Hawkeye: Looks like a pregnant bagpipe.
Trapper: Do bagpipes get pregnant?
Hawkeye: Sure they do, right after they make those funny sounds.

(I learned a lot of things from M*A*S*H, actually. I taught myself how to juggle after watching Hawkeye do it. I still know the closing stanzas of "Gunga Din" by heart. I'm pretty sure I could perform an emergency tracheotomy if I had to, and had a ballpoint handy. And I learned that good guys could make fun of religion — or, rather, religious people — and still be good guys.)

Frank: What are you doing there?!
Hawkeye: I just wanted to borrow your Bible, Frank.
Frank: Since when are you interested in the Bible?
Trapper: I peeked at the end, Frank. The Devil did it.

I even recorded the shows, although in those pre-DVR, pre-VCR days that meant me holding a 4-lb tape recorder and a microphone the size of a zucchini up to the TV speaker and hoping for the best. I had boxes of tapes, all duly labeled with episode names and season, and I listened to them over and over in the hopes of capturing that amazing rhythm of puns and snakebite-fast comebacks and just hilarious lines that served as my inspiration for what I wanted to be when I grew up.

A wiseass.

Also  a writer, although I didn't know that yet. It took a few years of steadily watching, and memorizing entire scenes to perform for my friends at school the next day, before I made the connection to the names in the opening credits. More specifically, I noticed that all my favorite episodes had "Larry Gelbart" on them. In the first four years, Gelbart wrote 97 episodes and had his hand in all the rest, sometimes up to his shoulder. Were Hawkeye and Trapper funnier when this guy was behind them, whispering into their ears? Was I not necessarily a M*A*S*H fan as much as a Larry Gelbart fan? OK, it wasn't exactly a Helen Keller "water!" moment, but it was a big thing for pre-pubescent me.

Frank: Colonel, you are not listening to me!
Henry: Uh, you'll have to speak a little louder, Frank. I'm not listening to you.

Of course most of the rest of the series was also brilliant and funny and groundbreaking, but never again quite in the same way for me. Gelbart and fellow producer Gene Reynolds and the other writers and directors and the cast had clearly been out to shake up television, push the boundaries, see what they could get away with. Language. Humor mixed with the horror of inhumanity. Characters with strengths and weaknesses and real changes that were still there the next episode. Episodes from the POV of a patient, episodes in letter form. Ending an episode of a  comedy sitcom with the devastatingly emotional blow of the death of a beloved main character, with no closing punch line to soften the blow. I was spoiled for quality television at a very early age and it's stayed with me.

So did the habit of obsessing over a show beyond what normal people would consider, well, normal. Even in high school when the show was slowing down I went for M*A*S*H bowling afternoons every week with my friends Eric Marle and David Story and Dan Schwieg, all of us in olive drab shirts and dog tags, swigging Sprite in martini glasses and keeping a poker game going in between our turns. But even then we still tended to gravitate toward the earlier shows when we quoted lines  (I was always Trapper).

It cheered me up no end when I bought the DVD sets and got both my sons completely hooked on the show. Finally they starting getting my references! Unfortunately that also meant they started realizing their funny dad didn't write all his own material, either…

BJ: Minding my own business is a full-time job. In my spare time, it's my hobby. I can't divide myself emotionally. I couldn't break my word to Peg, and not because God will send me to Hell without an electric fan or because it's not the right thing to do. I simply don't want to.
Hawkeye: You've got a lot to learn about messing up your life.

Larry Gelbart had a gift for humor and emotion that I envy still. Yes, yes, he worked for Sid Caesar and co-wrote Tootsie and Oh God! and co-wrote the book for A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum and many other notable accomplishments, but mostly he showed me (and the world) how to laugh, and he showed me what television was capable of. I am very glad tonight that I got the chance to tell him what his work meant to me; I wrote him a year back, as much of a gushing fanboy letter as I've ever seen, and while I'm sure his response was what he sent to everyone I still hope that my praise, added to the rest, cheered him up.

Gelbart died of cancer this morning at his home. He was 81.

Abyssinia, Larry.

Beginning on August 14, join fans around the world in watching two episodes of Dollhouse back-to-back every Friday, a six-week communal re-watch of Season One in its entirety.

If you tweet about it while you watch (and you really should) add #dollhouse so others can follow along. Live international commentary, anyone?

The program schedule is up at watchdollhouseweek.com and it's set so that you'll finish the unaired 13th episode "Epitaph One" just before the premiere of season two.

Check watchdollhouseweek.com for more details.

The winner by vote is Mike Mueller, for "Because I have a perfectly good see-saw that's just sitting there. It's just sad."

And the random choice winner is David Pickett! (His entry, for the curious, was  "So i could talk to myself without looking crazy.")

