things on tv

[scarfman]

Today (on something DVRed Thursday) I heard the word "fanboy" on broadcast network tv, if not on any tv, for the first time. It was on Eli Stone, the new series from Greg Berlanti, the creator of Everwood (which I hated to see the end of) and Brothers and Sisters (which never interested me despite the involvement of Berlanti, Sally Field and - at least in the pilot - Tom Skerritt). The lead, played by an actor I never saw before and whose name I don't know, is a journeyman Old-Testament-style prophet who's an associate in a large law firm, run by Victor Garber, in a role very like the lawyer he played in the short-lived lawyer show he was in last season except toned down (this is a Greg Berlanti series). But when this character meets George Michael he gets all gushy, and Eli calls him a fanboy to his face, though of course Eli is made to retract it immediately.

Last night on Investigation Discovery, the Discovery Channels' new all-forensic-investigation all-the-time channel, on Most Evil, there was a profile of a woman with delusions of an imaginary persecutor who killed her landlord for being the imaginary persecutor's hired assassin. She said of this imaginary persecutor's permeation into her life something like, "Everywhere I go there's the evidence. That can't be coincidence." That's very close to a joke I gave Frank Burns in his brief appearance in the M*A*S*H story I happen to have reprinted the other day.