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We're getting ready to launch a brand new school year! So I've been, y'know, extra busy this week. Not that anyone's terribly surprised when I disappear for a little while here on the blog. At least this time it wasn't six weeks.

One thing I did take the time to do -- said time taking, oh, nine seconds -- was buy the just released Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog Soundtrack off of iTunes. I haven't felt any huge need to talk up the good Doctor -- most of you should already know about the internet sensation that swept geekdom like a giant... sweeping... thing over the course of the summer. (If you're totally clueless, be enlightened.) I really loved the videos, and it was a fait accompli that I'd get the album when it came out.

I won't promise there won't be minor spoilers below, for the record.

While listening to the studio recordings, I found my mind wandering to mad science. More to the point, I found my mind wandering to writing mad science. I have a project or two under the cone of silence that touch on the few, the proud, the psychotically curious, and like a lot of writers i sometimes use the power of music to get my brain in the right state of mind for whatever I'm working on. We are programmed by television and movies to respond to musical cues, almost subconsciously -- the right music can underscore pain or joy, make us happy or sad, get us into the mindset of who we're watching or drive us away, depending on what they're going for. And a writer can use that when they're writing in the first place.

And honestly, writing mad science takes some brain work.

You see, it's easy to assume that mad science is just cute and fluffy and geek positive. Lots of real life geeks of giant brain identify themselves as "mad scientists." Some (I'm looking at you, Van Domelan) even qualify. (Actually, Superguy alumnus Bill Paul still wins the prize for maddest scientist I've met, though it's worth noting i've never actually met Andy Weir. Apparently, when he took an undergraduate apartment near school, he discovered there was a 220 volt tap for a dryer that didn't currently exist. His immediate reaction was "Cool! Now I can make plasma!" But I digress. And yes -- we're going to be talking about Casey and Andy soon.)

The thing is? Mad scientists, as a trope? They're not cute and fluffy and geek positive. They're insane. They're arrogant and deeply broken -- their pain and insanity driving their science beyond all rational measure. It's a powerful image -- one that laymen are willing to accept almost at face value. Scientists seem like magicians to us, after all -- they make nuclear power plants and electrical grids and bridges and chemicals that do everything from regulate brain imbalances to endanger us with four hour erections. Science is huge and can be scary, and these men and women get it using math most of us don't even recognize as symbols. We can believe that one of these intensely intelligent people might go too far -- push too hard... learn too much, delve into things best left undelved, and lose their mind in an arrogant belief that they can force the world to yield its secrets and bend to his whim. As with Faust in an earlier incarnation, we're willing to accept that something supremely dangerous and horrifying lies just beyond the pale, and those who seek after knowledge with too great a fervor will be consumed by it.

And, of course, when you gain the knowledge of the gods, you become a god -- or so you believe. It is natural for the superior to rule over the inferior. World domination isn't an end, it's a byproduct.

The trick is finding the right music to push your brain into that mindset -- to drive that combination of brilliance and hubris, often with a side order of a pain that can't ever be alleviated. Sure, real life scientists might enjoy "Particle Man," but that's not going to combine the hunger for knowledge and the driving need to change/recreate/rule/destroy the world.

On all the Dr. Horrible soundtrack, the only truly mad science fueled song is the intense (and wonderful) "Brand New Day," as our... er... hero goes from a moderately nice and schlubish supervillain poseur to the real psychotic deal. You can feel the brilliance and evil burn out of Neil Patrick Harris, wiping out the "dork and failure" as he says and leaving behind a being who can (and does) terrorize. None of the other songs on the album have this sheer mad science quality. "My Freeze Ray" is cheerful and pleasant and very human, regardless of the advanced technology. "Slipping" and "Everything You Ever" yield confrontation and consequence, but not that pure expression of manic belief.

And that got me thinking. Clearly, I needed a song list. One song isn't enough, after all. I needed songs that had that quality, whether or not they actually dealt with science or mad science or anything of the sort. And I have a music collection, so why not pare through it.

So I did. I found the songs that seem to trigger the right neurochemical response in my brain -- the frantic energy, the certainty, the terrible surety of their quest or cause. There had to be an edge to these songs -- a sense that something isn't quite right in the world. And even if the songs are enthusiastic, they shouldn't be happy. And in many cases, there should be a sense of defiance. Most Doctor Demento songs get let out because they're not staring you in the eye demanding you kneel before them.

I also kind of decided to avoid the cliche and the twee with my picks. "She Blinded Me With Science" isn't on here -- Thomas Dolby might be a mad scientist but his lament is a victim's lament, not a victor's. And "Weird Science?" Please. There's an Oingo Boingo song here, but it lacks goofiness, thank you. "Weird Science" is what mad science groupies play while waiting outside the laboratory in hopes of getting an autograph or a transmutation into some kind of shark-pumpkin person. Finally, I tried to keep it to one song per artist.

Naturally, these are the songs that work for me. They may not work for you. And yes, I'd be happy to hear more suggestions in the comments. In alphabetical order by title, I give you my Mad Scientist Mix.

"American Jesus," Bad Religion: Right off the bat, you see there's no science here. What there is a hard edged beat and a song about entitlement, about superiority, about damning the consequences and damning the world and not caring because you're a special snowflake 'cause preacher told you so. From the driving core of the song:

He's the farmers' barren fields, (In God)
He's the force the army wields, (We trust)
He's the expression on the faces of the starving millions, (Because he's one of us)
The power of the man. (Break down)
He's the fuel that drives the Klan, (Cave in)
He's the motive and the conscience of the murderer (He can redeem your sin)
He's the preacher on TV, (Strong heart)
He's the false sincerity, (Clear mind)
He's the form letter that's written by the big computer, (And infinitely kind)
He's the nuclear bombs, (You lose)
He's the kids with no moms (We win)
And I'm fearful that he's inside ME (He is our champion)

This concept of the spirit -- the demiurge that wreaks its will upon the countryside while still being a part of you? That could as easily describe "madness" in Narbonic or "the spark" in Girl Genius.

"As I Sat Sadly By Her Side," Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Atypical on this list -- most of these songs emphasize the savage joy (or savage motion) of rhythm. This, on the other hand, is a beautifully orchestrated, piano heavy ballad with a sense of melancholy. It jabs my Mad Science hindbrain because of a combination of unsettling music -- it is beautiful, but there is a sense that somehow it denotes a world that's wrong -- and dark imagery. It describes the figure who has hope for the world, and the figure who sees the suffering of individuals. Either one could be a mad scientist -- the woman who sees a shining future or the man who sees the cost and finds it unacceptable. Telling, though, are two stanzas near the end:

Then she drew the curtains down
And said, "When will you ever learn
That what happens there beyond the glass
Is simply none of your concern?
God has given you but one heart
You are not a home for the hearts of your brothers

And God does not care for your benevolence
Anymore than he cares for the lack of it in others
Nor does he care for you to sit
At windows in judgement of the world He created
While sorrows pile up around you
Ugly, useless and over-inflated"

He has seen the world's flaws. She obscures them and dismisses them. He feels responsible for making the whole world well. She feels no responsibility for the world at all. Polar extremes, and both mad.

