#most shows (especially network tv) take at least the full first season to settle into a rhythm

[harbingerofsoup]

btw psych is still the best network television show to ever air, no has ever done it like them and i doubt anyone ever will

[princessphilly]

Hockey Fic Exchange: Second Chance in Chicago

This is for the @hockeynetwork​ winter gift exchange. I was matched with my friend, @texanstarslove​ and it was relatively easy to give her what she wanted. 

Title: Second Chance in Chicago

Player: Jonathan Toews

Genre: Angst, smut

Word count: 6410 words

 March 2007

“Wouldja look at that? There’s the future NHL star, looking like the dork he is.”

Lizzie stuck out her tongue as Rachel announced the presence of the asshole himself, Jonathan Toews. They were all sophomores at UND but he had gotten drafted third overall by the Chicago Blackhawks last year. Hockey ruled UND so the team already had a high profile. But this year’s team looked like it would do some damage in the tournament so all eyes were really on them.

Tonight, Lizzie and her friends had decided to go to a frat party at the Beta house. It was a cold early March Thursday night but she had been in the mood to party. Unfortunately, the party had been invaded by the hockey team.

Jonathan grinned, his deep brown eyes sparkling like he had already pregamed. “Hey ladies,” he greeted before grabbing Lizzie and giving her a hug.

“Ew!”

Lizzie pushed Jonathan away. He definitely had pregamed, he smelled like good old Vladimir vodka. He was going to have a fucking hangover tomorrow.

Jonathan pouted. “I thought we were friends, Lizzie,” he exclaimed as he wrapped his arms around Lizzie again

“When did you think that?”

Rachel and Bethany snickered. It was a bit of a running joke, this animosity between Lizzie and Tazer. No one quite knew how it really started except it had been a freshman year hook up that ended bad. At least, that was the rumor. Ever since, Lizzie couldn’t stand Jonathan and Jonathan did every thing possible to needle her.

Lizzie flipped her hair over her shoulder before elbowing Jonathan in the ribs. Giving him an angelic smile, she ordered, “Don’t touch me.”

Being the drunken asshole he was at the moment, Jonathan leaned down and murmured in her ear, “You didn’t say that last weekend.”

“Ugh!”

Lizzie pushed Jonathan away before stomping towards the keg. Jonathan shrugged as TJ and some of the other hockey players came in. She was able to avoid him for the rest of the night and even flirted with a couple of junior guys she hadn’t met. Of course, as soon as she went to get a breather from the hot party, Jonathan was already outside.

Shivering, Lizzie huddled close to the door, planning to ignore Toews. There had been a snowstorm the other day and there was a good ten inches of snow on the ground.  

“Supposed to snow again tomorrow.”

Lizzie let out a loud sigh. Of course, he couldn’t respect her silent plea to be left alone. “This is North Dakota. It’s always snowing.”

Turning to her left, Lizzie looked at Jonathan. For once, he didn’t have his cocky, self-assured, ‘I’m the one in complete charge’ look on his face. He looked slightly pensive and a bit unsure. “Here, have my hoodie.”

“I don’t-,” Lizzie started to say but she relented as Jonathan put his hoodie over her head, pulling it down. She was cold as fuck, shivering in just a short-sleeved shirt and her jeans. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“You’re welcome.”

They stood there for several moments, breath turning into puffs of icicles before Jonathan finally broke the ice. “Ridley, really?”

“Oh, you know him?” Lizzie tensed, UND wasn’t as big as other schools but she could at least have found someone that Jonathan didn’t already know. But then, hockey ruled here and he knew more people than her so yeah, just her fucking luck.

“He’s cool.” Jonathan shrugged, suddenly feeling nervous as fuck. It really wasn’t his area to talk, he didn’t really want to be a cock-block, but fuck it. “He’s not an asshole or anything. But we both know that’s not who you really want.”

“Oh really? Who told you what I really want?”

He hadn’t really planned to do it now; Jonathan had planned to go for it next month. But he already had told coach and his teammates that he was going pro after this season, so he might as well do it. “We have unfinished business, Elizabeth.”

