been said, I am even more fearful of Studio 60's future even though the writing is very strong and potent while the characters are very complex. I can't see how far they can take that kind of intense drama within this format. I'm afraid that audiences will tire of it quickly or just not get it at all. It would not be the first excetptional TV show that got cancelled - remember My So Called Life? The amazing show about a young verbose and self-reflexsive teenage girl’s growing angst that got cancelled in the early 90’ (but not before it set Claire Danes, Jared Leto and Wilson Cruz on to the world stage - check out the site created by fans http://www.mscl.com/hallway/index.phtml?layout=low still going even after 10 years) or that other most funny of all shows Arrested Development which is still on the brink of demolition.

In either case, it's always good to see high quality programming in the TV line-up, hope you get a glimpse of it too.