Search Results for “the complainer is always wrong”

COL145

Dungeons & Dragons

by Mark Evanier

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 8/8/97
Comics Buyer's Guide

Phil Mendez is a wildly-funny cartoonist who has designed — often without ample credit — a number of hit animation shows and features.

Phil is the guy — this story is legendary — who moved his desk into the restroom at Hanna-Barbera. While he was working there, he was promoted to some title that entitled him to a proper office, only they didn't give him one right away. They left him in one of their little cubicles with the portable room dividers. (At Hanna-Barbera, the walls often moved more than the cartoons.)

After several requests when unheeded, Phil simply added the letters "DEZ" to the sign on the men's room door and moved in his drafting table. H-B execs would walk in to use the facility, see Phil sitting there drawing, and make quick U-turns out to find another john.

Finally, they ordered him to vacate, whereupon Phil posed the question of how it would look to the industry if word got out that Hanna-Barbera's highest-ranked black employee had been working in the men's room…and had even been thrown out of there. He was assigned a real office within the hour.

Some years back, NBC put us together on a couple of projects, hoping that between his artistic brilliance and the stuff I pass off as writing, a wonderful show would emerge. At the time of this story, we were developing a show for the Saturday morning schedule and were completing scripts and artwork. In animation, we don't film pilot episodes; not usually. It costs too much and takes too long. Instead, you whip up some scripts and notes and drawings and the decision to pick up a series is based on all that plus prayer.

Phil and I were at NBC one evening until around 7:30 discussing things with the appropriate vice-president. As we gathered to go, I asked her, "Can we walk you down to the parking lot?"

"Thanks," she said. "But I have to wait around. Marvel is sending over some scripts and artwork on a show they're trying to sell. I can't leave until it gets here." She muttered some curse words about how late it was. She also let it slip that this show was competing with ours for a time slot.

Phil and I walked downstairs. As we hit the parking lot, we saw the Marvel Films van pull up. A young "runner" (as they call delivery folks in show biz) got out with a pile of scripts and artwork. For no visible reason, I whispered to Phil, "Let's hijack their show."

I walked up to the runner and, sounding very official, asked, "Is that the presentation for the childrens' department? Good, good…we've been waiting for it." I dropped the names of some of the execs upstairs while Phil said, "I can take that."

The kid handed us the scripts and artwork, then got back in his van and drove off. Just like that.

Phil and I got hysterical. We were standing in the NBC parking lot — no, we were leaning on each other for support — holding the materials with which our competitor hoped to sell his show and freeze ours out. We were holding at least ten thousand dollars worth of artwork.

Now, what were we going to do with it?

My first thought was to sell it back to them for ransom. I suggested we go to the nearby pay phone, call Marvel with a handkerchief over the receiver and say, "We have your presentation. If you ever want to see it again, send Jerry Eisenberg out naked with fifty thousand dollars." (Jerry was a producer then at Marvel — a talented, nice man who we figured would enjoy being sent outside naked with fifty thousand dollars.)

"No, no," Phil said, still laughing too hard to speak. "Let's redo it for them." For about two minutes, we decided to go find an empty office somewhere. I would quickly rewrite the scripts into moronic gibberish while Phil would redraw the art to be out of proportion and ugly. Or, even better, he'd rewrite while I redrew. Then we'd deliver it upstairs.

We abandoned that idea because (a) there was no place to do this, (b) there was no time to do this and (c) it might make their show more likely to sell. We rejected other ideas, equally mad, before the joke ran its course and we walked back in and delivered the presentation to the proper hands.

The end result was that NBC didn't buy Marvel's show. They didn't buy ours, either. And the runner from Marvel got chewed-out, about which I still feel kinda guilty.

Marvel's show was called something like Swords and Sorcery. It had been created by a clever writer-producer on their staff named Dennis Marks and it was somewhat inspired by the popular game of Dungeons & Dragons,though without the official imprimatur of that institution.