Lizzie froze at Jonathan’s use of her full name.  He was the only one here at UND who ever used her full name. It brought back memories, those first weeks of spring semester of freshman year. Memories of doing things that would have had Momma reaching for her rosary and Papa yanking her out of UND to go into a convent. She bit out, “No, we don’t.”

“So, that’s why you called me last Saturday, asking me to come over after the game?”

Lizzie rolled her eyes. “I was drunk,” she very primly replied, staring at her nails. She thought to herself, ‘I need a manicure.’

“Then last weekend, you came over and you definitely weren’t drunk.”

Lizzie shrugged, pretending she didn’t hear what Jonathan said. She didn’t want to admit the truth; Jonathan made her nervous. She was 19 and every time she was with him, she felt like this could be something that could be forever. But Lizzie had plans; she was planning to go east for law school, get out of North Dakota forever. This wasn’t the time to even think of settling down with anyone, especially not with Jonathan since he was going pro. Even though, her traitorous pussy reminded her, Jonathan made her cum better than anyone else and wasn’t scared to choke, bite, or spank her unlike other guys.

Jonathan growled, of course Lizzie would be acting obtuse. He wasn’t looking to settle down or anything serious, he was just about to turn 19 and about to go to Chicago in five and a half months to start his pro career. Jonathan did really like Lizzie a lot and wouldn’t be against putting a label on what was going on. Then, Lizzie got cold feet last year and had been stringing him along for over a year. It would be nice if Lizzie actually admitted that they had something going instead of being nasty to his face but fucking with him late at night.

“Okay, since you don’t want to face reality, I’m just going to say it. It’s not fair that you like to treat me like shit in public but you want me to fuck you when no one is looking.”

Lizzie opened her mouth before closing it. From the tone of voice that Jonathan had used, it sounded harsh. Like she was using him like a whore. But Jonathan wasn’t done.

“Don’t worry about my hoodie, I’ll get it before I leave.”

Jonathan turned around and went back inside of the party. Lizzie stayed outside for several more minutes, pensive. Then she harrumphed and rejoined the party, resolute that she was going to ignore Jonathan once she gave him his hoodie back.

**

Twelve years later

Lizzie brushed her ginger hair over her shoulder. It was weird to be ginger for the first time since she was fifteen. The past years, she had been a very faithful blonde but it was time to do something very different.

“Not bad for a rancher’s daughter.”

Lizzie twirled in her full-length mirror, admiring the way the navy-blue dress fit her body, accessorized with her diamond hoop earrings, tennis bracelet, class ring, and the brand-new patent leather heels she had managed to score on clearance at Neiman Marcus. Very much the uniform of an intellectual property litigator who had just made partner, not the yee-haw who had went to UND. But right now, as she thought about tonight, Lizzie felt like the yee-haw she tried to suppress.

Tonight, there was a fundraising cocktail hour for her firm, Bradley, Lewis, and Cooper. This would be the first one that Lizzie attended since she transferred to the Chicago office from Atlanta. She was good at gladhanding and charming people, attending Penn Law had sucked the yee-haw from Lizzie’s accent. Now, she was Elizabeth Romanelli, ready to make connections while raising funds for the Children’s Miracle Network.

Only fly in the ointment was that this fundraiser was being held at the United Center. Not only that, it was rumored that the firm was able to get a couple of players for the Blackhawks to appear. Bradley, Lewis, and Cooper did some work for the Blackhawks, mainly with local TV contracts and sponsorships. Lizzie took in a deep fortifying breath. “It has been years,’ she told herself. “There’s no need to be nervous seeing Jon again.”

She turned around and grabbed her coat. It was mid fall but the temperature dropped enough at night that Lizzie wanted to wear her coat just in case. Before she left, she looked at her left ring finger. Taking a deep breath, she slid her old wedding ring off her finger. It was a new start, time to act like it.

**

The fundraiser went pretty well, in Lizzie’s eyes. It was her first firm social event in Chicago so most of it was spent shaking hands, exchanging business cards, and talking some shop. There were a couple of Blackhawks players there, none of that Lizzie recognized. She admitted several times while in conversation, that she was more of a college hockey than pro hockey fan.

