And the WGA more or less won. It’s been really interesting to watch; this is the first US strike I’m aware of in which the PR battle was fought on blogs. And when you get right down to it, the writers make a living writing persuasive prose, so it’s not entirely surprising that the PR went well. On the other hand, it’s also the case that this strike didn’t affect the majority of the public in the way that, say, a garbage collection strike does. That helped PR too.

Still, the next time the Teamsters strike, they ought to get the WGA to help out with their PR work. It’d be interesting to see if the same PR strategy works. You get so much mileage in this sort of struggle when people see you as a human being.

Voting seems to have about come to a close, so let’s see what we have.

First off, I totaled up our punches throughout the course of the season — five points to the person on top, four to the #2 slot, etc., etc. Mohinder and Matt each got 4.5 points the week they were tied. The sibs each got 2 points once. Our top eight looks like this:

West (26)
Mohinder (21.5)
Bob (16)
Maya (14)
Elle (11)
Matt (10.5)
Adam (10)
Angela (10)

There’s a huge dropoff after that, so I won’t bother with anyone else. We had a lot of West and Bob hating early on; West redeemed himself a fair bit over the course of the season, and Bob became a much more interesting character. If I were doing my own season-long list, Bob would certainly drop off it.

You guys have the following top five, with a tie in the last slot:

Maya (18)
Mohinder (12)
West (8)
Peter (7)
Elle (6)
Matt (6)

Awfully similar, except no Bob hate. And we dislike West a ton more than you do. CREEPY STALKER DUDE. Oh, and Peter pretty clearly did himself no favors by hanging out with insipid Irish gangsters for half the season followed by a nice stint as Adam’s pet. But man… he was too boring to punch in the face.

Tune in next year when we do the same sort of thing!

This is the eleventh and most likely the last PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face didn’t actually happen this episode.

Face-punch count: 0. Lotta powers, though.

Not your usual PITF Index after the cut.
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Everyone except Susan, who discovered Blackpool, is fired. Completely fired. A BBC mystery miniseries in which the actors periodically burst into popular song? Or, more exactly, popular song bursts onto the soundtrack and the actors sing along, like demented British karaoke? This sits right smack on my sweet spot and whispers sweet nothings into my ears. It’s the love child of Dennis Potter and, I dunno, something a lot more lighthearted than Dennis Potter.

Also, David Tennant.

Here’s David Tennant with “These Boots Are Made For Walking.” For walking! Here he is singing “Walk Tall”, along with Sarah Parrish. And David Morrissey singing “You Can Get It If You Really Want”.

This is entertainment. I have ordered the DVDs from Amazon UK.

This is the tenth PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face will last as long as someone’s writing the screenplay.

Face-punch count: 1. It might have been more but you know, it’s not like Monica’s powers could actually help her in a fight or anything. If only she’d seen some old martial arts footage… oh wait.

PITF Index after the cut.
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This is the ninth PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is the raison d’etre, full stop.

Face-punch count: 0. Apparently we’ve escalated to more serious forms of facial violence.

PITF Index after the cut.
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I just finished watching the first season of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I hadn’t expected brilliance; I’d watched enough of it the first time round to know I was buying some pretty flawed television. It was no Sports Night or even West Wing. But I am a sucker for Sorkin, and in this case I figured I’d get a ton of interesting insight into watching him fail fairly noisily.

It took me the whole season to figure out what was wrong with the show. Not, parenthetically, that there wasn’t a lot that was right. Matthew Perry was great. I like Sorkin dialogue. I liked a bunch of the characters, even the minor ones, some of whom had their arcs and character development sadly cut short when the show ended. Oh, and I really liked Mark McKinney. Man, what a deadpan. And Steven Weber! There’s a show waiting to be made about his character. More on that later.

Lance Mannion had a lot to say about Studio 60 while it was running, and a lot of the stuff he says about why it failed is accurate. I think the comedy was better than he gave it credit for, but I’m picking nits at that point. Sarah Paulson was in fact sorely miscast and abused as a stand-in for Sorkin’s own love life; the whole show moved kind of slowly; enough with the rants about Christianity already. Sheesh.

But he missed the big thing. (Come on. The whole point of blogging is to talk about why the clever person over there is wrong. It only lacks class when you don’t give them credit for clever.)

The real, deep problem with the show is that network comedy sketch shows are about the most unimportant thing on television these days, and Sorkin wanted to do a show about a very important network comedy sketch show. It’s all over the show; the characters treat Studio 60 as if it were the arbiter of cool. Sorkin is writing a world in which everyone in America, not to mention Afghanistan, cares a lot about late night network television.

I can’t name a single Saturday Night Live cast member except for those Lonely Planet guys, and that’s cause of YouTube. OK, I cheated and peeked — Maya Rudolph’s name rang a bell. But SNL is not, in fact, making what one could call an impact on pop culture these days.

So the premise is flawed, and as a result all the storylines — nearly without exception — feel slightly off. It starts out with the story about how Danny and Matt rejoin the show. Realistically, if a couple of SNL vets came back to run SNL again after winning a WGA award for Best Screenplay, the story is about how they’ve lost their career in a big way. Not in this universe.

This continues. Reporters flock to the stage doors, high-powered lawyers hang around the set because it’s so damned compelling, and major reporters push to do big stories on the show. It doesn’t ring true, because it’s all predicated on the idea that Studio 60 really, really matters.

If the show had been set in 1980 or so, it would have worked. Sadly, Sorkin needs his current events. C’est la vie.

The good show that sort of lurked at the edges of this one is the Jack Rudolph drama about a seriously competent network executive who has to grapple with the changing face of media. I want to see Stephen Weber figuring out how to use the Internet to sell his shows. I want to see him using the Internet to create his shows. NBS as the network which breaks with tradition and puts user-created content on prime-time television? Sure, why not? It’s the Sorkin universe. Weirder things happen. But make the stories about…

All the stuff that pisses Sorkin off. He’s always sneering at bloggers in his scripts. So that one is probably a lost cause.

Still, it was interesting to watch him trip up. I’d certainly recommend the DVDs for anyone who’s into that sort of thing. Also there’re more than a couple great bits.

This is the eight PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is not always successful.

Face-punch count: 1, plus an attempted face-punch. Can’t punch what you literally can’t hit.

PITF Index after the cut.

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This is the seventh PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is what it’s all about.

Face-punch count: 2. No quips. Badass episode.

PITF Index after the cut.
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This is the sixth PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is normative behavior.

Face-punch count: 4. Counting backhands.

PITF Index after the cut.
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