Ratings for Peter Pan Live! were down considerably from The Sound of Music…and viewership declined a lot last night throughout the show. That may have been a function of it airing on a school night when kids just couldn't stay up that late. Or maybe they found it as tedious in the middle as I did. I don't think this will stop networks from attempting more specials like this but if the next one drops as much…

It's interesting to see this morning how many people on the 'net saw quite a different show last night than I did. I'm wondering if Comcast subscribers got a version where Allison Williams was a lot more butch and expressive, whereas us Time-Warner Cable folks got the one where she didn't seem all that upset when she thought Wendy died, Tinker Bell was going to, Wendy went and grew up, etc. I hope Christopher Walken knew all his lines in the Comcast version.

But my friend Ken Levine liked it a lot and he is not an easy audience. Go read how he found dozens of things to fault but still gives it high marks.

I am told that if you omit all the commercials in the three-hour time slot, the show ran 2 hours and 12 minutes so that means 48 minutes of commercials. It felt like the other way around. By contrast, the last time Mary Martin did it for television, it ran in a two-hour slot with 20 minutes of commercials. The Cathy Rigby version ran one hour and 43 minutes.

I still like Rigby's best of all and I'm not trying to make a direct comparison. Rigby, after all, did it hundreds of times in front of live audiences before they ever committed it to video, whereas what we saw last night represented — what? Six weeks of rehearsals?

The DVD of Rigby's version was out of print for a while but it seems to be back, though Amazon is currently out of stock and awaiting more. No doubt, interest in the new version has caused a run on her version…and her version is six dollars. It was not videoed live. They apparently shot it repeatedly during a few performances in front of real audiences at the La Mirada Theater (its home base) one of the eighty million times it played there, then shot it some more without an audience and edited it all together. The wires were digitally removed from the video and some of Ms. Rigby's singing was redone by her to create definitive — as opposed to live — versions of key songs.

But it works really well, I think. If you have kids and you want to show them Peter Pan on TV, I'd go with that version over Martin or Williams. It's too bad you can't actually take them into a theater to see it anymore.

I thought Peter Pan Live! was quite skillfully done and while much of America was probably sitting there waiting for something to go wrong, some of us were marveling at how much went right…and how ambitious so much of it was. I thought the direction and staging and art direction and choreography were very good.

So did I love it? No. I admired the attempt but did not love it and some of the reasons were probably just ingrained in the whole idea of doing it at all. I found myself missing the presence of a live audience, and not just at the point where Peter asked everyone to clap and it saved Tinker Bell's life even though most viewers heard between zero and three people clapping. Mostly though, I found myself untransported to the Darling nursery or Neverland. I spent the whole three hours on a TV soundstage somewhere, unable to pretend the wires weren't there.

Most of all, I felt it was way too long, especially around the two-hour mark. They included, I believe, a lot of the show that stage productions have jettisoned. Then again, they had three hours to fill because, you know, Walmart had all that stuff to sell.

Allison Williams is adorable and I never for one moment thought she was a boy. Never thought she could fly, either. Cathy Rigby was visibly on wires too but she looked like she was in control, choosing where to fly and proudly showing off her amazing skill. Ms. Williams just looked like the wires were picking her up from one spot and putting her down in another. I hate to fault her performance because it took loads of guts and hard work to pull it off but Peter needs to have a boyishness and heroism that she just didn't have.

One moment really struck me: The moment when the Lost Boys tell Peter that they've killed "The Wendy Bird" at Tinker Bell's instruction. Williams showed no despair and no anger. Melissa Joan Hart showed more emotion in the Walmart commercial when she thought she was out of wrapping paper.

Okay, so let's talk Walken. I usually love him but his whole performance struck me as one of those Saturday Night Live-style sketches like, "What if Walter Matthau had been in Star Wars?" Or "What if Paul Lynde played The Elephant Man?" It was like they had someone in the cast who did a good Walken so they decided to do the unlikely comedic premise, "What if Christopher Walken played Captain Hook?" It wouldn't have differed much from what we got.

I think he really stopped being Hook for me when he started dancing. It's hard for Captain Hook to be an evil bastard when he's also a great hoofer. The monotonous delivery didn't accomplish much aside from inspiring thousands of Tweets saying he needed More Cowbell.