"Big O!," Tosihiko Sahasi: The theme song from the cartoon. This is the polar opposite of the last entry -- this one's entirely about the savage joy of rhythm. The lyrics not only don't denote some moral dilemma, they mostly consist of "BIG O!" shouted over and over again. The song has a similarity in feel to the old Queen "Flash Gordon" theme, though, and the hammering beat makes your heart beat faster too. Musically, you can entirely accept that madmen build a world from the musical structures within, and then a giant robot blows shit up.

"Brand New Day," Neil Patrick Harris: What started the article. It doesn't get madder than this. This is the moment of epiphany for the bad Doctor -- the moment when he bursts through the nice, shy guy he was before to become the true, future ruler of the world. This is where he stops wanting to look out for kids in the park, and starts wanting to rampage through the streets:

All the time that you beat me unconscious I forgive
All the crimes incomplete - listen, honestly I'll live
Mr. Cool, Mr. Right, Mr. Know-It-All is through
Now the future's so bright and I owe it all to you
Who showed me the light

It's a brand new me
I got no remorse
Now the water's rising
But I know the course
I'm gonna shock the world
Gonna show Bad Horse
It's a brand new day

The distinction between the driven man of scientist and the madman who uses techniques "no reputable scientist would employ" while tearing into fields of study forbidden, for man was not meant to know them... is a moment of epiphany like this.

"Chicks Dig Giant Robots," Deathwish IX: Mad science as surf rock. This was the MEGAS XLR, and as suits that work it is enthusiastic and bright, counterpointing the banality of New Jersey with the epic of saving the world from alien invasion in a giant robot car. It might not immediately seem like Mad Science so much as mecha combat, but the core of the cartoon is an automobile nut who loves video games finds a prototype giant robot that's missing its head in a junkyard, and then rebuilds it using his classic car as the head, rerigging all the controls to a melange of video game controllers. That the thing works at all -- much less that it's superior to anything the designers could have hoped, is pure mad science at its best Plus he added flaming eightball paint jobs. And, as the song claims:

You dig giant robots!
I dig giant robots!
We dig giant robots!
Chicks dig giant robots!
Nice!

As justifications go for your rampage that decimates half of Trenton, it'll do just fine.

"Eli's Coming," Three Dog Night: I'll admit, some of my Sorkin love fuels this pick. In one of the best episodes of Sports Night, Dan (the cool host) sees a convergence of bad signs and declares that Eli's coming. When it becomes clear that he's reffing the Three Dog Night song, and that said song is about an inveterate womanizer, he agrees but said when he first heard it, it sounded like it meant trouble was coming. And, as he says, those things stick with you. And in that way, this has stuck with me. What makes it mad science? Well, it fits musically -- musical and frenetic but with a sense of dread coupled with terrible inevitability:

Walk but you'll never get away
No, you'll never get away from the burnin' a-heartache
I walked to Apollo by the bay
Everywhere I go though, Eli's a-comin' (she walked but she never got away)
Eli's a-comin' (she walked but she never got away)
Eli's a-comin' and he's comin' to git ya (she walked but... she walked but...)
Get down on your knees (she walked but she never got away)

Obsession, fear, flight, conquest. The fools at the Pier 1 down on pier nineteen will pay for defying the will of ELI! Look, it works for my brain. I don't promise it will for yours.

"Genius," Warren Zevon: It was nigh inconceivable a Zevon song wouldn't make the list, but this was iffy. I considered this one, "Piano Fighter" (for it's energy) and others. But in the end, this song has a sense of simmering, respectful resentment masked in a relatively peppy beat. It's the dark face of "Brand New Day" in its own way -- the loss that forms the maniac resolve. "You'll pay," the song seems to say. "When I have taken over the world then you'll pay!"

When you dropped me and you staked your claim
On a V.I.P. who could make your name
You latched on to him and I became
A minor inconvenience
Your protege don't care about art
I'm the one who always told you you were smart
You broke my heart into smithereens
And that took genius

You and the barber make a handsome pair
Guess what--I never liked the way he cut your hair
I didn't like the way he turned your head
But there's nothing I can do or say I haven't done or said

Everybody needs a place to stand
And a method for their schemes and scams
If I could only get my record clean
I'd be a genius

"I Wanna Be a Boss," Stan Ridgway: There are dedicated, passionate, even obsessed scientists who want nothing more than to make the discovery, to find the truth. While some of them might be Mad Scientists, they don't have to be. Mad Science requires something beyond the drive to know. There also has to be ambition -- ambition that can't ever truly be satisfied. This is where the drive to rule comes from -- the certainty that you could do it better, coupled with the sense that finally your genius will be given its unmitigated due. He starts off wanting a nice office, expensive clothes, a lear jet, the respect of his peers... but as the song progresses, his dreams get progressively grander, wilder, not just unlikely but impossible. And then he goes farther:

Now if I find a product I like
I'll buy up the whole company
Shave my face, and grin and smile
And then I'll sell it on TV
And everyone will know me
I'll be more famous than Howard Hughes
I'll grow a long beard and watch
Ice Station Zebra in the nude

And grow my nails like Fu-Manchu
Keep a row of specimen jars
Get other people to work for me--well
Maybe I'll buy the planet Mars, and
Build an amusement park up there
Better than old Walt's place
You'll have to be a millionaire to go
We'll smoke cigars and lounge in lace
Talk the talk of businessmen
And bosses that we are
So here's to me--the drinks are free--
'Cause I just bought this bar!

Within the heart of the Mad Scientist beats the heart of a man who knows that when he rules the world, it will be an absolute paradise. For him, anyway, and who else could possibly matter as much?

"The Math Song," The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets: from the movie Spaceship Zero. It opens with someone shouting "Your facts! Your figures! What are they worth now? Huh? Are they worth the lives of seven billion people?!" So, you know it starts out well. And then the song starts with a good drum beat and high guitar and cheer and a singer who sounds a touch strung up singing a song that makes it clear that yes. Yes these facts and figures are worth the lives of seven billion people. Don't be ridiculous:

X
X by the tangent of N
N minus pi over 10
That equals negative 9
Negative 9 is so fine

You've got a brain
And nobody really needs another love song

This is the song that underscores the joy and beauty in math, the power of the brain... and honestly, haven't we heard all the ridiculousness about love and adoration and other people before? No one needs another love song! You've got a brain! Read a book!