Then, the one person she was hoping wouldn’t show up, showed up. Lizzie worked hard not to check Jonathan out but he had the kind of presence that commanded attention. His hair was cut short and the once lanky frame had filled out completely. Lizzie smirked when she saw one of her fellow attendees lick her lips but she couldn’t blame her. Jonathan looked delicious in a black suit with a pristine white shirt, no tie. He looked like casual, dominant elegance in a hockey player package as he made his rounds the room.

“You’re lucky that your department doesn’t work with the Blackhawks on anything,” said the woman who licked her lips. Lizzie looked down and looked at her name tag, it said ‘Elise’.

“Oh why?”

Lizzie took a sip of her pinot grigio, waiting for a reply. Elise didn’t disappoint as she whispered, “He’s single and my law school loans say he would be perfect for them.”

She couldn’t resist laughing at that statement; Lizzie totally understood where Elise was coming from. But as soon as her laughter faded, there was Jonathan Toews, right in front of them. Elise looked up at him, obviously starstruck. Lizzie put her best courtroom face as she stuck out her hand. “Hello, I’m Elizabeth Romanelli. You are?”

Jonathan blinked when Lizzie introduced herself as Elizabeth Romanelli. She was Lizzie MacArthur in the flesh, all these years later. Grasping her hand, Jonathan said, “Jonathan Toews, but you know who I am.”

Jonathan kept his best PR smile on his face as he processed his thoughts. This was Lizzie, the only one who got away. She was a redhead now, not a blonde, but those green eyes were still the same. Deep green eyes that always brimmed with an intelligence that had made Jon feel like he was an idiot when they first met at UND.

“Oh, how do you two know each other?”

Lizzie managed to keep her expression completely neutral while Jon reddened a bit. He dropped her hand as he said, “We went to college together.”

“Where was that,” Elise innocently asked and Lizzie wasn’t sure if she was truly curious or if she was being a bit catty.

“I went to University of North Dakota with Mr. Toews for undergrad,” Lizzie said. “Then I did Penn Law.”

Elise replied, “Oh. I remember reading that once.”

Lizzie refused to roll her eyes as Jon made small talk about the hockey season with Elise. Spotting a waiter, Elise raised her hand for another glass of wine. Tonight, was looking like it was about to be long. Before she could make her escape, Elise exclaimed, “Oh, there’s Mr. Schmidt, I need to talk to him! It was so nice to meet you and talk to you, Mr. Toews, Ms. Romanelli.”

Lizzie sighed as she scampered away, leaving her alone with Jonathan.

“Long time, no see,” Jonathan said, taking a sip of his water. Tomorrow was a game night and while he enjoyed drinking, he had no interest in doing anything that would keep him out of peak performance. But looking at Lizzie, he wished he had something stronger. The years had done her good; she looked curvier, stronger, hotter. He felt his pants tighten and Jonathan thought of his smelly hockey gear to deflate his hard on.

Lizzie stroked the curve of her new wine glass before replying, “I know. Wasn’t necessarily planned.”

“Romanelli?”

“I was married,” Lizzie’s smile tightened.

Jonathan quickly replied, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ask anything that would make you feel- “

“It’s okay, let’s not go there, okay. Before you ask, I’m a widow.” Lizzie looked down at her wine. It had been long enough that she knew she wouldn’t break down but it was awkward to talk about it with her first college hookup/almost boyfriend. After all these years, Jonathan still had an affect on her. She felt a bit lightheaded but her once dormant libido had flared up as soon as they shook hands. It was as if her body had decided that someone worthy was nearby and it was time.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan repeated, his voice low as he ran his fingers through his short hair. It was a bit overwhelming seeing Lizzie again but he was already damn sure that he needed to see her again. As they exchanged pleasantries, Jon moved on to another group at the fundraiser. But every now and then, he made sure to catch her in the crowd.

At the end of the night, he was finally able to get Lizzie alone, again. “Now that you’re in Chicago, why don’t we go out? As old friends?”

Lizzie laughed as she waited for her coat. “We weren’t old friends and you know it.”

“But who said that we can’t be at least friends now?”

Jonathan gave Lizzie a big smile while she scoffed, “I can tell by the way you’ve been looking at me all night that you aren’t interested in being just friends.”

“How was I looking at you?”