The following year, Marvel hooked up with the folks who did own Dungeons & Dragons, and Dennis refried his idea into a show with that title. CBS picked it up as a potential project and the Marvel staff produced more scripts, more outlines, more artwork, hoping to sell it there. I have a hunch the runner was very careful about delivering them to the right folks.

Dennis had done a very fine job on the show but, as sometimes happens when something's around long enough, everyone involved had grown somewhat punchy. In the development process, as the format is being worked out and characters are added, deleted or defined, you often get lost in the ninety-third revision. The CBS folks felt that Dungeons & Dragons was "almost there" as a series but that it needed some work from a fresh mind. I have an extremely fresh mind to go with my fresh mouth.

They said they'd send the work done to date over for me to inspect. When I answered my door, it was the same runner from the NBC parking lot. He looked at me in shock and when I said, "I'll take that," he yelled, "I'm not falling for that again" and carried it back towards his van. I had to chase him into the street and show him a picture I.D. to get my package.

Talks were held, suggestions made, contracts negotiated and I wound up doing the pilot and format for Dungeons & Dragons — both in about forty-eight hours, which was about all I had before CBS had to set its schedule.

My main contribution was probably to simplify the show. Dennis had a good idea to start with but, in the development process as different minds had suggested this or added that, the whole thing had grown needlessly complicated and rambled off-course.

(Several years earlier, another studio had offered me a not-dissimilar show that was in much the same trouble. The written format had about three dozen characters in it, each with his or her own alleged personality and gimmick. I proposed tossing two-thirds of them out and thus horrified the studio head, who was more interested in a big line of toys than in a good show. He wound up, of course, with neither.)

In the case of D & D though, everyone concurred with my approach, in part because there wasn't time to quibble. We only had two days to whip the show into a shape that CBS would buy. Sometimes, the best thing that can happen to you in television is to be up against a deadline. If they have time to argue about something, they will.

I told the story about Phil Mendez and the intercepted presentation for a few reasons. One was that it still makes me laugh. Another is that I've lost touch with Phil and I hope that mentioning him here will spur him to call me for lunch. (If you know Phil, show him this column.)*

But the main reason is to segue into clearing up a small matter. A couple of animation mags have credited me with creating the series and being responsible for its three-season success. This is not accurate. The credits on every episode read, "Created by Dennis Marks, Developed by Mark Evanier."

And that ain't the end of it, either. Many others (mostly a fine producer named Hank Saroyan) steered its course after Dennis and I each went on to other projects. Dozens of writers, artists, actors, camerapersons, etc., contributed to make that show happen.

Whatever credit there is to distribute should be parceled out in many directions. I'll accept my hunk but I would not be getting any, had not all those other folks made their fine contributions. I had next-to-nothing to do with the show once it was up and running, so I got to enjoy it as a non-involved viewer. I usually did.

I also told the story about Phil because I wanted to talk about Dungeons & Dragons.I have a confession to make and also, I think it's time we cleared up an urban legend, which I'll get to in a moment. But first the confession —

Dungeons & Dragons was a series about six kids who were transported to a dimension filled with wizards and fire-snorting reptiles and cryptic clues and an extremely-evil despot named Venger. The youngsters were trapped in this game-like environment but, fortunately, they were armed with magical skills and weaponry, the better to foil Venger's insidious plans each week.

The kids were all heroic — all but a semi-heroic member of their troupe named Eric. Eric was a whiner, a complainer, a guy who didn't like to go along with whatever the others wanted to do. Usually, he would grudgingly agree to participate, and it would always turn out well, and Eric would be glad he joined in. He was the one thing I really didn't like about the show.

So why, you may wonder, did I leave him in there? Answer: I had to.

As you may know, there are those out there who attempt to influence the content of childrens' television. We call them "parents groups," although many are not comprised of parents, or at least not of folks whose primary interest is as parents. Study them and you'll find a wide array of agendum at work…and I suspect that, in some cases, their stated goals are far from their real goals.

Nevertheless, they all seek to make kidvid more enriching and redeeming, at least by their definitions, and at the time, they had enough clout to cause the networks to yield. Consultants were brought in and we, the folks who were writing cartoons, were ordered to include certain "pro-social" morals in our shows. At the time, the dominant "pro-social" moral was as follows: The group is always right…the complainer is always wrong.