"The Needle Lies," Queensryche: Another song that sets the tone with a voiceover before it begins. "I've had enough -- and I want out!" [sound of crash] "You can't walk away now," comes the answer, followed by the all-important mad scientist laugh -- a laugh that trails up at the end instead of down. Operation: Mindcrime is a concept album that plunges the horrible depths of mad science. One of its characters is actually called Doctor X for God's sake!

I looked back once
And all I saw was his face
Smiling, the needle crying
Walking out of his room
With mirrors, afraid I heard him scream
Youll never get away

Cold and shaking
I crawled down alleys to try
And scrape away the tracks that marked me
Slammed my face into walls of concrete
I stared, amazed at the words written on the wall

Dont ever trust
Dont ever trust the needle, it lies
Dont ever trust
Dont ever trust the needle when it cries...
Cries your name

In a way, this suffers from the same thing as "She Blinded Me With Science." Nikki is a victim, not a mad scientist. But where "She Blinded Me With Science" is a romp, about the seductive powers of the modern woman with her perfume and her wicked ways... this is about a man crawling away desperately from the madman who has taken over his existence and threatens to destroy it, and there is no escape.

Now that's Mad Science, baby. Dr. X could take Dolby's chick out with one jab.

"No One Lives Forever," Oingo Boingo: This pick was a tossup between it and "Insanity" -- both the version from Farewell -- Live, the last concert Boingo played as Boingo. Both have that burning energy, that intensity that separates the sane from the not-sane, and they both kick the ass of "Weird Science" in pretty much every way. I go with this one because it's less about true full on non mad-sciency psychosis and more about the inevitability of death and the need to therefore go for absolute broke in life, without concern for laws or what is possible:

No one beats him at his game
For very long but just the same
Who cares, there's no place safe to hide
Nowhere to run--no time to cry
So celebrate while you still can
'Cause any second it may end.
And when it's all been said and done . . .
Better that you had some fun
Instead of hiding in a shell-Why make your life a living hell?
So have a toast, and down the cup
And drink to bones that turn to dust ('cause) . . .
No one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one
No one lives forever!! (Hey!)

The song is a party, a celebration. What it celebrates is that we're alive and someday we won't be so don't hold back! Don't let yourself have regrets! Take this life for all it's worth. Doctor Madblood would certainly agree. Not that he won't prove them wrong. Oh yes. Yes he will.

"The Sidewalk Song (v 1.1)," The Tenmen: For a while, Radio Achewood had a couple of tracks up from 'the Tenmen,' the black clad trio of rickenbacher playing cats who Roast Beef, Emeril and Spongebath all love. They're gone now, which I can understand -- how can one hope to put to music a group defined in a silent medium as the best post-wave musicians of their age. Still, this track has a beat and a funk that's infectious, and feels like distilled productivity. There are no lyrics -- it is, if anything, aureal wallpaper, but I could see it as the closest representation to the music a mad scientist hears in his mind, and that's good enough for me.

"Skullcrusher Mountain," Jonathan Coulton: Yeah yeah, I know. All these songs I've been avoiding all the geek-adored obvious picks. I don't have "They're Coming to Take Me Away." Hell, I don't have any They Might Be Giants on the list. These are songs about the crush and the pain, and here I have geek icon Jonathon Coulton with his parody of romantic light rock songs, all about the mad scientist who woos a pretty young thing. Look, the difference here is the absolute sense of rightness in the protagonist's voice, and the continued failure of his methods to have any positive effect:

I'm so into you
But I'm way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You'd see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn't kill you yet

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don't like it
What's with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don't like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

It's all here -- the lack of ability to see the real world. The absolute certainty that his master plans cannot fail -- be they destroying the planet or hooking with his girlfriend. And, as he said above -- the chick likes ponies and likes monkeys, so why wouldn't a monkey-pony monster be the perfect gift! It's convenient, and no one else one! Honestly, Can't you show a little gratitude?

"Straw Hat and Old Dirty Hank," Bare Naked Ladies: This song's subversive. It's very bright and perky and cheerful and you can listen to it a dozen times before it hits you that this guy's a crazy celebrity stalker who thinks Anne Murray's talking to him in her songs. (Or Rae Don Chong. Or others. I've heard several women named.) He is a farmer, he works in the field, and he has come to see himself as the man who feeds the world -- and especially the love of his life -- with his labors. There's no science here but there is the right kind of delusion -- as well as the sullen resentment that can creep in when his letters to the celebrity stop fulfilling his worldview:

All of this corn I grow I grow it all for you
I took a hatchet to the radio I did it all for you
You could have written back,
You could have said "Thank you"
I guess you've got better things,
better things to do.

You say you love me, is that the truth?
Although they've heard the songs, my friends want living proof.
I know your address, I ring the bell
I bring you flowers and a .22 with shells.

He knows what the world is. He knows that he gets it -- he knows the truth. And his friends -- his friends -- won't believe them, and you won't write back so he could prove it. You have to understand, he's got to prove how you feel. He's got to prove it to the world. And then, when he has you and his life is so great... well, his so called friends will change their tune, won't they, but it will be too late. Too late!

Replace the psycho stalking with 'building an Oo-ray,' and Bob's your Uncle. And it's so upbeat in its psychosis.

"What We Need More Of is Science," MC Hawking: I'll admit, I'm not the biggest MC Hawking fan on Earth. It just seemed... I dunno. Cute, to me. A little twee. I didn't hate the Hawk, I just didn't buy in. But "What We Need More of is Science," the first of the Achewood songfights (the second was the fantastic "Corner of Dude and Catastrophe" by MC Frontalot with Brad Sucks) is just a wonderful rant against the people of the world who follow ridiculous cults (from crystals to fundamentalist Christianity in his view) and don't spend enough time listening to their god damn science teachers. This is the sort of rant that leads, fundamentally, to a giant steam powered robot with vortex rays mounted on the shoulders and an unbreakable glass dome on the head where the inventor sits in an easy chair, holding a martini that foams slightly, smiling and saying "where's this God then? Why doesn't He stop me? Mm? Here's my creation -- it's the one beating up His creation." And then he would laugh, and laugh and laugh.

The list is incomplete. The list can't be complete, because there could be something on it tomorrow that serves the same purpose. And the list that works for me might not work for you. If we could find the music playlist that elicited the same brain chemical responses in every listener, we could (of course) rule the world, but so far that goal is elusive. Still, we can get closer. Go ahead and chime in, down in the comments. What's music rocks your Mad Science hindbrain? What do you listen to when you're dreaming of unleashing your unstoppable Pneumatic Steel Legion upon the fools at Tompkins-Cortland Community College? And in what way am I wrong? Which of these songs denotes my clear inferiority, which shall lead to your song list crushing mine like so many grapes held in the hydraulically driven hand of your fabrication robot?