Jonathan leaned into Lizzie as he noticed that Seabs was nearby. While he loved Seabs as a brother, he didn’t want him to have any idea of what he was planning, yet.

Lizzie batted her lashes at Jonathan before replying, “Like you never seen a woman before. I have to keep the conversation business casual but we both know what I’d really like to say.”

“Then, you should let me have your phone number.”

“Smooth, Toews,” Lizzie commented. “Very smooth.”

“I try.”

Jonathan couldn’t help himself; as Lizzie received her coat from the coat check, he helped her put it on.

“Wow, I don’t know if you’re actually a gentleman now or if you’re trying to get points,” Lizzie quipped.

Jonathan gave her an aw-shucks grin and a shrug. Despite her better judgment, Lizzie figured that it couldn’t hurt. She didn’t really know anyone yet in Chicago and it would be nice to talk to someone who she at least knew from college. But she didn’t want to openly give it to Jonathan so she took the moment to turn and grab paper and a pen from a table. Writing her number and snap down, she slid it into Jonathan’s pocket.

“There, now you can never say I never gave you anything.”

Lizzie turned and sauntered away. Jonathan fished through his pockets and grabbed the paper, grinning and laughing to himself.

**

Lizzie had to give Jonathan credit. He knew how to attempt to get a woman’s attention. The flowers were a nice touch; not too ostentatious and he was smart enough not to attach his name to them. But Lizzie knew exactly who they were from because there were exactly nineteen pink and nineteen white roses in Monday’s bouquet. Yesterday’s bouquet was a set of nineteen purple flowers that after she looked them up, Lizzie found out that they were purple columbine. Today’s bouquet involved nineteen white camelias and nineteen red chrysanthemums.

“This guy must really like you.”

Lizzie turned around to see Peter, her paralegal. He was pointing at the flowers, a pensive look on his face.

“Really? He just wants my attention.” Lizzie dismissively waved towards the flowers but inwardly, she was loving it.

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Okay, whatever you say. Anyway, I have five messages from the managing partners.”

“I already know what they want and I already reviewed the files and sent them to Kristin, Jacques, and Malik. They are working on the briefs for the arbitration and they should all be done by the end of the work day. I will prep my own opening argument myself for the hearing when we are done talking. You can quote everything I just said in your email,” Lizzie stated with a smile on her face. This was her first arbitration hearing at the Chicago office with her new associates working under her. But she knew it would go well.

“But the flowers. I’d look them up, Ms. Romanelli. He’s sending you a message with each bouquet. Especially that first one with those kind of pink roses, maiden blush roses? Oh, he’s definitely telling you something.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

Lizzie brushed Peter off, her mind already back on work. However, she messaged Jon later, I like jasmine, lily of the valley, the most.

The next day, there was a bouquet with yellow jasmine, lily of the valley, and red pink flowers, the number adding to 19 and a note, looking forward to seeing you tonight.

**

Lizzie was still a mystery and Jonathan was desperate to figure her out. This was their sixth date and every time he felt like he was getting closer to her, Lizzie pulled back. Jon understood but at the same time, he was getting annoyed. He was also horny as fuck and trying very hard not to let his cock dictate his actions.

Tonight, Lizzie wore a little black dress with strappy heels to dinner and all Jonathan could think of was having Lizzie wear those heels while he fucked her hard and fast. It took all his willpower to keep the conversation light during dinner as his traitorous brain filled with all kinds of dirty images. Now, they were having post dinner drinks at a place Kaner had suggested. It was very intimate, the kind of place for seduction. Unfortunately, Jonathan thought, there would probably be no seduction tonight as he stood on the wall with Lizzie.

“I intentionally wore these for you.”

Lizzie fluttered her eyelashes at Jon’s dumbfounded expression. She wasn’t dumb; she knew exactly the kind of affect she had on men. Lizzie had to give Jonathan credit; he was doing a good job of not being a stupid hornball.

“I love them,” Jonathan drawled before taking a sip of his whiskey on the rocks. He told himself to be patient, as they continued to talk but after another half-hour talking about football, Jon finally broached the subject. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Are you,” Lizzie countered. She went out on a couple of dates with a couple of different guys when the Blackhawks were out of town because, in her mind, she was still a free agent. Doing that actually made Lizzie feel more comfortable with going out with Jonathan. Not that the other dates were bad but Lizzie had to admit to herself that there was still something more with Jonathan.

