Did you ever run across one teeny tiny small thing in an episode or something that just bugged you so much you wanted to smack the people responsible? And you know it's tiny, and you know it's not meant the way they said it, and you still want to smack them?

In last night's episode of Glee, they made the students pair up with each other to sing ballads to each other, as it would be required at sectionals. Fine and dandy. And the students were paired randomly by picking names out of a hat, which allowed for people to be paired in hi-larious ways. The club has an interesting yet very Hollywood mix of apparent ethnicities -- a black boy and girl, Matt and Mercedes, and an Asian boy and girl, Tina and .... They have, interestingly enough, resisted the temptation to pair everyone up romantically along ethnic lines. So far, so good. For last night's episode, the black guy, Matt, was supposedly out sick, leaving Mr Schuester, the teacher, to pair off with the student who he discovered had a crush on him. Larf riot! And then Tina pulled a piece of paper out of the hat, and said: "Other Asian."

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

Here's the thing: Glee club only has 12 students. They've been going for several weeks in the show's time. Mr Schu is practically neurotic about trying to be a good mentor to his students. You're telling me that after all this time, he wouldn't know the student's name? Moreover, he wouldn't know how humiliating it would be for that student to have it stated in public that the teacher couldn't remember the guy's name? Mind, it's also possible -- perhaps even probable -- that Tina said that on her own, as an insult to someone who might well have been one of her persecutors. Which ... OK, but in that case, the teacher should have said something. It shouldn't have passed unnoticed. And in either case, quite honestly, it feels vaguely like the powers that be were trying to avoid giving him a name because once he has a name, he'd actually maybe get lines, and the speaking cast is quite crowded already.

I suppose I shouldn't be terribly surprised. They screwed the pooch rather badly the last time they brought up anything like ethnic issues played for comedy, in the episode "Throwdown", but that was easier to get past, since they were trying to make a point -- albeit badly, and the point was actually quite quite wrong -- and the good intentions were practically glittering on their sleeves. (And, in fact, in light of later revelations about Sue Sylvester, the episode makes a great deal more sense ... though the point Schu makes is still quite quite wrong.) In "Ballad", this was just a small moment played straight up for comedy ... and they should have known better. Anyone thinking about it for a tenth of a second would have known better. It's not true to the characters as they've built them, it's not true to the situation, and it's wrong on its face. Plus, it's just plain not funny.

To be sure, last night's episode was wildly uneven. One thing they did right was showing other parents, finally, and how they react to the news that their children are going to have an untimely baby, which the entire school including faculty already knew. Finn's mother was hurt, but supportive; Quinn's parents threw her out. There's also the gay kid Kurt with a crush on Finn, and Finn having the brains of a flea (and, to be fair, being a teenager) has not the slightest idea how to handle it. And the actual crush plot with the teacher and student was handled fairly well, and done in one, which is good. And we will not speak of Mercedes' advice to Puck, which was not only wrongheaded, but possibly also wrong for the character as we've seen her built to date. (She seems to have very firm ideas about what's right and wrong, and to tell someone that they should just shut up about what's true in order to make life easier for someone else doesn't seem in character.) It wasn't, overall, a bad episode, and it had some very good moments in it.

But that "Other Asian" crack ... it still nags, for some reason. It's a tiny, small thing. I know this, I absolutely know it. It just ... vexes me.

It vexes me, you hear?

Who knew that we'd need this more after Obama's election?

When I saw this, I thought three things right off the bat:

1) Good lord, that woman is over 60 years old and doesn't look a moment of it. Assuming that there's some snippage involved, her plastic surgeon is really remarkable.

2) Oh, my WORD!

3) Actually ... it's not a terrible version of that song.

But, seriously, the look on Jerry Lewis face when she ... I mean, I realize that at least some of that was probably played up for the camera, but he really did look genuinely shocked, so he's still good at the mugging, at least. And all those audience members who were drafted into the act! And the lipsync was not even vaguely near what she was singing near the end, and she so didn't care!



And regarding the dance lesson on this page, all I can say is: I think it went wrong at the cape. (EDIT: replaced embedded video with link, because it starts playing automatically when you load your friends page and I HATE THAT.)

Huh.

I think I have just seen the most subtly unsubtle outing of a continuing character that I can remember. It was just ... odd.