Go on. Prove me wrong, Silent Bob. For if you do not... then soon... I... will... rule... the world.

Of mad scientist mix tape creation.

Look, start small.

Let us speak then of the dead. It's something we seem to do more and more of. The last time I spoke of the dead, I was speaking of Chris Benoit, and of the conflicted feelings I had as a man I respected and enjoyed as an entertainer had turned out or turned into a monster. This time, I speak of someone we all knew, once upon a time, was a shallow, bad and hypocritical person, and who I speak well of now as a kind and decent woman who, in the end, meant what she said.

A person I, and most of the people who know anything about the last twenty years of her life, mourn now the way we mourn any person who is essentially decent, kind and open, and who did her best to spread a message that on balance was a good and decent one -- far more so than many of the others of her kind and era did.

I speak, of course, of Tamara Faye LaValley, who was known professionally as Tammy Faye or Tammy Faye Messner at the end of her life, and who millions remembered (and mocked) as Tammy Faye Bakker, wife of disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker.

I was a child in the 70's and 80's, living in rural Maine along the Northern Canadian border. I have never needed a Saturday Night Live sketch to tell me who Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were. I had the PTL Club. And if it seems weird that I had watched it, you don't understand what television used to be like, especially in Northern Maine. Until the cable came, our television universe was CHSJ (the New Brunswick Television System) on Channel 6, WAGM on Channel 8, three French channels (two of which barely came in) after that, and MPBN (the PBS affiliate) on Channel 11. Period.

WAGM, in particular, was our gateway into the world. It was primarily a CBS affiliate, but officially it was an affiliate of all three networks. They would (usually) show CBS shows when they were supposed to air, and shows on ABC or NBC would show up at odd times -- the 7 o'clock hour, for example. Or on weekends. But despite this plethora of programming, there was never enough programming to fill the dial. Old, bad movies would play here and there, after Captain Kangaroo and the game shows and the soap operas. And weekends? Saturday morning was the CBS cartoon lineup, and then there was a long void all day. Sunday mornings there were various religious shows, then various crap, then they would pull in ABC's Wide World of Sports.

Why did I watch it? I was a kid living in the middle of nowhere. I had Canadian television, French television I couldn't understand, Public Television, and whatever cheap crap WAGM threw at me. You're damn right I watched it. All of it. I watched Jim McKay excitedly present ice barrel jumping. I must have seen every episode of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I watched Hee Haw. I watched It's The Law, Front Page Challenge and The Beachcombers on CHSJ. I watched To Tell The Truth and What's My Line, in the days when Soupy Sales was the high point of those shows. The high point.

And I watched The P-T-L Club.

My parents didn't. They had better things to do, and who could blame them? I don't know if my sister watched it or not, but I don't know how she could have avoided it -- she was even more of a child of the 70's than I was. But I did. I was young, and let's be blunt. This show was amazing. It had music (not like Lawrence Welk, another show I watched out of the 'there's nothing else to do' theory, but more exciting music), it had shouting and gesticulation and sobbing -- let's be blunt. It was a freak show. A spectacle. And kids love spectacle.

And it had Tammy Faye Bakker.

Tammy Faye Bakker seemed too over the top to be real. So heavily made up she seemed greasepainted, always laughing or sobbing at what seemed like near hysteria (for many years, mascara pouring down her face from tears was practically her trademark and calling card), she seemed like a clown. A literal clown. Especially when a kid like me was watching -- I knew from clowns, and I knew television wasn't real. And there was no way that freak was real.

But it wasn't just kids like me watching the show. There had been religious programming for a long, long time, but it was P-T-L (for PRAISE THE LORD! shouted enthusiastically) that inaugurated the television crusade. Billy Graham had been the closest we'd had to a public crusader and evangelist, as once a year WAGM would give over the To Tell The Truth/What's My Line block to him for a week of shouting and praying, but this was something else. This was up close and personal and in your face. Witnessing. Testifying. Exhorting!

And, as you all know, begging. Begging for money. Money to show your faith. Money to continue the faith. Every Church in America "passed the plate" and churchgoers understood that's what kept the church going and enabled them to help the poor and needy (this was a given in these somewhat simpler days -- churches helped the needy. It was most of what they did with their time in between sermons. At least, that's what people assumed back in the day). Well, they were passing the plate to America, and they expected to see it fill fast, brothers and sisters!

And they were a monumental success. They were the vanguard of a boom, informing and being informed by ministries and ministers like Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts (Expect a Miracle!), and later on Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others of their ilk. They were so successful they launched a theme park. A theme park for Jesus. Heritage U.S.A. was another huge success, bringing in crowds of people to ride rides and have good family fun and obey Jesus.

Meanwhile, a few years later, cable done come to my town, bringing with it NBC and ABC on a regular feed, plus what was then called Superstation WTBS, and -- for a glorious twelve hours a day -- a mysterious and exciting new pay cable service called Home Box Office. And with these new, dramatic options, The P-T-L Club followed Hee Haw and Lawrence Welk into the department of "never watched, because damn, man. I have a life." WLBZ -- the NBC affiliate -- in particular held my attention. They still produced most of their own post-soap opera television. Sure, it was crappy movies just like WAGM had been, but they were slightly better crappy movies and they were introduced and presented by Eddie Driscoll, who rocked so hard you could measure him seismically. So I hadn't seen The P-T-L Club for quite some time when scandal rocked it. Jim Bakker had allegedly drugged and raped a church secretary, the ministry had paid her hush money and covered it up, and donations were going to support a lavish, decadent lifestyle for the Bakkers. (As a side-note, Jimmy Swaggart was the man who "broke" the story of Jim Bakker's transgressions, as well as another minster name of Marvin Gorman. This led Gorman to hire a private investigator to investigate this man who was purging "cancers in the body of Christ." That led to Swaggart's own habit of prostitutes coming out and his own fall from grace. I digress, but it's always fun to remember that taking joy in and promoting the fall of your rivals is a good way to fall yourself.)

Bakker's actions were reprehensible, and Tammy Faye was pulled in for the ride. It was just too easy to include her. She seemed at best incredibly naive -- and at this point, no one was ready to believe she could be anything but as venal as the rest of the defrocked. The P-T-L Club had preached prosperity theology and the Bakkers had lived a good life. Too good a life, as it turned out, as financial improprieties came to light and the IRS came a-calling. Jim Bakker went to prison. The pair got divorced. And Tammy Faye Bakker became a footnote and a joke. Just another scandal. Just another flim flam artist.

The thing is? She meant it.