“No,” Jonathan admitted. His DMs were full on all social media so he could go out with anyone he wanted if he truly felt like it. But right now, he really was just interested in Lizzie.

“That’s nice.”

Lizzie twirled the straw in her cocktail. Jonathan thought about what to say but ended up blurting out, “I still think about some of the things we did.”

“Woooooooow.”

Blushing, Lizzie bit her lip. Some of those memories had come back since she had seen Jonathan again. Some of those things that had seemed extra sinful at eighteen and nineteen were mainstream these days. Plus, Greg had tried but he didn’t have that same aura that teenage Jonathan had. Adult Jonathan had that dominant aura in spades and it was tempting.

Lizzie added, “And?”

Jonathan moved closer to Lizzie, his big body bracketing hers, his monotone voice even deeper, “You remember when I tied you up the first time?”

“That was…. interesting,“ Lizzie replied. She felt flushed, that memory now in her brain. They had been fumbling around and Jonathan had tied her up before making her beg and scream his name. But the knot had got stuck and after he cut her out, Lizzie had chafed skin on both of her wrists. “It was an interesting experiment.”

Jonathan licked his lips. He noticed that Lizzie was flushed, her body leaning towards his. It was almost heady, the tension, he could taste it. So, he decided to press into the attack.

“We’ve both grown up now. I mean, I know what I love to do in the bedroom and I’m not a teen boy fumbling around.”

Lizzie resisted the urge to roll her eyes at Jonathan’s pronouncement. Steeling her face so that she looked impassive, inwardly she was freaking out a bit. Jonathan had been pretty good fuck in college, better than the rest of her boyfriends before she married Greg. But this Jonathan, three times Stanley Cup winner and hockey superstar Jonathan, he seemed lethal.

And he knew it as he gave Lizzie a little smirk and a wink.

“Don’t worry Lizzie, no one is going to judge you now if you like a little pain. I definitely won’t. You know I liked giving it to you when we were experimenting.”

Exasperated, Lizzie exclaimed, “You’re still so arrogant! I seriously doubt you’d have a chance to fuck me again.”

Jonathan moved closer and Lizzie backed up, backing into the wall. Jonathan got close enough that Lizzie could smell his expensive cologne but far enough that she could easily move away if she wanted to.

“I don’t know why you’re still lying to yourself all these years later,” Jonathan murmured, his dark brown eyes looking black. “But I’m patient, I can still wait. You still want me and I’ve always wanted you.”

Lizzie bit her lip and Jonathan resisted the urge to groan. He had thought that he had forgotten her but just meeting her again two months ago had brought back those old feelings. Now, he was getting tired of playing cat and mouse but from what he had learned from TJ and Ridley, Jonathan was trying to be careful and tactical with his advances. He at least managed to get her to go out with him. His cock could wait.

Of course, after telling himself that, images from a decade ago filled his head. Ignoring them, Jonathan instead taunted, “Nothing to say? I never thought lawyers could be rendered speechless.”

Instead of replying, Lizzie reached out and touched Jonathan’s sweater. It was super soft and felt like it was made from the finest cashmere. She finally replied, voice low and soft, “Why am I so attracted to you? This shouldn’t really be happening.”

“Fate.”

It was a very simple reply as Jonathan grabbed her hand and brought it up to his lips. He kissed her hand, just a brief touch of closed lips to skin. But it felt like electricity coursed through both of them. Jonathan recovered first before giving Lizzie a devilish smile. “Night, night Elizabeth.”

***

“He’s way too smooth.”

Lizzie took in a deep breath as she watched the first snowfall of the year through her office window. Rachel’s laughter at her complaint registered super loud over her ear pod.

Rachel commented, “Of course he is, he’s had over a decade of practice. I can’t believe he’s still interested; I think Jon has dated models and he could date anyone. You’re lucky as hell, Lizzie.”

Lizzie pouted as she moved away from the window. “I don’t know if I want to be lucky.”