This was the message of way too many eighties' cartoon shows. If all your friends want to go get pizza and you want a burger, you should bow to the will of the majority and go get pizza with them. There was even a show for one season on CBS called The Get-Along Gang, which was dedicated unabashedly to this principle. Each week, whichever member of the gang didn't get along with the gang learned the error of his or her ways.

We were forced to insert this "lesson" in D & D, which is why Eric was always saying, "I don't want to do that" and paying for his social recalcitrance. I thought it was forced and repetitive, but I especially objected to the lesson. I don't believe you should always go along with the group. What about thinking for yourself? What about developing your own personality and viewpoint? What about doing things because you decide they're the right thing to do, not because the majority ruled and you got outvoted?

We weren't allowed to teach any of that. We had to teach kids to join gangs. And then to do whatever the rest of the gang wanted to do.

What a stupid thing to teach children.

Now, I won't make the leap to charge that gang activity, of the Crips and Bloods variety, increased on account of these programs. That influential, I don't believe a cartoon show could ever be. I just think that "pro-social" message was bogus and ill-conceived. End of confession.

That leaves us with the urban legend I wish to dispel. Here is the truth of the matter — in bold type, no less:

There was NO "final episode" of Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, let me get more specific. There was a final episode, in the sense that they stopped making them. There was even an episode wherein the kids thought they'd gotten home, but actually didn't. There was no "final episode" in the sense of doing one wherein the kids finally vanquished Venger and returned home from the magical dimension, thereby ending the series.**

I'd love to have done one, and I even had some ideas about what it might have encompassed. But the way network TV animation deals work, when you do your last episode, you almost never know it's your last episode, and that was the case here.

About once a week on the Internet, someone asks where they can get a copy of this episode. I usually drop them a little E-note telling them it was never made. Half the time, they write back and give me an argument: They saw it, they know it existed, I'm wrong. One even wrote, "You only started the show. You're not an authority on how it ended."

You'd think this would disturb me, but it doesn't. As stated, I was worried that the "pro-social" message of the show might actually have impregnated someone with group-think. It's nice to see that some of its viewers are still able to think for themselves. Even if, as in this case, they're dead wrong.

*UPDATE #1: Someone called Phil and he called me. So you can all stop pestering him with calls to say, "Mark Evanier is looking for you." And thanks.

**UPDATE #2: Since I published this article, I've learned that one of the writers who worked on the series, Michael Reaves, wrote an episode that did "end" the serial but it was never produced and he's made it available on the Internet. At least one other writer developed an ending that didn't even get that far and neither is anything like what I would have done. But if you want to consider either of them an ending, that's up to you. The point is that folks who swear they saw an ending on TV are wrong.

Welcome to '18

Posted on Monday, January 1, 2018 at 12:57 PM

There is, of course, no earthly reason why we can't make resolutions on August 14 or May 23…but New Year's Day is such a tidy day for them. If you resolve on September 3 to henceforth stop doing something and then on September 8 you start doing it again, you might find yourself wondering, "Hmm…did I make this resolution — the one I've now broken — on the second or the third? Did I manage to keep it for five days or six this time?"

Make 'em on January 1 and it's easier to figure how long you held out before you decided one little milk shake now and then won't hurt…or that it's okay to do a little crystal meth once in a while.

Today, I'm resolving to listen to fewer complaints in 2018 — especially complaints where the complainer doesn't really (or shouldn't really) expect me to solve the problem(s); they just want to tell me how distressed they are. They're wasting their time and it's their time, they have every right to waste it. But in doing so, they're also wasting my time and I'm going to try to put an end to that part. Sometimes, they're also dragging my mind way far away from the script I'm trying to write and forcing me into a mood that'll make it hard for me to resume my writing.

My resolution has exceptions to it, of course. Certain friends complain to me so little and only with enough good reason that I'll hear them out. Sometimes, the complaint is part of a genuinely funny or interesting or enlightening story. Sometimes, the complaint is brief and it's the kind I (and maybe no one else) can quickly eradicate for them. Those are all fine.