Congratulations gentlemen, and thanks to every who participated! And a big thank you to Scott Neumyer from Click Communications for letting me do this.

If you didn't get one here, fret not. The Dollhouse Season One DVD hits the streets next Tuesday. All 13 episodes (including the unaired "Epitaph One")  and the unaired pilot, "Echo," plus commentaries, deleted scenes and tons of features. See my mini-review here.  Preorder it at Amazon for the best price: at the moment, $29.99 for the regular one, $47.99 for Blu-Ray.

Since Saturday there's been a graphic on BashingInMinds.com leading you to vote for the entries you liked, but the link was wrong. You could still find where to vote by searching or scrolling through posts or from my Twitter posts about it, but visitors to the site wouldn't find it easily.

The link has been fixed, and so I'm adding an extra day until closing the voting. Here's where to go. I apologize for any inconvenience.

The newly reincarnated Doctor's new look will consist of "tweed jacket, bow tie, rolled up trousers and black boots."

OK, fair enough I suppose. Still a bit odd, very British, and slightly apart from humanity. I get that, I do. But it's not essentially different from most Doctorwear, is it? Whatever form he's in, he tends to dress like a professor. Admittedly a very odd or eccentric one at times, but none of the Doctors would look out of place wandering around the halls of higher education in a fog of tenure.

I say the Doctor needs to reflect more of the UK. Where's the docks worker? The politician? The indie artist with the three dozen piercings and the facial tattoos? The drag queen? Where's the Time Lord soccer hooligan, who travels back through time to correct bad calls and gently guide close games and ultimately save humanity?

Let's see some diversity, BBC.

Tonight on BBC America is the third season of Torchwood in a special 5-night event. Every night this week, from 9-10:15 p.m. (note the extra time) will be a new episode of an amazing story, far more intense than Torchwood has ever been. Captain Jack, Gwen and Ianto will face perils from an alien race that they could probably handle if someone wasn't trying so hard to kill them.

Tonight at 8 is "Inside the Hub," a special documentary that can help newbies catch up before the new episode starts. The rest of the week, the previous night's episode will be shown at 8, before the new one. And every night there will be a 15-minute behind-the-scenes special afterward. If you're a Torchwood fan. you can't miss this.

You cna read more about it in my article here. You can also read/listen to my interviews with Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto) and producer Julie Gardner.

"Remains" was written and performed by "Dollhouse" writers Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon (who also wrote the script for this episode) and released on their "Nervous Circus" label. And it's gorgeous.

"Epitaph One," which was supposed to premiere at the San Diego Comic-Con next week, was leaked to the torrents last week along with the unaired pilot. You're on your own finding it, but if you do download it please buy it anyway when it comes out on the 28th. You'll also get commentary on two episodes, lots of deleted scenes, and several hefty features. Order it from Amazon for just $31.99!

burn down my home
my memories hardened in the brightest chrome
good times escape
while every mistake seems to be caught on tape…

And if you haven't yet voted for the winner of the Dollhouse Season One DVD set, please do! Ten entries were chosen for you to select from, and one random winner from all the entries will also be chosen. Vote!

Read a description of the whole thing here, from the lucky Browncoat who received this amazing edible recreation, and check out the pics here.

But Walter Cronkite was a public figure unlike many others. He was what people wanted to be, for his generation. Honorable, intelligent, caring, trustworthy.

At one time, his audience was so large, and his image so credible, that a 1972 poll determined he was "the most trusted man in America" – surpassing even the president, vice president, members of Congress and all other journalists. In a time of turmoil and mistrust, after Vietnam and Watergate, the title was a rare feat – and the label stuck.

By the time I was watching the news regularly he was retiring, but he had already left his mark on me as to how news should be reported. Not hyped, not fancy or with its own theme music, and not with exaggerated even-handedness to produce "balanced" reporting or presenting events out of context to prove your already decided-upon point.

You just tell people what happened.

That's it. And that's what he did.

That's the way he was.

I missed this when it came out, but thetorchonline.com got Brian Fuller to spill some of the season three secrets last month. Pushing Daisies, which was canceled and closed with a somewhat hurried wrap-up of many (but not all) of the dangling plot threads, had plenty of places to go:

We knew when we were shooting it that it was our last episode essentially. After we got into post and it was like, “Okay. That’s our last episode and it ends on a cliffhanger.” Because, as scripted, the last moment of the show was they open the door, and Chuck says to Vivian and Lily, “I’m alive,” and then it cuts to black. That would set up our back nine arc, which we were going to bring back George Hamilton as Ned’s father, and we just had so many balls up in the air that I was looking forward to bringing down and writing, but we just never got the opportunity.

Lots of details there about Chuck going after her father, and Ned going after her, and Vivian and Lily's split, and Olive's new life, and… Let's say I hope this continues, whether in comics or movies, or whatever. I want the rest of the story. And this is a good start.