“Well, I remember all of the sneaking around you’d did when we were in college. You had no problems fucking him in private.”

“RACHEL!! Oh, my Gawd, you knew that?!?”

Lizzie put her hand on her forehead, mortified. She thought she had been cautious.

Rachel chuckled before continuing, “No one else figured it out. But it was obvious that sparks were flying. And then Jon goes pro and you end up dating around until you met Greg. But you never were as happy as you were freshman spring.”

Lizzie sighed, feeling a headache beginning to start. “Greg, you know I loved Greg.”

“I know honey, if you hadn’t, I would have seriously considered stopping the wedding,” Rachel consoled. “And he did help you escape the ranch and your parents’ plans.”

“I’ve been a widow for 3 years and this is the first time I’ve been attracted to a man,” Lizzie blurted out. Her cheeks reddened as she realized her admission.

There was an extended pause before Rachel finally replied. “Then you should go for it. Greg wouldn’t want you to give up on sex because he’s gone.”

Lizzie flipped through the messages on her work phone as she pondered Rachel’s words.

“I gotta go, Alyssa is about done with school and the baby should be up any minute. Stop thinking and just fuck him. Just remember to put color corrector and concealer over any marks Jonny leaves on you.”

Lizzie exclaimed, “Rachel,” but she had already hung up. Checking her personal phone for messages, Lizzie grinned when she saw she had a snap from Jon. Opening the snap, she saw a photo of Jon signing jerseys and picks with a note of can’t wait to give you one.

Lizzie responded; too bad I’ll be too busy to get one for the next couple of weeks

Lizzie put her phone down, ready to focus on her work before getting a new message from Jon. I told u I can be patient.

**

Lizzie looked down at her list of pros and cons. All the pros were reasons why she should fuck Jonathan: get rid of all the unresolved tension from college, he’s an already proven great fuck, probably the best guy to be her first fuck since Greg passed away. The cons were that he was Jonathan Toews, he was famous, and he did have the ability to be an asshole. Her skeptical side told Lizzie that she probably couldn’t keep it casual but the other side was like, was that a bad thing?

Shaking her head, Lizzie pulled on a pair of jeans before putting on a sweater. The Blackhawks were back in town and last night, she went to the game courtesy of Jonathan. Lizzie had taken Elise with her and they enjoyed the Blackhawks winning against the Flames. It was actually fun as Lizzie explained some of the finer points of hockey, such as power plays, penalty kills, offsides, and the fact that all refs in all sports were absolutely awful. Tonight, she actually told Jon she would come over after they saw a movie.

Lizzie was curious about where Jonathan lived. She knew it was in an area called Lincoln Park; she lived in the outskirts of the North Side. Her student loans from law school demanded payment so Lizzie moved in the nicest area she could afford, in a gentrifying neighborhood. “Get a taste of how the rich live tonight,” Lizzie said to herself. However, she did put on a matching pair of underwear just in case she decided to do more.

**

Jonathan looked at Lizzie as the car pulled up to his place. He had been on his best behavior tonight; no sly comments, etc. after last time. But Lizzie had been cuddly during the movie and now, she… he couldn’t read her actions.

Jon entered his code and led Lizzie inside. “Very nice,” Lizzie commented as they walked through the first floor of his place.

“Oh wow, you have my favorite flowers,” Lizzie exclaimed as they walked into his kitchen. There was a vase with Spanish Jasmine flowers.

Jonathan shrugged even though he was inwardly pleased. He had ordered them this afternoon, a rush order when Lizzie said she would come over. Now she was here and he felt at a loss. His cock said to seduce her, his brain said to wait for her cues and see if she was actually interested. Jonathan grabbed two cups and got himself and Lizzie a glass of water before guiding her back into the living room.

“More movies,” Lizzie teased as she made herself comfortable on his leather couch.

Jonathan shook his head no, suddenly nervous as he cut on the TV. He didn’t want to fuck it up.

Lizzie smirked as she watched indecision on Jonathan’s face. Tonight, had been their first date since that conversation and it was obvious that Jonathan was still very interested but didn’t want to do anything that seemed pushy. Lizzie thought at first it was because they were out in public but she realized that if she wanted to actually go there again, she would have to bring it up.

