Thursday, May 6

Why We Feared Russians During the Cold War

You may remember I posted the video of the Russian singer a few months back (check it out here).  Well, I saw on a new blog, Mikes's Short Attention Span Theater, the story behind that video and a re-edit  that is even funnier than the original. Genius!

EW's 20 Most Shocking TV Deaths List Incomplete

I love a good list and Entertainment Weekly's list of the 20  Most Shocking TV Deaths has some good ones (Adriana, played by Drea de Matteo, from The Sopranos was one of the best) and some lame ones (Kenny from South Park, really?). 

However, a major omission from their list was one of the most shocking deaths of a major TV character I can remember.  Lt. Col. Henry Blake, played by McLean Stevenson, died offscreen at the end of the third season of MASH.  Stevenson asked to be released from his contract.  The show's writers reluctantly penned him an exit in the final episode of the 1974-75 season, in which Lt. Col. Blake was discharged, only to board a plane that was shot down over the Sea of Japan, killing everyone on board (a development added after scripts were distributed so the show's actors would display genuine emotion as if they had been truly unaware of that part of the storyline).

It was quite a shocker, because they just didn't kill off major characters in TV shows back in the 1970s and nobody had any idea it was going to happen.  How could EW leave that out?

Click here to see the (in)complete list.