She really did. Oh, she wasn't pure and innocent of all the goings on. There were rumors of prescription medicine and addiction. There was a clear opulent lifestyle she embraced. This is not to exonerate Tammy Faye Messner of the choices she made.

But when she said that God loved you? And loved me? And loved everyone? She meant that. She meant it with all her heart. And she felt that included everyone. The rich and the poor. Criminals and the innocent. The healthy and the sick. Heterosexuals, homosexuals, people of all creeds and races. Everyone. During the heyday of The P-T-L Club in the eighties, when AIDS was mysterious and homosexuality denounced by most evangelists as dirty and sinful -- with the implication that HIV was a divine judgement against them -- Tammy Faye Bakker had gay men and women on her show. She had AIDS victims appear. She exhorted her audience to pray for these people -- not to abandon their sinful lives, but to be healed of their illness, like any Christian should pray for any sick person.

After her divorce and remarriage, Tammy Faye slowly began to emerge. Her message was the same, even as she embraced her (admittedly freakish) public image. She launched a (secular) talk show with openly gay (and HIV positive) actor Jim J. Bullock. She appeared on programs and documentaries. (One notable documentary brought her back to Heritage U.S.A., long abandoned and falling apart. She broke into tears at the sight of it, wishing she could just spend some time painting things and making it look a little nicer).

And then she got sick. She got cancer. Colon cancer. She left the talk show, and worked on fighting it -- and seemed to win. It went into remission, and she stuck to the edges of popular culture. She traded on her image -- in a move almost stunning in its self-understanding, she appeared as a recurring guest star on The Drew Carey Show as the mother of an overweight, heavily made up caricature of a character named Mimi Bobek. And most famously (or infamously), she appeared on a season of VH-1's freakshow of the has-beens The Surreal Life, appearing alongside porn star Ron Jeremy and Vanilla Ice, among others.

And a whole new generation of people -- and an old generation of skeptics -- discovered they really liked this woman. She was honestly, truly kind to everyone. She was unafraid to espouse unpopular opinions but those opinions weren't ever exclusionary or mean spirited. She declined to accompany her castmates to see a psychic or attend a nudist resort, but she didn't condemn them for their choices. Co-star and Baywatch babe Traci Bingham described the experience of knowing her and hearing her speak on the show as life altering.

And then she got sick again.

She was seen undergoing treatments on her son's documentary series, One Punk Under God. She needed oxygen and had to stop making appearances for the most part. In telephone interviews, she described her hospice care and told people to never live their lives in fear but only feel hope. On July 19, she and her husband Ron Messner appeared on Larry King Live, and she was almost shockingly thin -- the woman parodied and known for being heavyset having dipped below seventy pounds, the skin loose on her skeletal body. It was known she was dying, but her appearance was hopeful and full of faith. From the transcript:

KING: Now you've always been so upbeat, the feeling of god being with you. Does that remain?

T.F. MESSNER: That remains consistent. I talk to God every single day. And I say, God, my life is in your hands and I trust you with me.

KING: We have an e-mail from Renee in Strongsville, Ohio: "I admire you for your unshakeable faith. Do you believe when you leave this Earth, you're going to go to a better place?"

T.F. MESSNER: I believe when I leave this earth -- because I love the Lord -- I am going straight to Heaven.

That was the tone. That, and excitement over having gained five pounds, and really looking forward to biting into a burger, which she had been craving. And expressing love and thanks to everyone who had spoken for her. She mentioned the gay community, who had "opened their arms to her" when the bad times had come and who she would always be thankful to. And she said she was mostly unafraid, thanks to her faith, but that she was afraid for her children and the sadness they would feel if she died. But that she continued to have hope.

That was July 19. On July 20, she was dead.

And with her dies a little bit of my childhood. And with her dies what might be the shining bright spot in the midst of a darkness that had spread over Christianity in the 80's, with cynicism and hypocrisy and avarice and scandal. In the decades since all that happened, Swaggart's been found with another prostitute (and unlike his first time, he flatly told his congregation that God told him it was none of their business) and said that if any gay man looked at him with lust, he'd kill him. And Jerry Falwell, who presided over the fall and the end of the P-T-L Club, though having brought a certain humor to his ministry, also brought intolerance and hatred and ignorance. Pat Robertson recently apparently called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez in God's name.

Tammy Faye? Just wanted everyone to love each other and accept each other and live without fear and in faith.

I'm not a Christian, but I suspect Tammy Faye -- though she would certainly have witnessed to me -- would have accepted me and been charitable and kind to me and assumed only the best and only had hope for me.

If there is a Heaven, I am confident Tamara Faye LaValley is in it. Very likely singing. And Earth is a slightly brighter place for her having lived, and a slightly sadder place for her having passed.

And that, in the end, is exactly what I think she would have hoped for.

Wrestling, to me, is something I associate with my big friend Frank.

Who, you will recall, I always refer to as "my big friend Frank." And have ever since the day he military pressed me over his head. Never being small myself, I became impressed with his massive muscularity. Frank is a refined man. An intelligent man. A gentle man. But a very physical and powerful man, as befits an alumnus of the South Philly streets.

It was on those streets, and at the Philadelphia Spectrum, that Frank developed his lifelong love of professional wrestling. At the Spectrum, Frank would see then-road agent Gorilla Monsoon at the gate. Gorilla -- with a keen eye for business and for building relationships -- remembered the Philly kid and would talk to him on the way in. "You still mad about what the Sheik did to Bruno?" Gorilla would ask. "You watch tonight, kid. I bet you'll go home happy. Bruno's mad."

And Frank did go home happy.

By the late eighties and early nineties, when Frank and I shared a couple of apartments in the Ithaca area, wrestling was one of those Things Frank Did. And for several months I mocked him mercilessly over it. This was stupid. This was asinine and ridiculous. Why do you watch this stuff.

Until Wrestlemania V, anyway, and a match between Curt "Mr. Perfect" Hennig, and Owen "The Blue Blazer" Hart. A match that was a stunning display of mat skills, of hardcore technical wrestling instead of brawling. I was blown away as I watched them go. And for months, I was glued to my set whenever a mat technician was on the screen.

Frank, being my best friend and being sensitive, mocked me with twice the energy I mocked him before. "Seems like my friend Eric's a rasslin' fan," he'd say, snickering. And he was right.

The gigantic guys didn't usually interest me, though. There were exceptions. We liked the Road Warriors in their prime. In a later era I marked out hard for Bill Goldberg. But you needed a certain charisma to be a big guy and still engage my interest in the ring.

Not so for the mat wrestlers. What another era called the technical wrestlers. Not the high fliers -- the crusierweights or luchadores, though I enjoy that style too. No, these were the mid-sized guys, who could wrestle an hour match and make a story out of it.

