He's been called the King of Late-Night. Today when there are so many talk shows on at pretty much every hour of the day, that might not appear to be such a huge distinction. There were talk shows on before Johnny Carson, but there can be no doubt that he invented the modern late-night show. For 30 years Johnny Carson was like a member of the family for millions of Americans. He was a friendly face at the end of a long, stressful day. He was that dependable routine that you could set your biological clock by. You would lie back in bed and let Johnny bring the world to you. You could count on a wide assortment of entertainment experiences. Johnny would deliver a monolog that often touched on the hot topics of the day. The news programs might be depressing, but Johnny always gave you a reason to crack a smile at the worst of times. There were characters like Aunt Blabby and Carnac who became comfortable old friends. The top names in show business competed for precious minutes on his stage, and if you were very lucky you spent some time on the couch and some face time with Johnny and his faithful sidekick Ed McMahon. Johnny could make or break your career in three minutes. He brought you the best of the new comics and musicians while delivering the big stars just as well. When you made it to The Tonight Show, you really made it.

There will never be a complete season or complete series set for Johnny Carson. There are several problems that present themselves almost immediately. Johnny was on nearly every night for thirty years. Do the math and you'll realize there have been thousands of episodes. The sad fact is that many of these moments are lost forever. Footage has either been lost completely or is in such bad shape as to be almost unwatchable. There was so much variety that having a full season would be a logistic nightmare to find those favorite moments. No, there just isn't ever going to be a complete anything when it comes to Johnny Carson. But leave it to Time-Life to go into the vaults and at least bring out some gems. This is the second volume, so the discs start with # 7.

Before The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling had a fruitful career writing teleplays in the early 1950’s. One of his earliest successes, Patterns (1955), was aired on a program named Kraft Television Theatre. The popularity of the play was so enormous that a second encore performance was aired the same week of its release, and it was written as a feature film the following year. Given its impressive history and my love of Serling’s writing, I was really looking forward to watching the the film. However, I was surprised that I did not enjoy myself as much as I was expecting. While the film demonstrates a lot of great dramatic moments that Serling is known for, the simplicity of the editing and camerawork really made the piece underwhelming. Certain images had so much potential to be utilized to service the actual plot, but it ultimately felt as if director Fielder Cook relied too heavily on the story’s earlier success as a teleplay.

Patterns tells the story of Fred Staples, an engineer brought into a large industrial company Ramsey & Co. in order to bring about new ideas and policies. He immediately produces a friendship with Bill Briggs, the company’s vice president. As Staples becomes acclimated to the company, he discovers that Walter Ramsey, the company’s president, has brought him on as competition to Briggs. From here, Ramsey begins to play multiple mind games with Staples and Briggs in an effort to force Briggs into a resignation. The film’s conflict becomes a battle between corporate practices and simple human decency.

Shonda Rhimes now has a fourth series running on ABC this past season. Joining Scandal, Grey's Anatomy, and How To Get Away With Murder is the new series The Catch. The series is based on a series of novels by Kate Atkinson and was actually created by Jennifer Schuur. And while The Catch distinguishes itself rather nicely from the usual Rhimes formula, you can still expect the bed-jumping antics that Rhimes is so obsessed with. It's the one thing that all four shows have in common. It doesn't matter whether she's a writer, creator, or just a producer; there's never been an episode of a series with her name on it that doesn't have plenty of sex. In this case it's a sad distraction from what turned out to be a rather clever show.

Alice Vaughan (Enos) helps run one of L.A.'s elite private investigation and security firms. She was engaged to Christopher Hall (Krause) whom she has been with for a year. In the pilot it all comes crashing down. Christopher's real name is Ben Jones, and he's been running a con the entire year. He's gotten close to Alice in order to put himself and his partner Margot (Walger) in a position to steal from the firm and its wealthy clients. The sting backfires and the firm is saved, but that's not going to be the end of the story. Alice decides she's going to track him down and put him away for what he tried to do. But when she does track him down in the middle of another sting, he claims his feelings for her were real and tries to warn her against digging too deep.