But otherwise, I don't need to hear a half-hour of your problems just because (a) you haven't even tried to solve them; you just figure it's easier to ask me to…or (b) you just want to vent and you think "Evanier's a good listener." I'm really not. I'm going to stop pretending I am.

Now, let me interrupt here because I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "This guy is complaining to us about people complaining to him." A good point but it's not the same thing. You don't have to read this blog. You can stop whenever you like without hurting my feelings at all. If this topic bothers you at all, now would be a great time to click elsewhere and here — I'll even make it easy for you. This is a link to a page of Funny Names to Give a Duck.

Go there instead of reading the rest of this. Funny duck names are great. I especially like "Quack Galifianakis."

But really, please. If I never tell you my problems — and I almost never tell anyone my problems except for comedic purposes — don't tell me yours. Here are a few tips though that may help you solve yours without my (or anyone's) help…

I have found that I can't solve a problem until I can gauge it at the proper scale. Treating it like it's way less serious than it really is makes it difficult to solve. Treating it like it's way, way more serious than it really is usually makes it impossible. Step back and ask yourself, "How big a problem is this really?"

Differentiate between problems that can be solved with one phone call and those that can't. If you can't get a job, that can feel like the biggest problem in the world but it's one that can totally disappear if the phone rings in five minutes and someone offers you the right position. If you have a serious illness or physical condition, there is no one phone call that can make that one go away.

While you're at it, ask yourself if this is really and truly a problem at all. Just because it looks like a problem or feels like a problem doesn't mean that it is one or that you have to treat it as one. I would say a good third of the problems people bring to me are in the category of "Just ignore it and it will go away" — and it does.

I have also found that, at least for me, if I can't solve a problem, the problem is that I really and truly don't understand the problem. Try asking yourself, "What's actually happening here?" The answer may be something that's painful to admit but you probably need to admit it if you're going to solve it.

And the painful admission might be that somewhere in the past, you tried to solve this problem the wrong way. You might need to accept that you made a mistake before you can find a solution that works.

Also, one must remember that if the problem is what you're afraid might happen, it might not. In my life, I have worried about many, many problems that never happened.

There are also problems that can only be solved by not letting them occur in the first place. There are many freeways we could all name which, if you get on them at certain hours, you are almost always giving yourself the problem of sitting in bumper-to-bumper stasis for long periods of time and being late for something. Fuming about the traffic when you should have known better is only good for reminding you to know better in the future.

And there are also downsides which inevitably flow from upsides. I once met a guy who'd won something like $30 million in a state lottery and he seemed like the most miserable person, droning on and on about how everyone was asking him for loans or gifts of cash. Winning all that money was such a horrible thing. It's like if someone spends his or her life trying to become famous and then complains about how they can't go anywhere — for God's sake! — without being recognized. Some good things come with bad things attached and they can't be separated. Just accept both as a package deal and stop whining.

Learn to differentiate problems that are caused by luck of the draw or circumstances beyond your control from problems that are of your own making…or which are beyond your power to solve. You probably can't remove Donald Trump from office or cure some disease, at least by yourself. There may be some where the futility is a little less obvious.

Which brings us to this last one: That there are some problems that just plain cannot be solved. Medical problems can be like that but so can many other kinds. In those situations, your thinking probably needs to change from "How do I solve this?" to "How do I minimize the suffering?" It can be tough to make that transition because most of us don't like the idea of giving up but this gets back to the part where you need to a realistic answer to the question, "What's actually happening here?" and the possibly-painful answer that may come with it. It may not be cost-effective to keep fixing that old, broken-down car of yours. You may need to give up on it and get another…or begin taking the bus.

And I probably should have included something about not thinking life is meant to be without problems. Light bulbs do burn out, tires do go flat, you do sometimes have no toilet paper in the house. Once in a while, a whole bunch of those things will all occur at about the same time. That doesn't mean life is awful. It just means you need to go to Costco. You'd be amazed how many problems I have sometimes solved at the same time with a trip to Costco.