Basically, Brenda and her crew get dragooned into working a case for the FBI. As the beginning of that case, they wind up locating a missing body in the LA County morgue. Brenda mentions that the missing person has a boyfriend, and Dr Morales suddenly goes, "Oh, he wasn't in just in town for a party, he was going to HelLA." Brenda and Sgt. Gabriel are, understandably, politely blank, and the coroner says, "OK, time for Gay Culture 101." Which isn't quite the sort of thing one would say from the outside. (Said coroner being one Dr. Morales, first name unknown, played by Jonathan del Arco, who once played Hugh the Borg -- and I have a feeling that the date of birth listed on that profile may be as much as a good decade off, since he would not appear to be over 40, but maybe he's just extraordinarily well preserved.) The coroner then explains about gay party drugs, and circuit parties and a lot of stuff that I suppose a medical examiner in a big city would know about, but which he seems to know very very well. It was all very ... gay vague, really.

It wouldn't be surprising if they meant for people to take it that way. The episode as presented was all party boys and drug dealers and pathetic and somewhat stupid gayboys and, well, after all that, I'm sure that GLAAD would like to have a word with them.

The show also has a lesbian officer as a new recurring character, Det. Mikki Mendoza. She's rather alarmingly kickass (and crash-car, when required). It's going to be interesting to see what they do with her, since in her current position, she sits outside the Major Crimes squad in another division altogether. She's apparently being cast as an anti-romantic interest for another detective.

(Purely a side note: the SGA fen will likely be all over that episode, since it contains one of the first post-SGA appearances by David Hewlett. Playing someone oddly Rodney-esque, actually. Rodney as an FBI agent. Ew.)

To the best of my knowledge, there are now two shows dealing with the LAPD at some level. It's fascinating to see how very differently cast "The Closer" and "Southland" are. They could not look more different. As mentioned elsewhere, Southland's LAPD, with a couple of exceptions, looks like it stepped out of the 1980s, whereas "The Closer" -- with the possible exception of Brenda Leigh herself -- looks much more like the LAPD of today. Much more diverse, even at the relatively high level that they show -- almost everyone we see regularly is a sergeant, detective or above -- and it's periodically dealt with the tensions caused by that diversity, too. For all that it's, in general, a much less realistic show -- procedurals in which things get neatly wrapped up every episode are by their nature less realistic -- "The Closer" manages to get that one thing very right.

EDIT: Apparently, both Dr Morales and the actor who plays him are gay. And it was meant to be the character's "coming out episode". Del Arco talks about it in an interview from ET Online -- the first part is about the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, because of course every actor has to be asked about it, and the rest is about the character and himself, and working on the show, and his offscreen involvement with GLSEN.

Circlet Press: Welcome to Circlet 2.0 » What’s So Sexy About Spock and Star Trek?

Younger Leonard Nimoy without a shirt.

...What? What? Man was hot, dammit! And I believe it was one of my first indications that I might be That Way Inclined. (No, no, not like that. Or not JUST like that. Toward a nice hairy chest. And THEN like that.)

Yes, this will be a relentlessly shallow comment. You have been warned.

See, I really didn't get all the brouhaha over Kirk. He got his shirt torn off or taken off all the time, and he was brilliantly gleaming and nipply and ... eh. It was just some guy on TV without a shirt. (OK, it was Captain Kirk without a shirt. And you couldn't be a young geekly guy -- or at least not my kind of young geekly guy -- and not respond to the pure Kirkness of it all. But that was about the character and the story, not the physical side. To put it in the sorts of terms that actors understandably absolutely hate: Shatner per se did nothing for me. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Except that I used to wonder why he was so shiny all the time; I didn't know about oiling people for years yet.) But there was Spock. And, as a somewhat picked upon kid, I loved that whole stoic thing. He made it work for him. So he was quickly my favorite character, purely because of the character and Nimoy's portrayal. But then ... there came "Patterns of Force."

Honestly, not necessarily the strongest episode dramatically. I mean, seriously, the "hey, look, we accidentally exported Nazis!" premise might be considered just the teensiest bit much. But -- for the first and, I believe, only time -- we got shirtless Spock. Granted, he was being whipped in the first part of the scene, and taking it quite stoically. Which, you know, ick. Didn't float my boat. But then there was a bit of standing on the also-recently-whipped Kirk (and who knew you could get deliberate, if slightly icky, comedy out of that sort of thing?) and doing zippy (and gross) things with embedded transponders and escaping the jail and stealing uniforms and ... well, you know. Fun stuff. Or at least as much fun as you could have thwarting Nazis in Trek. A good few shirtless minutes in there for all concerned.

See? See? And he managed it without all that oil they normally dumped on Shatner, too. (Probably would have looked awful if they'd tried.) Would have been nicer without all the green "blood" on him, but one makes do!

