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STOP THE PRESSES! MICHIGAN J. FROG BITES THE DUST (AND OTHER TALES OF ABSURDITY)
August 5, 2005
Nate Fisher isn't TV's only recent casualty. Joining the "Six Feet Under" character among the dearly departed is Michigan J. Frog.
Who, you ask?
Michigan J. Frog, I repeat, the Chuck Jones-created cartoon amphibian who has served as the WB's mascot since the network debuted a decade ago. You know, he wears a top hat and has a little cane and used to dance in the corner of the screen around episodes of "Dawson's Creek."
Who cares, you ask?
Excellent point, I respond. Who indeed does care? Apparently, some TV critics, since it was inquiries about a new WB logo that lead to network chairman Garth Ancier pronouncing that the frog was "dead and buried" during the TV industry's semiannual Television Critics Association media tour in Beverly Hills last week.
I could not attend. Schmoozing with network heads sounds okay, but I just couldn't risk missing that week's new episode of "Entourage" to make the trip. (A fake Hollywood where super agent Ari Gold actually exists is better than the real Hollywood without him, if you ask me.)
But, apparently, I was not missed, since the TV writers who were there managed to unravel the disappearance of Michigan J., a mystery with not quite the same allure as "Who killed Laura Palmer?" or "What's buried under Mary Alice's pool?" Good job, fellas.
And if you think frog-icide was the only major story to come out of the media tour, well, you would be fiercely mistaken. We also learned that Sydney Bristow, the sexy spy played by now-pregnant Jennifer Garner on ABC's "Alias," will also be expecting a little bundle of joy this season.
Not a big shocker there. After all, there was never a problem hiding Elaine's belly behind a sack of groceries when Julia Louise-Dreyfus was pregnant. But it gets trickier when your show's pregnant gal plays a character who spends 82 percent of every episode kicking bad-guy butt. Sydney doesn't even shop for groceries unless she's supposed to whack a double agent using his produce-sorting job as a front. Some other chicks have been hired to do the butt-kicking this year, while Sidney will apparently use her brains to fight evil. That sound you hear is people flipping the channel so fast this fall that the clicking noise traveled back in time to right now.
Another major announcement to come out of the Beverly Hills shindig was Fox's statement that an independent counsel continues to investigate former "American Idol" Corey Clark's claim that judge Paul Abdul helped him advance in the competition whenever the two weren't at her place snogging.
"The sanctity of the competition is first and foremost," Fox Entertainment President Peter Liguori told reporters. "The line is whether or not it affects the outcome of the competition."
Well, you heard it right there, folks - a Fox bigwig used the word "sanctity," which Merriam-Webster Online defines as "the quality or state of being holy or sacred," when talking about television's most glorified talent show.
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