TV Watch: So this is what the dastardly N. Korean hackers were after -- Paul Reiser's cri du coeur about "Mad About You"

Why so pensive, Murray? Paul and Jamie Buchman (Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt) of Mad About You share the love seat with the greatest of all TV dogs. (I didn't say the smartest, just the greatest. Go get the mouse, Murray!)

"As you know, for seven years I put every ounce of my life-blood into Mad About You and remain enormously proud of what we all accomplished. I think it more than stands the test of time, and still shines. Traveling the country and hearing people's enthusiasm for the show only confirms for me its huge impact of its legacy, and I'd like to think that it's a proud part of Sony's success and legacy too."

-- Paul Reiser, in a hacked e-mail to Sony
Pictures Television President Steve Mosko

by Ken

Oh, quit your whining, Reiser! Mad About You was made, when, in the '90s? Have you looked at a calendar lately? Or a clock? As Tad Friend tells us in a piece on the brave new world of viral video in the December 15 New Yorker, "Hollywood and Vine," people today -- teens and tweens, especially -- can't be bothered chaining themselves to some lame hour or even half-hour programs programmed by some lame old-style TV fogeys.

No, no less a personage than DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, 63, whose company last year bought AwesomenessTV ("a company that manages YouTube stars, for thirty-three million dollars," and "a wave of old-media investment followed") assures us: "Within five years, YouTube will be the biggest media platform of any, by far, in the entire world." But even that, we learn soon enough from Tad that "YouTube’s primacy as the place teen-agers go after school is already being challenged, especially by Vine, an app of looping six-second videos that launched last year." (A founder of Vine, Rus Yusupov, explains that part of his group's original thinking was: "Nobody's going to complain that you wasted six seconds of your time.")

The six-second length apparently suits the Youth of Today, and while it might have hamstrung, say, old Will Shakespeare, Tad introduces us to one of the shining lights of Vine, Andrew Bachelor, known as "Bach" (pronounced "Batch," I assume, as in "Bach-elor"), or "KingBach," who "knew since third grade I wanted to be Jim Carrey." He seems to think making mindless six-second videos is either it or the path to it. ("He'd tried YouTube, but it required a modicum of technical expertise, as well as sincerity and a crusading mind-set." Screw that!) I'm guessing that hardly anyone would be more surprised than Jim Carrey.

So I hate to rain on Reiser's parade, all the more since this memo was unearthed in the stash of Sony e-mails hacked by those dastardly North Koreans, by Gawker's Sam Biddle, who calls it "one of the most depressing emails you'll ever read" -- which sounds more touching if we stop here than if we continue with his "from a man wondering why more people can't buy his 90s sitcom." (Is it my imagination that this tends to make the guy sound like some pathetic old self-regarder?)

In the e-mail, Paul tells his old pal Steve,

Not sure if you even know about this, but I had been trying for the longest time to try and get some clarity as to why Mad About You was not available in its entirety. (Seasons 6 and 7 were never released on dvd at all. iTunes offers only season 3, and seasons that had been made available were now very difficult to find.)

I had not even known any of this till I started performing on the road again over the last two years, and people kept asking me why they couldn't get this season or that season. (Apparently there are more than a few people out there who want these shows.)

He explains that he's learned that part of the problem is rights clearances on a couple of songs, and tells Steve that he and a couple of his people met with a group of Sony people to see what could be done.

As I explained to the group yesterday, my motivation here is not financial (though if we could relaunch interest in the show, that would surely be nice for everyone involved.) The truth is, I just wanted to rectify the crazy-making situation in which we now find ourselves stuck.

As you know, for seven years I put every ounce of my life-blood into Mad About You and remain enormously proud of what we all accomplished. I think it more than stands the test of time, and still shines. Traveling the country and hearing people's enthusiasm for the show only confirms for me its huge impact of its legacy, and I'd like to think that it's a proud part of Sony's success and legacy too.

So, while I don't underestimate the obstacles we need to clear to make this happen, I remain confident that between everyone's talent, ingenuity and good will, we can get the show out there into the hands and libraries of the people that would like to enjoy (and own) it for themselves.

It would be heartbreaking to say the least if all that hard work and quality television languished for posterity on the shelves -- all because we couldn't get the clearance rights to a couple of songs.

"ALL THAT HARD WORK AND QUALITY TELEVISION"?
COME ON, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING, REISER

Who cares about "hard work" or "quality television"? Come on, I've watched every single episode to date of the nearing-completion season of The Comeback. It's a pretty lousy show, but one that nevertheless somehow has kept me watching, as it has spun its second tale of crass people ranging from paycheck slackers through out-and-out psychopaths coming together to produce a god-awful show, this time for HBO. That's where it's really at, isn't it?

Actually, I'm very afraid that that's more where it's at than any of us might like to think, which I guess is what kept me watching the damned show. That and a morbid curiosity to see just how thoroughly humiliated Valerie could be.

As it happens, I happen to love Mad About You, and recently rewatched the whole of Season 1, via the really lousy DVDs finally grudgingly issued -- on two instead of three discs, thus ensuring that the technical quality would be mediocre. That along with the high price and the absence of any DVD extras (obviously Sony wasn't going to spend an extra dime on the damned thing) ensured that even people who wanted to buy the show would hesitate, and amazingly, sales of Season 1 were too poor to warrant further releases. When Seasons 2 through 5 were finally issued, in technically far better form though still without any extras, as Paul note they were difficult to impossible to come by.

I remembered Season 1 as being really special, and here to tell you that it isn't "as good as" I remembered; it's better, way better. Even on the cruddy crammed Sony DVDs, it's magical. And there are special features on a bizarre "Best of" DVD anthology Sony eventually issued, where we get to see a little of how people as talented as Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt accomplished what they did. Why, it's as if a bunch of really, really talented people got together and poured all that talent, poured their bodies, hearts, and souls, into making quality television.

I don't mind as much as Paul that Seasons 6 and 7 still haven't been made available. My recollection is that things were already going downhill in Season 6, and by Season 7 had pretty much fallen apart. But those earlier seasons not only are hilarious, but in their shrewd look at a new marriage -- and the complications of living life as if it mattered give the viewer some reason to feel a little better about the human race and its prospects.

Unlike Tad Friend's New Yorker piece, which I'm sorry to say I haven't been able to finish yet. The portrait it paints of the once-and-future video consumer is so horrible that one tries to remember, recalling forecasts of the doom of the human race, what exactly the downside might be.

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