You can talk about the friendship between Kirk and Spock, and how rare it was, and remains, to show very close friendships between adult males, especially those who weren't raised together or who haven't been friends for donkey's years. You can talk about how intriguing and appealing that was, and how small a shift it takes for such a relationship to scan as romantic. You can talk about the fact that it absolutely wouldn't have worked without two actors as charismatic and appealing as Shatner and Nimoy (and whatever else you say about him, the Shat's on-screen charisma is undeniable). All that is absolutely true. The legend of K/S would not have endured without all that.

But still. Shirtless Spock. Pretty much all you needed.

Information about the New York ceremonies (first of three -- insert eyeroll ... here) can be found at at the bottom of this post on the GLAAD website. I'm glad to see that Suze Orman, Noah's Arc and LZ Granderson won awards. Most of the film and television awards still remain to be announced. The Los Angeles ceremonies promise to be positively littered with celebrities. I will admit that I'll be astonished if anything but Milk wins the best film award. I'm also a bit puzzled at East Side Story being in this year's television awards, since I first saw it in a theater -- admittedly, at a film festival -- two years ago, in a slightly different form.

Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources - Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment » Buffy the Vampire Slayer wins GLAAD award:

Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer has received a GLAAD Media Award honoring its representation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

The 20th annual Media Awards were presented Sunday at a ceremony in New York City.

The award lists Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb and Joss Whedon, who wrote the 2008 stories “Anywhere But Here,” “A Beautiful Sunset,” “Wolves at the Gate,” “Time of Your Life,” and “After These Messages … We’ll Be Right Back.” The artists were Georges Jeanty, Karl Moline, Cliff Richards and Eric Wight.

Other nominees in the comic-book category were: The Alcoholic (DC Comics/Vertigo), Final Crisis: Revelations (DC Comics), Secret Six (DC Comics), and Young Avengers Presents (Marvel).

Given the nominees, probably the best of the choices for this category. Which reminds me...

Sci Fi Channel Has a New Name - Now, It's Syfy - NYTimes.com
By STUART ELLIOTT

FOR years, television viewers, journalists who write about TV and services that compile listings have wondered how to refer to a certain cable network: Sci Fi Channel? Sci-Fi Channel? SciFi Channel? SCI FI Channel? Soon, to paraphrase Rod Serling — whose vintage series, "The Twilight Zone," is a mainstay of the Sci Fi Channel — executives will submit for public approval another name, not only of sight and sound but of mind, meant to signal a channel whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead — your next stop, Syfy....

Media Relations: beyond scifi/ March 16, 2009:

...Actually, I'm pretty sure that this will convey to "the fan-boys and -girls who love the genre" the opportunity to relentlessly mock the corporate overlords at NBC Universal. Because, seriously, Syfy? Seriously? Seriously?

NBC Universal has been searching ceaselessly for a way to rebrand SciFi almost since they bought it. [...] it's clear that SciFi's corporate overlords ardently desired a way to rebrand and trademark the channel for ... well, that's just it. What does having a trademark in a television channel get you, exactly? The right to run around telling the kids to get off your intellectual property lawn? What?

With this name change, NBC Universal manages to inflict upon itself the worst of all possible worlds....

Coming Clean - all I have to say is: you straight guys are SO CUTE when you get all into the manly manlove and such. Not that one cannot sympathize, of course.

There is no shame in having the mad passion for Mike Holmes of "Holmes on Homes." The combination of passion for his work and devotion to getting it done right would make even the strongest among us all swoony, whether gay or straight. (The advantage -- and disadvantage, come to think of it -- of being among the non-straight is that if I say that I'm in love with Mike Holmes, people may take it entirely the wrong way. Then, of course, I say something like, "It would be nice if he could work in that sleeveless get-up like he wears in the credits, 'cause man's got himself some guns," and they realise that I'm even more shallow than they thought.

But seriously. The guy works up in Canada, and the show seems to be taped in the winter and spring, so he will be fully ensleeved -- and usually, enjacketed and engloved -- more often than not.And yet, still I watch! Because it's just so enjoyable to see him get so livid about shoddy workmanship, and so determined to make things as right as he can. It's merely the manly manlove caused by his passion, devotion, skill and craftsmanship and not swooning over the guns.

It also seems to be a family affair; he's got a daughter and son among his crew. And it seems that this year's season will take place in New Orleans, where he helped Brad Pitt's foundation work on sustainable homes in the Lower Ninth.

(Of course, life being what it is, someone will discover that he's a sincerely passionate archconservative -- whatever that would even be in Canada -- and tell me, and I will have to surrender the manly manlove, because, you know, ew. There's just limits.)

(EDIT: Huh. I mean ... huh.)