Posts by Gino Sassani

"What's your favorite song? That's like asking me if I like steak or ice cream..."

He was The Beatles before The Beatles were The Beatles. His voice would make women swoon and men want to be him. He romanced some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood history, and he sat at tables with kings, princesses, and presidents. He was The Voice. The Chairman of the Board. He was Old Blue Eyes. His name was Francis Albert Sinatra, but we all called him Frank. He had an unprecedented singing career that literally covered seven decades. Eagle Rock Entertainment gives us a few frozen moments in time for three of those decades

You know a series is not likely to make it when it jumps the shark halfway through the pilot episode. But if your name is Steven Bochco, you get a little more rope than most with which to hang yourself. And why not? Bochco changed the entire landscape of television with shows like Hill Street Blues. He's provided the training ground that gave us other brilliant television minds like David Kelly and Dick Wolf. He's managed to push the boundaries of what you can and can't do on the small screen with such controversial hits as NYPD Blue. With those kinds of street creds, you get a lot more rope than most. Still, every now and then even the greats manage to use that rope to hang themselves.

"Everybody here knows what a spin-off is."

No doubt about it. Major Crimes has managed to do what few shows before it have been able to pull off. Shows have survived the loss of their lead, but the remaining years were usually something lesser than it once was. That's not the case when The Closer lost its lead actress/character. The title was changed, and with just a few cast tweaks the series returned as Major Crimes, and I dare say it’s a much better show than its predecessor. Is it a spinoff? I might have to go to the replay booth to answer that one.

Bob Newhart is one of the last in a dying breed of comedians, at least on television. He had a reserved, almost deadpan delivery that drew your attention not because of raunchy material or manic display of hijinx. He was obviously comfortable with being the brunt of all of the jokes. His half embarrassed and half sly-dog grin become a staple in our living rooms for four decades. Newhart was his second situation comedy following a respectable run as a stuttering stammering psychologist with a wacky set of patients and friends. The Bob Newhart Show ran from 1972 to 1978. Just four years later Bob was back on our television screens with Newhart, and it was as if he hadn't missed a beat

“’Have gun, will travel’ reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land…”

Those words ended every episode of Have Gun Will Travel, sung by Johnny Western in a time that such words could be sung without irony. Outside of Richard Boone’s black-clad, craggy, Rhett-Butler-gone-to-seed gunfighter, that song was all I could really recall about this venerable Western from television’s golden age. Would it, like so many revisited shows from my youth, ultimately disappoint? Or would it hold up fifty years after it was originally broadcast, viewed as it would be by the far more jaded, cynical man I’ve grown into?

I was entirely too young to remember even the syndicated run that my mother was watching in the late 1960’s. Under more normal circumstances that would not matter as I could introduce myself to this world with the DVD release. That was before 1987 and the release of Brian De Palma’s classic film. Honestly, I simply can’t watch these episodes without thinking of that movie. For an entire generation that film has defined these characters and that time. It’s unfortunate, really, because this 1960 series had a lot going for it, particularly when you look at what else was on television at that time. Never before had such brutal violence in such a starkly real world graced the black and white sets of America.