Some of the songs were fine. The "Ugga Wugg" number was so much better with everyone muttering in Yiddish instead of doing faux Indian gibberish. Switching out of Sarcasm Mode, "Distant Melody" was actually pretty good, sung well by Taylor Louderman, and I liked "I Won't Grow Up" a lot and "Hook's Waltz." Okay, fine. But such moments were just too few and far-between.

Peter Pan has always been a show with a very special duty: Done right, it's a great way to introduce young kids to the concept of musical theater. I'd love to think this production will inspire another generation of playgoers but I don't think so. Oh, well. Maybe that's what Glee is for.

• There should be an Internet law that says the ad you have to sit through to view a video clip can't be longer than the video clip.

A couple weeks ago, I went to hear John Cleese in conversation with Eric Idle. I linked to a great video of that chat here.

During it, Mr. Cleese and Mr. Idle read/performed a sketch that had been written for a pre-Python projecy in which Mr. Cleese appeared, a series called At Last…the 1948 Show. Idle read a role that had originally been performed by Marty Feldman.

What we have here today is a longer version of that sketch as performed by Mr. Feldman and his foil, John Junkin, on a subsequent show of Feldman's. The character's name is Mr. Pest. For obvious reasons…

Mary McNamara will miss the Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report. So will a lot of us…but I have no reason to think that the Stephen Colbert of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert won't be a fine trade-off.

My knee and arm continue to heal. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have posted about my little accident but when you have a blog to fill, you tend to think of everything as material. It was not as bad as some who wrote me seemed to think.

I don't have much to say about the Eric Garner matter back east other than to echo the frustration of Mr. Stewart last night on The Daily Show. Years ago when we had the Rodney King riots in L.A., I had a gentleman of color doing some construction-type work on my house. Naturally, we got to talking about the looting and burning that was going on in parts of the city following the verdict that acquitted the police officers who'd been caught on tape beating the crap out of King, long after he could not have escaped or harmed them.

The worker said to me, not that this wasn't obvious, "It just shows you the system is rigged. Even when they have videotape of these cops assaulting a black man, the cops walk." That's got to be what a lot of people are feeling today about Garner's death and also that of Michael Brown and others.

I'm trying to not write as much on this blog about serious subjects because there are so many places on the 'net where you can read about them, whereas this is one of the few places you can read about old comedians and my silly experiences and the evils of cole slaw. But as a wise man wrote very recently, when you have a blog to fill, you tend to think of everything as material. So I'm not going to dwell on Brown or Garner…and if Bill Cosby weren't a comedy legend, I probably wouldn't be writing much about him. I just have trouble at times getting my mind off injustices that are out there. I kind of hope I never learn how to do that.

My old pal Pat O'Neill wrote…

A local community theater I occasionally work with just finished a run of Peter Pan. Like the Rigby version, they dropped "Mysterious Lady" and Liza's ballet (Liza being the Darlings' maid), but kept the bit where she asks Peter to teach her to crow, leading to the reprise of "I Gotta Crow." (It looked like it's necessary to cover a scene change, actually — and I'd bet the ballet was, too.)

Their Peter was a young woman who could — had I not known the convention of a woman playing Peter — have completely convinced me she was male. It can be done.

Oh, I know it can be done. Cathy Rigby pretty much made me forget her gender for the duration of the play. I just wonder why it always has to be done. There are other theatrical versions of Peter Pan (other than the one with the score by Leigh, Charlap, Comden, Green and Styne) that cast males in the role.

The ballet with the animals may have covered a scene change in the version you saw but in the Mary Martin version, it took up the whole stage so nothing was changing. It was in there because, once upon a time, it was Standard Operating Procedure for Broadway musicals to hand one whole number over to the choreographer to show off. Most of the top choreographers demanded it even when, like Jerome Robbins in this case, the choreographer was also the director.

Broadway shows of the period usually had one even if, as in Peter Pan, it stopped the action and did not advance the story one bit. One of the best was the "Sadie Hawkins' Day Ballet" in Li'l Abner where the ballet not only advanced the story a lot but it closed the first act. I seem to recall that when My Fair Lady opened for previews, it had a ballet that was quickly cut.