Owen Hart was great at it. But now he's dead -- fallen from the top of an arena during a pay per view. Curt Hennig was great at it, but he's dead too. Bret Hart was one of the best at it in his generation, but a concussion followed by a stroke put him out of the game. Dean Malenko, the iceman, was one of my favorites. He was a "crusierweight" who didn't go to the top rope. His gimmick was he knew every damn mat hold on the planet, and he could chain them together in an amazingly interesting story. He's not dead, but he's retired -- working as a road agent now, just like the Gorilla, once upon a time.

Eddie Guerrero was great at it. Really freaking great. But then he died of heart failure, years after he kicked his substance abuse problems, but still paying the price for the damages he'd wreaked on his internal organs.

And Chris Benoit was great at it.

This is a hard essay to write.

It's hard because I liked Chris Benoit. I liked him a lot. He was everything that I watched wrestling for. He was tough and smart in the ring, a good "ring general," who could take anyone, with any physique, and build a good match out of him. Like the Nature Boy Ric Flair, Benoit could have a sixty minute match with a broom and take your breath away the whole time.

I liked his personality. Benoit didn't have the kind of charisma a lot of wrestlers had. He could cut an okay promo, but in the end he let his ring work speak for him. And it held him back for a lot of years. He was the best damn wrestler in the building, but he didn't have the size that made you a top star without needing mike skills, and he didn't have the sheer mike skills that made you a star without needing the size. He was the darling of wrestling critics and serious fans of the form, though. Fans who were pissed that he kept being passed over for the top of the card.

This is a hard essay to like, because I liked Chris Benoit. He was a hard worker, and utterly unselfish in the ring. If he was booked to win, he still made his opponent look good. If he was booked to lose in a hard fight, he made his opponent look either superhuman or like a total bastard (depending on what was needed). If he needed to be destroyed for a storyline, he laid the fuck down without whining.

When Bret Hart wrestled a match for the first time in the arena his brother Owen died, the WCW management let him do an old style mat match -- a full length match, taking out all the stops. A match style almost unheard of during the height of the Monday Night Wars.

Bret chose to wrestle it with Chris Benoit. And it stands out as one of the best wrestling matches I've ever seen.

I liked Chris Benoit.

So did Frank. Frank liked him a lot. Benoit was of the old school. He's one of those guys who'd have fit in during the days of Gorilla and the Philadelphia Spectrum. If you were a serious fan, you wanted him to do well.

And ultimately, he did. He took titles. He took tag championships in ECW. He got the WCW World Heavyweight belt, the World Tag belts, the World Television Title, and the United States Heavyweight Championship. And in WWE, he took the tag belts, the United States Championship, the Intercontinental championship, the World Heavyweight Championship and he won the God damned Royal Rumble. Belts could come and go, but you only had one Royal Rumble winner in a year, and that winner had to carry storylines for the first quarter to third of the year. A Royal Rumble winner was expected to headline at Wrestlemania, and there's nothing bigger in a wrestling promotion.

Benoit did it by being a damn good wrestler. Nothing more, nothing less.

I liked him. Frank liked him. A lot of people liked him. And Hell, I don't know anyone who hated him.

Well, Kevin Sullivan wasn't his biggest fan. Sullivan was a wrestler and promoter, and one of the last bookers of WCW. Sullivan booked his wife, Nancy Daus, into a romantic triangle with Benoit. One that became real -- Benoit ultimately married her. And when Sullivan got the book in WCW, he actually booked Benoit to become champion. And the same night that Benoit won the belt for the first time in WCW was the night that Benoit and his friends in the "Revolution" made the jump to the WWE. A jump made in large part because even as a champion, Benoit couldn't see himself wrestling under Sullivan's book. And without a doubt Benoit flourished in the WWE.

A note, before we go on, about Nancy Daus. This was a woman I remembered fondly from her days as a heel manager in WCW, her era as "Woman," as one of the real prototypes of the modern wrestling diva. Nancy Daus could play a face, switch to a heel, and sell both roles and the transition. It's a damn hard skill, much prized in the modern era, and she's one of the pioneers of it. She was beautiful, a good actress, able to take a bump (a prized skill in women managers of her era) and able to sell both that bump and her 'interference' in matches. She was good at what she did, and deserves mention.

God, she deserves mention. Writing an essay about Chris Benoit without writing about Nancy Daus would be unthinkable now, because Benoit....

Man, I don't want to write this.

Last week, as near as we can tell, Chris Benoit suffocated his 7 year old mentally handicapped child to death. One of the current prevailing theories is he actually applied a wrestling choke hold to his seven year old son until his son died. He bound the hands and feet of Nancy Daus, his wife, and then asphyxiated her. And then, probably a day or two later, Chris Benoit set bibles next to the corpses of his wife and child, went down to his gym/basement, and hung himself with the cord off one of his weight machines.

A brutal crime. A horrific double murder followed by a suicide. The man killed his wife and seven year old son. And then hung around with the bodies for a couple of days.

When I heard the news that Chris Benoit was dead, it hurt. Another wrestler I really liked was dead way too soon.

When I heard that he died after killing his wife and son....

It is horrifying. It is monstrous. It is the kind of crime you can't easily put into words, no matter how much you want to or need to.

And it made all the worse because I liked Chris Benoit. I rooted for him. I enjoyed watching him wrestle. He seemed like a decent guy. A stand up joe. And he killed his mentally retarded seven year old son.

It's not just me. Frank described himself as stunned. And the wrestling world went into shock. The day that the tragedy was announced, the WWE canceled Monday Night Raw and aired a tribute to Chris Benoit. They've taken some heat for that since, now that we know that Benoit killed his wife and son, but at the time I don't think the WWE could have truly known that. And I know that they weren't thinking clearly. Benoit was liked in the company. In the locker room. And they've become sadly good at putting together tributes and retrospectives of "superstars" who die way too god damned early.

They have apologized, of course, though any number of wrestlers still can't get their heads around it. The death of young Daniel Benoit in particular horrifies everyone. Bret Hart mentioned how Chris Benoit worshipped his son -- a popular refrain.

The son he killed. Very possibly using a wrestling hold.

WWE's made some errors since then. They've published a vehement defense against the idea that Benoit was suffering from "roid rage." Unfortunately, such a defense, coming after the tribute episode, makes the company seem like it's doing damage control -- like the last thing they wanted was steroid use by a wrestler conflated with the murder of a defenseless child. That's the worst thing they can do, because now people are going to conflate those two things -- and question whether or not the WWE had pressured Chris Benoit to take steroids.

This is not an accusation on my part. I hope to God they didn't, because if they did, with a child dead now? As a publicly traded company? That could mean the end of the WWE in its current form. Honestly. You don't mess with the SEC with a child lying dead.