I'm telling you all this because whoever you are, I'd like you to have a better year in 2018. But more important is that I'd like me to have a better year in 2018 and I've decided that one way to do that is to give myself fewer problems…like, say, just mine and no one else's. This is me trying to make that happen. And by the way, it is not okay to do a little crystal meth once in a while. Just in case you were thinking it was.

Hack to the Future

Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 1:10 AM

As I must have mentioned here a few times, I'm fascinated by the art and skill (those are not quite the same thing) of weather forecasting, especially the part that involves distilling all those computer models and isobar analyses down to a few brief sentences which will help millions figure out how to dress for tomorrow and whether to take an umbrella. At one point in another time and place, I briefly flirted with an offer to become a TV weatherman before reminding myself that was never what I wanted to do with my life. The brief flirtation, I might add, lasted about twenty seconds.

Now, I follow the forecasts not just to know how hot or cold it might be next Monday but as a fan/student of those who do it for a living. I believe today's forecasters are very good when it comes to telling you the weather for the next 48 hours. When people bemoan that weatherfolks are always wrong, it has usually been because the complainers have taken longer-range forecasts too seriously, which is to say at face value. In the weather forecasting business, there's a tremendous pressure on the meteorologists to issue 7-to-15 day projections…or even longer.

It would make all our lives simpler if we could know if it'll rain two weeks from now…and there are periods where that can be done with a fair amount of confidence. The problem is that when you do 15-day projections, you have to do them all the time. You have to put out that 15-day projection when it's easy to see that far ahead and you have to put it out when it's impossible to do that.

We in Los Angeles have a couple of storms heading our way now. As recently as last Monday, the official word was that we'd have a quarter-inch on Friday, a quarter-inch on Saturday and perhaps as much as 1.5 inches on Sunday, bleeding into Monday. But really if they could, the forecasters would probably have said, "We don't know yet." On Monday, the elements that will comprise this weekend's weather simply had too many options, too many directions in which they might drift.

Around Tuesday, the jet stream did an unanticipated shift and that two inches of precipitation is now heading mainly into Central California and proving to be not quite as damp. Where I am in L.A., we're now looking at one decent shot of rain and one slim chance of a few drops more. Between Friday night and Saturday morning, we'll get a quarter- to a half-inch of H2O. North of us, they should get twice as much, and of course the mountains around us usually get double whatever we get.

They're calling it a 60% chance but it looks to me more like a 100% chance of some rain and a 60% chance of achieving the stated amount. Then on Sunday, there's a very strong chance of some light rain in Central California and a tiny chance of it reaching us. The main computer model, the GFS, says the storm will fall apart totally before it gets to us. The other computer models say there could be sprinkles. As I write this, the National Weather Service hasn't hung a percentage on this one but if they had to, they'd probably put it at 20% just to cover asses.

I often think of weather forecasters when I read political pollsters. They too are under a competitive pressure to peer farther into the future than they should. Like the guys in the weather biz, they have to gather data on now, then throw out educated guesses for then, ignoring the many possible scenarios that could occur before the date in question. They publish them, then they try to refine the predictions as circumstances change and we get closer to the actual event.

I have a feeling that Obama will do quite well but I can also think of a hundred things that could make it, as Vin Scully likes to say, a Brand New Ball Game. Any poll today minimizes game-changers like Romney actually getting the nomination, his choice of running mate, battles at the conventions, what's said in debates, what kind of scandals get unearthed, how the stock market performs, unemployment numbers, possible terrorist attacks, effective TV commercials and the inevitable stupid gaffes we may hear. Look how just one or two clumsy statements or embarrassing revelations changed the presidential prospects of Rick Perry and Herman Cain.

