This time clinched it. Williams just doesn't deliver the scripted news with clarity and style (and he has a great smile). He has proven that he has a comic delivery, timing, and intelligence that is far better than any comic I've seen on television.
Last night, Boston Legal hit one out of the ballpark for all of us elders who are tired of television programming aimed at every generation but ours. If you missed this episode, where the firm takes on the television industry for discriminating against the oldest generation, you can watch it when it shows up here. Unfortunately, this creatively funny, poignant, and topical series ends next week, and it is going out with a bang that I wish had been postponed. Like, forever.
In the argument to the court that law partner Carl Sack (Emmy Award winner John Larroquette) makes, he asserts that, on the average, people over 55 watch about 6 hours of television a day, compared to the 3 hours watched by young people, who are usually online or texting at the same time. The case is brought to the court by Catherine Piper (Betty White), who is bored, can't get hired for a job because of her age, can't bike or climb mountains etc. because of effects of aging, and so she watches television. Except there's almost no programming aimed at entertaining people of her age.
It's impossible to capture here in words the impact of the show's acting and messages. You have to watch it and commiserate.
And there's no way to capture the poignancy of Denny Crane (William Shatner) as he fights for the life he loves against the tyranny of Alzheimer's.
The characters of Boston Legal are wackily intelligent, and most of them are over 60 years old. I'm going to miss them; I never missed a show. Hopefully, they will be running online for a long time to com.
For once, though, a widely admired TV drama's dismissal has nothing to do with ratings. Boston Legal's imminent retirement is of its own choosing. This time, creator David E. Kelley has decided to quit while ahead. Boston Legal may not go down as the greatest courtroom drama in TV history, but when the jury's finally in, the verdict is likely to be more favourable than most.
The only show left that I never miss these days is Brothers and Sisters. But it's no Boston Legal.
As I surfed around, looking to see if I could find any studies on elders and television, I stumbled upon a reference to this book (preview pages here). Published a decade ago, the book includes observations that are still valid.
It's time for some new research on television watching by those of us over 60. It still seems pretty much a wasteland for people like us.
As I walk out of their little "office," where I had been using their desktop to do some late-night catching up on the Scramble games that I play with my friend in Saratoga, I come upon my daughter and son-in-law engrossed in their laptops. He's checking up on the latest presidential campaign issues, and she's going through her photos to find images that match the series of nature-based poems her father wrote. The television remotes lay on the couch where they were tossed. The only sound is the rustling of pages and the tapping of keyboards.
It's a telling scene for me. We have, as a family, embraced this technology for all that it offers our hungry minds. We are constant learners, thoughtful and curious. The Internet is our classroom.
And it is becoming so for my grandson, who is being home-schooled. He not only has his own XO Laptop; with his mom's help, he uses their desktop to look for and print out images for learning projects, such as identifying animals and their habitats. The world map that hangs from the mantle in their living room is a constant source of questions on his part that he knows have answers somewhere in the great net-out-there.
At the moment, I am without a laptop, and I find it a great inconvenience. My old one has a major problem with the port the power cord goes into so that the machine turns off as soon as it is turned on. Now it doesn't even start because I fiddled with it once too often.
I also recently caused the crash of the brand new laptop that I inherited from my once-husband. I guess I got too impatient with Vista, and I am convinced I want to stay as far away from that OS as I can. My plans are to have Vista uninstalled and have a different operating system put in. I'm even thinking about Linux.
It's interesting how quickly we have all adapted to this technology. I'm planning to have my laptop repaired before I move into my digs at my daughter's and son-in-law's, where wifi rules.
...Grace, that part of you that is fearless, that questions everything, that lives life unconditionally, gloriously, giving in to a freedom of expression so raw and primal that sometimes it leaves you breathless.
According to the website (same link as above):
SAVING GRACE stars Holly Hunter in an astonishing performance as Grace Hanadarko, a top-notch, forceful investigator whose wild personal life translates into a no-holds-barred approach to her detective work......Grace's mesmerizing journey involves facing both the internal and external demons that stand in her way.
I have never been a fan of Holly Hunter because most of the time I couldn't understand what she was saying. But either my ears and tv reception have improved, or Hunter has had some elocution lessons between last season and this one. I gave up watching it last summer. Now, I'm addicted to it.