And Nancy Daus. The beautiful, talented, saavy Nancy Daus. Who once started divorce proceedings against Benoit but later retracted them.

She's dead.

Daniel Benoit is dead.

Chris Benoit is dead.

God help me, I don't know how to feel. I don't know what to do. I liked Chris Benoit.

It's going to be awfully hard to despise him. But would anything else be appropriate? Nancy Daus and Daniel Benoit are dead. And he did it.

He did it.

Somehow, that match in tribute to Owen Hart? Seems less impressive now. Everything seems less impressive now.

I don't know. This sucks.

All my thoughts and hopes with those left behind. With a family in shock. With friends who are feeling a thousand times worse than I am. With the hardcore fans who are feeling just as conflicted now. With the coworkers who are dealing with their grief over Chris Benoit at the same time as they are trying to reconcile their horror at the terrible thing he did.

Hell, I feel badly for Vince McMahon right now. No matter what sketchy things he's done in the past, he would never, ever want a seven year old child to die. I believe that with all my heart. And he's going to be the only man in all of this to have to show accountability. Because this is a monstrous crime -- as black and dark and horrible a crime as we can imagine, the murder of one's helpless disabled child, the binding up of one's wife to make her helpless and then murdering her, and then committing suicide after it is done -- and people will want resolution. They will want to know why this happened, and what would make Chris Benoit, this guy we all liked, into a hideous monster.

And they're going to look at McMahon, because he plays a bad guy on television, and he's done sketchy things in real life in the past. And because we don't have anyone else to look at. Because the man who killed Nancy Daus and Daniel Benoit is dead, so we can't get any resolution there.

It's not fair. I think McMahon would be repulsed by the very thought of a father killing his son. But the best case scenario will now focus on the schedule that Benoit was working -- all those days on the road in the year, the lack of an "off-season" either in television terms or in sports terms. All the physical stress of wrestling. The need, sometimes, to use steroids just to recover, without even using them to bulk up.

Right now, all those questions are going to be asked of WWE management. Shareholders are going to want answers. And because WWE is a publicly traded company, so is the SEC and possibly other federal investigators. Because a seven year old boy is dead, and so is a woman who was tied up first. And it's their father who did it. Their father, who was missing a pay per view wrestling event at the time. An event he was going to headline.

So yeah. I feel really badly for Vince McMahon right now. This is a dark day.

Most of all?

I feel badly for Frank. Because deep inside Frank is the kid who used to talk to Gorilla at the Spectrum.

And that kid isn't going to understand this. Because the next time the WWE comes to town, no one's going to make it better. No one's going to get revenge. No one's going to redeem the darkness or beat the evil.

We're all just going to have to live with it.

And that sucks.

Rest in peace, Nancy Daus and Daniel Benoit.

(From Questionable Content! Click on the thumbnail for full sized smug satisfaction!)

This is a strip from a few days ago. Life, you know. Long life. Long, long... long life.

But that's not important right now.

What is important is something cool in Questionable Content.

We're used to cool things from Questionable Content, for the record. Of all the strips in my trawls, it's pretty much the only one I start hitting "refresh" on at 11 at night, in hopes Jeph Jacques will get the next day's strip out early. (It's a pretty good bet. Most nights the new strip is up early. And that's cool. Of course, the downside is, on a day when it updates 'on time' you end up acting mentally like it's late, even though it's not late. Jacques is just consistently early. But I digress.)

But I'm talking about this strip in particular because it is really cool, and because it shows something I find is remarkable.

You see, the question of Faye coping with Marten and Dora's relationship has been one of the central conflicts in Questionable Content for quite some time. This is because, as we mentioned a long while back, the Marten/Faye relationship was the central conflict of Questionable Content.

As yet another digression, in that post I just referenced above, I made casual note of the fact that I had a hidden desire to have "Anyway You Want It" by Journey as a wedding recessional. Of course, at that point I wasn't engaged. I now am. Obviously, there is now going to need to be an active discussion. With Weds. And with Weds's friend Mara. And Mara will take your face off with the casualness of breathing and a smile if you cross her. Trust me. If you don't believe me, ask Ferrett.

On the other hand, she might think it is awesome.

But back to the point of the essay. In the earlier snark, I made mention of Questionable Content as a romantic comedy, starring two leads -- Faye and Marten. And that the resolution of their relationship would bring with it... well, here:

Questionable Content is a romantic comedy. As with 84.5% (by volume) of all romantic comedies, the tension and conflict of the strip comes from the question of the two leads hooking up, bumping uglies, doing the nasty, falling in love, ripping the bodices, taking the skin boat to tuna town, riding the baloney pony, tethering the blimp, shaking hands with Abraham Lincoln, kissing God Damn it. And so on. If the strip follows the formula (and that's not a guarantee), then in the last minutes of the picture Faye and Marten kiss, and then they walk out of the frame to a Journey song in the background.

Which, you see, is where the wedding recessional bit comes in. It is not impossible I consider my own life to be romantic comedy.

Well. Here it is, about a year and a quarter later. And what we're seeing in the referenced strip is the full on migration that Jacques has made in his comic strip, away from the formula I mentioned above.

A lot has happened in that year and a quarter. Faye finally broke down and talked about why she couldn't date Marten. Dora, once it was clear that Faye wasn't going to date Marten, made her move. Marten accepted. Faye went back home to try and begin the process of dealing with the trauma of her life. Hannalore slept on Marten's couch very often. Penelope came to work at Coffee of Doom and might or might not be Pizza Girl. Some people got smacked around. Dora's brother had wacky hijinks. Oh, and at one point a purple haired chick in a german stormtrooper helmet attacked Marten and Steve on a transforming combat vespa-robot.

I swear I would be wholly incapable of making this up. I am in awe of Jeph Jacques's ability to do so.

And, in the background of it all -- with occasional forays into the foreground -- there has been Marten and Dora's developing relationship, and the constant sense that they are walking in a minefield of Faye's emotional issues with it.

This strip comes down to a Sorkin Relationship Moment. Which is, God help me, a newly coined term for the lexicon. A Sorkin Relationship Moment is a moment where one person -- generally the unwilling object of affection in one of the defined unconsummated relationships of the show -- gets fed up and demands that the pursuer just stop it, already. This is just too much. It is uncomfortable. It is unpleasant, and it is unfair. Dana had this moment with Casey in the first season of Sports Night. Casey had this moment with Dana in the second season of Sports Night. Natalie and Jeremy passed the moment back and forth. Josh had this moment with about three different girlfriends in The West Wing, generally on the receiving end. C.J. had it with Danny Concannon. Over on Studio 60, Danny and Jordan have had a few here and there, and Matt and Harriet have had it... um... I think twice an episode. I think. I don't have numbers but it sure feels like twice an episode.