The CBS poll finds Obama and Romney in a dead-even tie at the moment. That's significant because I think that could sew up the nomination for Romney, if not in South Carolina then soon after. A lot of Republican primary voters are likely to vote for The Guy Most Likely To Beat Obama and if the polls say that's Romney, so they'll go. Ron Paul is a close second but Ron Paul is not going to get the nomination because he's Ron Paul and there's not much he can do about that now. Romney's true rival for the nomination is Gingrich and this poll gives Obama an 11 point advantage over Gingrich. That's enough to make a lot of Republicans who'd prefer Gingrich to Romney pick Romney.

In the meantime, the Pew Research poll and PPP have Obama five points ahead of Romney while the CNN and ABC/Washington Post Polls have Romney one or two points ahead. At some point in the future when the Fox News and Rasmussen Polls show the G.O.P. contender with more strength than other polls, we'll be hearing about pollster bias and there may be a smidgen of validity on either side. But right now, the traditionally Conservative polls show Obama doing better than the traditionally Liberal polls…though it's all within the margin of error.

The intriguing difference between predicting politics and predicting the weather is that the former seers actually change the storyline they're trying to project. What the National Weather Service says on Monday doesn't change what the weather is on Friday. But candidates drop out or achieve frontrunner status because of polls. They get or lose campaign donations and even change strategies and platforms because they're down or up.

In both cases, the predictors are expected to say what's going to happen and they're not allowed to shrug and admit that any forecast is premature and meaningless. They've gotta say something so they do. It helps me to remember that they aren't quite the same job even though in both professions, it's possible for a prediction to be too early to mean a damn thing. It's always possible for the jet stream to shift to the north.

Comic-Con Reflections

Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 10:53 AM

I'll probably be blogging about the Comic-Con for another week or so here and as you can see, I'm not even trying to proceed in sequence. It was an extraordinary event and at the risk of annoying those who couldn't be there, I have to say that I enjoyed every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

That statement will also probably tick off the two dozen or so folks who were there and who somehow think that I am the Complaint Department for the convention and that an irate e-mail to me will deliver an immediate promise that whatever pissed them off will be remedied. That wouldn't be the case even if I agreed with their bitching, most of which comes down to the shocking discovery that it's crowded down there. I'm afraid that's what this particular convention is. There were around 125,000 people at this year's convention. There will be around 125,000 at next year's convention. If and when the con moves (which I don't think it will) or the convention center down there expands (likely), there will be more than 125,000 people there. Moaning about the crowds at Comic-Con is like going to a strip club and being outraged to find naked women named Jasmine and Bambi with fake breasts.

Many of the other complaints could be alleviated if the complainer would do a little more advance planning. Let me give you some cold, hard facts of life. Next year's Comic-Con is July 21-24. It will sell out and given the pace at which advance registrations sold at this year's con — that is, folks at this year's buying tix for next year's — 2011 will sell out even sooner than this year's did. I'm not sure how soon online registration will open — I'll try to give you some advance warning if I can — but the minute it does, order your tickets. If you're even thinking of going, order your tickets as soon as possible and don't dawdle about arranging for lodging, either. If you decide next May to go, you're going to have problems.

A brief, probably unnecessary digression. Back in '69, I paid my first — and for a long time, only visit to Disneyland. My friend Dwight was in town. He wanted to go so we went…and did darn near everything wrong, starting with getting there via a long, circuitous bus ride that left us exhausted before we'd made it halfway past Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln. We didn't plan anything, didn't research. We had no idea where to eat or which attractions we might have particularly enjoyed. We just went, had a miserable time and blamed Disneyland. For years, I didn't go back.

Now, obviously this is not a majority sentiment about the place. More than one or two people seem to love the occasional visit to the Happiest Place on Earth. It took a while (I can be slower than the line to get into the Pirates of the Caribbean) but it finally dawned on me that it was humanly possible to go there and enjoy one's self…so maybe, just maybe the problem was on my end. Upon that realization, I obtained and studied a travel guide. I drew up a little rough map and itinerary. I figured out not to go on a steaming-hot, tourist-infested day…another mistake Dwight and I had made. And the next time there, I had a pretty good time.