I haven't heard if they've cut the ballet in the version of Peter Pan that airs tonight. They seem to want to make this show technically difficult and filled with spectacle so perhaps not. I also don't know what they're going to do about the scene where Peter asks the audience to clap to save Tinker Bell's life. There's no live audience there.

I'm still looking forward to the show but some of the publicity almost seems to be saying, "Hey, it's live! Tune in and see if anything goes wrong!" I assume that if there are any screw-ups, they won't be fixed for the West Coast feed of the show…but this is looking less and less like a musical and more like one of those "daredevil" TV specials where we tune in just to see if Evel Knievel is going to make it over the canyon or some Wallenda is going to walk the tightrope successfully.

Our pal Robert J. Elisberg (I get to call him Bob) reviews some new electronics devices that might be of use to writers. Most of 'em seem to be ways to power your laptop or other portable device.

Another audition tape for Peter Pan Live. This time, it's Jane Krakowksi. I can't wait for Whoopi's…

• How come all the people who were hysterical about Government Death Panels seem to like the idea of cops killing whoever they want?

Jon Bois writes about how terrible it is to work at RadioShack, a company which many predict will not outlive the warranties on most of the products they're now selling.

RadioShacks are closing every day and there are two obvious reasons. One is that so much of what they sell is more easily available on the Internet. You'd think that they might be able to compete by being a place where you could get wise advice on your electronics and computer purchases but that brings us to the second problem: Very few people who know anything about such areas can stand to work for RadioShack for very long. I don't know how many times I've had to explain to sales folks there what it is they're selling. I don't know that much about this stuff but I know more than any RadioShack employee I've encountered in years.

Warner Brothers Home Entertainment has had some complaints about missing content on their new release that is supposed to be an utterly complete collection of the Batman TV series — the one with Adam West, the one you can order here. A few minutes are absent here and there.

If you bought a set, read this about how to obtain replacement disks that will give you what you thought you were paying for.

Today on Stu's Show, the guest is Jerry Beck, who as you can see knows everyone of importance in the field of animation. Jerry will be talking about what's current in the cartoon biz, including what (if anything) we can expect to see released on home video soon…and no doubt host Stu Shostak will rant a bit about how the studios aren't doing enough in that area. They'll speak of what Christmas specials one should watch this year — you just missed Charlie Brown — and what new books are out and…oh, just listen in for a lively conversation.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go way longer. Today's will run long as they do whenever Jerry's on and after it's over, it like all Stu's Show episodes will be available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a measly 99 cents each and you can get four shows for the price of three. And that's not a week-long Cyber Monday deal to lure you in. That's a genuine, year-round bargain.

We're guardedly looking forward to NBC's live telecast of Peter Pan tomorrow night. In the meantime, let's take a look at Laura Benanti's audition for any role in the show except the one she might actually have played. I have sat in on auditions that weren't a whole lot different from this one. Thanks to our pal James H. Burns and all the others who let me know about this…

Brian Fies, who's written some great graphic novels like Mom's Cancer sent me this…

Just writing to lend you some support on the idea that any writing is good writing. I started my working life as a newspaper reporter, put in more than 15 years as a science writer, and have produced a couple of graphic novels and webcomics. I find a lot of overlap.

Writing almost anything every day gives you a facility and confidence with language that you wouldn't gain otherwise. You learn what works and what doesn't, how to prod a reaction from a reader, and the incredible importance of clarity. One of the most valuable writing jobs I had was also one of the worst writing jobs I had: covering a season of high school basketball for a local newspaper. Since every high school basketball game is pretty much like any other, by the 15th or 20th I was really working hard to make my stories interesting for both me and my readers. It was a great exercise.

Even a "just the facts" news article or scientific paper needs to be structured and crafted to make its point effectively. I really look at everything I write as a form of journalism. The only difference is that when I'm writing fiction, I'm reporting on events and characters that don't actually exist. But it feels like the same process in my brain.

Writers need to write, and should write however they can.

Yeah, I'm a big believer in the philosophy, "You want to be a writer? Then write something." Over the years, I haven't had a lot of patience with people who ask if I can help them get a writing job…and when they get the job is when they intend to start writing. Writers need to be wary of writing for free or for bad pay…but there's nothing wrong with writing for yourself for free. In fact, you need to do that so you don't limit your writing to just what people are willing to pay you for at the moment. Or so you're still writing when they don't.