The Sorkin Relationship Moment doesn't have to be romantic. It is, however, an attempt to resolve a tense situation through direct confrontation -- shouting, in effect, stop it from one person to the next. And this is what we have here. Dora has been freaking out about stepping on Faye's insecurities and emotional landmines so severely that the net effect has been stepping on Faye's insecurities and emotional landmines. And Faye has hit the Sorkin moment. Stop it. Of course you two are having sex. There is no chance you weren't having sex. And by trying so hard to not rub my nose in it you're rubbing my nose in it.

Or, in Faye's parlance:

If you want things to be not-weird between you and Marty and I, stop actin' weird about them! Be normal!

It is a good moment, and a seminal moment, and a moment that allows for one phase of conflict to end and the next to begin. It keeps the strip fresh, and it's a funny comic to boot.

And, it has built into it two different results.

First off, I still maintain that the Faye/Marten relationship is at the emotional heart of the strip. I think that whenever Jacques ends the strip, the way these two end their dynamic will be the climactic moment of it. However, Jacques has very carefully gone off-formula. While it is not impossible that the pair will have the Journey music kiss/walk out/credits ending, it is no longer better than even odds they will. In fact, it seems to me that Dora/Marten ending up staying together is actually on the table now, and I wouldn't have given that any chance at all a year and a quarter ago. Jacques has managed to successfully transition this romantic comedy into new territory, broadening its scope and potential and making it a better story in the process.

The second result is this: the Sorkin Relationship Moment, on essentially every Sorkin show, defuses the tension but it doesn't resolve the conflict. It lets air out of the balloon before it bursts, but the balloon stays attached to the nozzle and the inflation starts over again... um... yeah. Metaphor ran out on me there.

It's just this. Faye has demanded Dora (and by proxy Marten) simply drop the weirdness and be a normal couple around Faye, since there's no way she can acclimate to their being a couple if they don't. However, this in no way means Faye has actually acclimated to their being a couple, and it in no way means this plot arc is finished.

On the other hand, it's possible that Marten ends up with Penelope, and they spawn Hannalore, who comes back in time through a process that drives her into O.C.D., and that's why she sleeps on Marten's couch -- it reminds her of home and Marten is her father, after all. On the other-other hand Dora's mentioned in the past that her hair is naturally platinum blonde, only she dyes it black, and Hannalore came back in time to ensure Marten and Faye don't end up together so she'll be born -- and don't look at me like that. It's a magical realism comic strip. Anything's possible.

Even the Journey ending.

Way too much to write about, but I'll be quick about this one. It's yet another comment on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

In my earlier comments, I made mention that Aaron Sorkin needed to let go of all the axes he wants to grind in his own life and let the life of the characters of the show take shape. I had a few people disagree -- in particular, they said that if one didn't know about Sorkin's various references, but took the show on face value, it worked a lot better than I was giving him credit for.

And you know, I was willing to entertain that possibility.

Well, last week's show was particularly disappointing, in my estimation. And here's a simple spoiler warning, for those who... well, care.

Last week's show just fell flat in so many places. All the Jordan and Danny scenes lacked conviction, passion or sympathy for the characters. Cal was at least vaguely unbelievable (why wasn't Cal going to the party? He didn't need to hang around watching basketball -- and why did he think it would be appropriate to wander in and interrupt meetings between the show runners and the network president? I'm not comfortable interrupting my supervisor when she's talking to the front desk worker in her office, much less the Head of School). Requisite preaching point A -- the evils of product placement -- just rang false given the plethora of obvious product placements on the show. (What, you didn't notice the top of the line 17" MacBook Pro being slid back and forth between the Brit and Ricky, open and then closed and then open again? Not to mention Final Draft being mentioned by name?) There was no electricity anywhere in the piece, with the obvious and specific exception of the scenes between Matt, Ricky and Ron. Those were electric, with actual, engaging conflict and a real sense of character. Those scenes were real, the dialogue was sparkling and potent, no one was in the right and everyone was in the wrong -- it was fantastic.

And then Ricky and Ron left the show (and all of Studio 60, as near as I can tell). It was like watching the last canteen of water pour out into the desert sand.

But most of all, there was an extended scene where Tom, Simon and ultimately Matt were arguing over Harriet "changing her mind" and deciding to do a lingerie spread for a magazine. It was at best creepy (all three men talked about how desperately they loved naked women and trashy magazines, but Harriet was a good Christian Girl and should be above all that -- which came across as thinly disguised Madonna/Whore syndrome). But even worse than that, it was out of nowhere. This was the third show surrounding one episode of the show-within-a-show (This episode was "The Option," and it took place immediately following the episode that the cast was rushing to get back to during "Nevada Day" parts one and two.) Why didn't we hear word one about this until now, in and around the pervasive Harriet plotlines of those earlier episodes? It was way too weak a B plot to simply be a B plot -- so what's the deal? Why was it here? And why was it so creepy?

Well.

The Matt Albie/Harriet Hayes relationship is a very very thinly disguised pastiche on Aaron Sorkin's ex-relationship with Christian Broadway Star, Comedianne and annoying-voiced girl Kristin Chenoweth. It's been mentioned before that this was Sorkin's chance to "win" arguments with his ex on national television.

As it turns out? Kristin Chenoweth did an FHM bikini shoot.

Before I knew that, I literally couldn't work out why this B plot had shown up. It seemed clunky, moderately out of character, and clumsy. It didn't work for me -- it flat out failed in terms of characterization and the actors had difficulty playing it and having it work. (Say what you like about D.L. Hughley -- the man can take anything and make it work as dialogue. And even he had a harder time with this week's script than with two solid weeks of breaking in on a judge to insist a joint was his.)

After I knew that, it made perfect sense. Aaron Sorkin was taking his ex to task again. Sure, he doesn't like Christianity and he doesn't believe in Christianity, but good Christian Girls don't take their clothes off, Kristin!

I thought the Madonna/Whore overtones of the B plot were creepy before. Now, they're cringe-worthy. And worse than that, they were ham handedly forced in without setup, contradicted characterizations as we've seen them, and boring to boot. And they were clearly there purely so Aaron Sorkin could snot to an ex-girlfriend about her choice to wear a bikini in a Men's magazine.

I keep hoping. I really do. I keep hoping that astronomically bad ratings will force Sorkin to wake up, to get story help, to stop grinding his axes and start doing the stellar storytelling that has always been a hallmark of his career. That's why I'm still there. It's faith. I have faith that the man who wrote A Few Good Men and The American President and "Two Cathedrals" on The West Wing and the wonderful verbal tango between Dana and Casey on Sports Night will pull it out.

But faith is finite. For me and a lot of the faithful. And the faithful is all Studio 60 has left.