Moral of the story? I had to figure out how to make Disneyland work for me…and now it does. If you attend Comic-Con down in San Diego and don't have a grand experience…well, first point: Maybe you're simply attending the wrong convention. There are plenty of smaller ones and maybe one of them would be a better fit. Or perhaps you could learn to have a better time at Comic-Con…figure out an easier way to go and a more efficient way to use your time there. I can't tell you how often the following conversation occurs with just the time and event changing: Someone comes up to me and says, "Hey, my friend told me Quick Draw! was great this morning. Wish I'd known about it."

The folks who run Comic-Con do a superb job. I've been going to conventions for four decades now. I've been to some of the worst-run, unprofessional gatherings and I've also seen how much can go wrong even at the well-operated ones. I am stunned by how much goes right in San Diego, how good those folks down there are at assembling this incredible event each year. There's always room for improvement and I'm sure they'll continue to improve. They always do. But the way I see it, they offer us this wonderful, varied buffet each year and it's up to us to take from it what we want. As I've said before, the convention you want to attend is in there amidst all the convention experiences about which you couldn't care less. You just need to find yours.

Killing Characters

Posted on Saturday, September 13, 2003 at 11:11 AM

Over in his weblog, my pal Daniel Frank notes…

Mark Evanier discusses the factors that will determine whether John Ritter's show will continue. Evanier left out how the Burns and Allen TV show went through four Harry Mortons, the next-door neighbor. The most famous transition was between Fred Clark and Larry Keating, Mortons number three and four respectively. George Burns interrupts a scene with Clark. He introduces Keating to the audience and explains that he will now be playing the role of Harry Morton. Clark and Keating shake hands; Clark leaves and Keating continues with the scene.

Actually, I think I may have led the discussion awry by dragging in times when one actor went elsewhere and another simply took his place. There's something about a performer dying that puts such changes into another category. It seems to mandate that the character be eliminated and not merely recast. And then it would seem awkward and perhaps disrespectful to merely drop all reference to the departed character, so they usually declare him deceased or say he's moved away.

Either way, it reminds viewers that the real actor, for whom they perhaps had some affection or at least familiarity, is dead. So they have to mourn a second time, and a little genuine grief (or at least, discomfort) invades the otherwise-safe fictional environment. In the realm of comic books, people have even gotten upset when a favorite fictional character has been "killed." It's like, "Why did we need that sadness in our lives?"

I remember that on the original Hollywood Squares game show, they had this situation: When panelist Wally Cox died, there were many episodes taped with him that had yet to air. It would have been ludicrous to not broadcast those shows. Not only would it have been a silly waste of resources but it would have been, in effect, destroying Cox's final work. But game shows — then, more than now — maintain the generally-unspoken fiction that they're live or almost live.

There was the feeling, perhaps correct, that audiences would get confused watching and go, "Hey, I thought Wally Cox had died. What's going on here?" so the producers superimposed the words, "pre-recorded" on the screen whenever Cox was in a solo shot. This clarified things for the more befuddled viewers but reminded all that they were watching a dead person. A lot of people wrote in and said, "You shouldn't air this. Have you no respect for the deceased?" The outpouring was so emotional that later, when Cliff (Charley Weaver) Arquette passed away, the Squares people handled it differently…and still got a lot of that kind of mail.

One presumes the complainers weren't objecting to the broadcast of a television program containing a person who'd passed on. No one writes in and says it's wrong to show I Love Lucy since Lucy, Desi, Bill and Viv have all joined the choir invisibule. But in the context of something current, it unnerved some people. A lot of them said, in effect, "Hey, we watch that kind of TV show to forget about death. If we want that, we'll watch the news."

When a show kills off a major character like McLean Stevenson's on M*A*S*H or John Amos's on Good Times, such sentiments are voiced. Even though no one actually died, there's always mail that says, "I'm still getting over my father's death. Why did you have to put me through another round of mourning?" It's not the cast change that bothers people. It's the issue of death. They get enough of it in real life, they say. Why have it when it isn't necessary?

