Pete Emslie is one of the best contemporary cartoonists around and his blog, The Cartoon Cave, is a must-read. Emslie has recently published what we will term "a guest editorial" because it captures many of Cinema Retro's criticisms of the current state of television. Unlike Emslie, we still find enough nuggets out there (some admittedly guilty pleasures) to justify keeping the old cable TV subscription. However, we can well understand why he just canceled his. Emslie concentrates on the sad state of the endless, indistinguishable crime shows that are on the air. The plots tend to be more and more over-the-top and the cast members are virtually cloned from the same mold. There is the token nod to someone over the age of 35 (Mark Harmon and David McCallum in NCIS, for example) but for the most part, crime shows always feature drop-dead gorgeous people holding pistols with two hands while shouting, "Freeze, you mother!" Every other situation has juvenile sexual innuendos and we rarely even get any cool theme songs because the average TV drama is a one hour block of commercials occasionally interrupted by content. Contrast this, as Emslie does, to the great old crime shows of old. Hawaii 5-0 (the real one, that is), didn't have Jack Lord and Kam Fong competing to get some comely new female detective in the sack. Instead, we got compelling characters, good acting and people looked like they really belonged in a police station. Imagine trying to launch a series with Peter Falk as Columbo today? A middle-aged, frumpy, cigar chomping man in the lead role? Fuggetaboutit! If they remake the series (and they eventually will), Columbo will be a Brad Pitt clone who eschews cigars for Twizzlers (more politically correct) and who uses his eccentricities to woo female suspects into confessing. In any event, click here to read Pete Emslie's take on all this (which includes a sly criticism of the fact that even all the cluttered, unimaginatively designed DVD boxed sets for these shows seem Xeroxed.) - Lee Pfeiffer