I don't think that's a terrible question. Sometimes, as in M*A*S*H, killing a major character may be a sound creative decision. M*A*S*H, after all, was about war and it would have been hokey if no one died or if only day players died. I think on Good Times, Amos quit and for a time, the character was simply away, working on an Alaskan pipeline or something. Finally though, the producers felt that making it a show about a family with a deceased father was a better idea than what they had and they explained the absence that way.

Both of these were elective deaths and the actors involved had not died so there was no loss of real human life attached. Fictional characters were dead, not McLean and John. Still, a lot of viewers felt they'd been put through unnecessary emotion. If and when they announce on John Ritter's show that his character died in a car crash or whatever, some of America is going to sit there and really cry for John Ritter…again.

In my earlier discussion of what they'll do, I left out a couple of questions which one hopes the show's writers are given the chance to ask: Will the show work as a show about a family where the father has just died unexpectedly? Would it work better as a show where the father has just been transferred to Greenland so we never see him again? Assuming ABC isn't ready to give up on the series, there's already economic pressure on the show runners to decide they can keep it flying without that character.

They'll probably decide it's a worthy challenge and try, but it won't be the same as saying, "Hey, folks! Here's a new Harry Morton." (Actually, I sometimes wish we had George Burns on every TV show to break the fourth wall, tell us what's going on, and do things like introduce the new actor. But I guess it would just upset people by reminding them that George Burns was dead.)

The Junior Senator from New York

Posted on Monday, June 9, 2003 at 1:03 PM

I didn't see the Barbara Walters interview of Hillary Clinton because I assumed it would be like every other Barbara Walters interview, and darn near every TV interview by anyone: The host exploits the subject to get ratings, and the subject exploits the opportunity to sell their book and/or version of history. Those who complained Ms. Walters wasn't tougher (a) don't seem familiar with Barbara's style and (b) will have to show me where some TV interviewer of the last decade or so has actually been tough on their subject. None of them are…and of course, if they were, the interviewee probably would not even appear with them. Occasionally, some interviewers try to look tough by asking a rude question. But rude is not the same thing as tough, and I suspect that that's what some of the complainers really wanted: Rudeness.

There is an anger towards Senator Clinton that strikes me as having little to do with her actions in the White House or Senate — and that's not to say there isn't cause there for legitimate criticism. But what seems to drive discussions of Hillary on talk radio and Internet forums is something different, including a hostility that some people — both male and female — seem to feel towards any powerful woman. Some of it is from people who have been flogging the notion that she was going to prison for Whitewater, Filegate and Travelgate; that she had secretly divorced Bill; that she personally had murdered Vince Foster, moved the body, then murdered him again. As accusations of that sort have failed to stick, the folks making them never pause to wonder if maybe they're wrong in some way. They just get madder at Hillary for not admitting some wrongdoing for something.

In an odd way, it parallels the Martha Stewart situation, except that prosecutors actually found something for which they could indict Martha. People who couldn't care less about far more egregious stock swindles are suddenly celebrating that Martha Stewart's getting nailed on a relatively minor offense. It's like they're getting some remote revenge on that stuck-up girl in high school who was smarter than them and she knew it. True, there's always a certain joy in some quarters when a rich celebrity gets taken down…but there's something about successful, not-unattractive females that brings out the worst in some people.

With Hillary, there seems to be some compulsion to trash everything she says or does. This morning, some news outlets are reporting people lining up to buy her book. Given the Barbara Walters interview and how excerpts have been all over the news, that seems utterly unremarkable. Still, over on conservative websites like The Corner, we have the suggestion being offered that either those lines of people were paid by the publisher to be there, or that they're just there to buy something they can instantly resell on eBay. Whatever else one might think of Hillary Clinton, she did win the Senate race in New York in a landslide, and even G.O.P. polling shows that there are millions who support the lady. But somehow, if a few hundred folks turn out to purchase her overly-publicized book, her detractors have to find some way to deny that those people might genuinely like her.

Republicans complain — rightly so, I think — that Democrats are too quick to dismiss George W. Bush as an ignorant frat boy and to view everything he does through that prism. Maybe some of them need to come to grips with the fact that Hillary Clinton may not be quite what they've always insisted she is.