“What are you thinking about, Jon,” Lizzie asked, intentionally shortening his name.

Jonathan put his arms on the back of the couch and mentally said fuck it. “Do you want to good answer or the dirty answer?”

“Dirty answer?”

Lizzie grinned as Jonathan gulped then groaned.

“I keep looking at your ass in those jeans and I want to grab it so bad,” Jonathan admitted. Lizzie looked at his big hands and she decided that tonight was the night.

“You can grab it, if you want?”

“Huh, what?”

Jonathan looked so dumbfounded that Lizzie giggled. “I said you can grab it. That’s another way of saying, you can touch me.”

“Are you sure,” Jonathan asked, locking eyes with Lizzie.

Lizzie rolled her eyes before grabbing his hand. “I came here with the full intent of getting fucked. But if you aren’t interested, that’s okay and we can hang out before I go home.”

“Oh, do you really want me to fuck you?”

Jonathan raised an eyebrow as Lizzie flung her hair behind her shoulder. “I want you to kiss me, eat my pussy, maybe I’ll suck your cock, and then fuck me, if you want to get precise.”

“Goddamn,” Jonathan breathed. “Fuck, then why don’t you sit in my lap?”

Lizzie climbed into his lap before locking eyes with Jonathan again. His deep brown eyes looked nearly black and he had stubble all around his jaw. She traced his jaw with her fingers before running her fingers through his hair. His voice a deeper monotone, Jonathan murmured, “I’m not going to bite, unless you want me to do that.”

Instead of replying, Lizzie brushed her lips over Jonathan’s, once, then twice. Then she leaned down and nipped his lip. “I like biting,” she whispered against his lips before kissing him again. Jonathan’s arms came around her waist, keeping Lizzie in place as he began to take over the lazy kiss. Need stretched through their kisses, tongues interacting as over a decade apart melted away. Then Jonathan pulled away. Lizzie reached to pull her sweater off but Jonathan stopped her.

“Let’s go to the bedroom, I don’t want to fuck you for the first time in forever on a couch, at least not this time.”

Lizzie laughed as Jonathan picked her up and nearly ran to his bedroom. She didn’t even get a chance to look around and admire before he was on her. Jonathan’s hands were all over her body as he desperately kissed her. Before Lizzie realized it, her sweater and bra were off and so was Jonathan’s hoodie and t-shirt. She could feel his rock-hard abs against her body as Jonathan rolled so that Lizzie was on top.

“Your tits are still fucking amazing.”

“Thanks,” Lizzie beamed as Jonathan gently kneaded them in his hands.

He murmured, “They are still so sensitive,” as her nipples hardened quickly in his fingers, watching Lizzie’s changes in expression. “So, you’ll tell me right away if I do something you don’t like?”

“Like what,” Lizzie asked.

Jonathan lightly grabbed her throat, something they had never done before but something he had learned that he liked to do. “Like that.”

“Mmmm, this is good,” Lizzie replied. Choking was one of the kinks she had explored with Greg and that she missed.

“Fuck, you got dirtier,” Jonathan stated before rolling Lizzie under him again.

“Why don’t you stop talking and undress me some more,” Lizzie ordered.

Jonathan laughed before idly replying, “Normally, I wouldn’t let you tell me what to do but we haven’t even negotiated that yet. And we aren’t, not tonight.”

Lizzie’s giggled as she shimmied out of her jeans. But those giggles were replaced with moans when Jonathan’s fingers brushed her upper and inner thighs before stroking her pussy through her panties. “So wet for me.”

He had planned to go slow but Jonathan was pretty sure that wasn’t happening, at least not for this first round. He needed to be deep inside of Lizzie, back where he belonged. Jonathan stood up and took off his own jeans and boxers, revealing his very hard cock. Lizzie reached up and ran a hand over his cock before pumping it with both hands.

“I’m not going to last that long,” Jonathan warned as Lizzie began to jerk him off. “I want to cum deep inside of your pussy, Elizabeth.”

“Oh my God,” Lizzie breathed. There was something in the way that Jonathan said her full name, it made her pussy drip even more.

Jonathan reached into his night stand and grabbed a condom. “Be a good girl and put this on me.”

Lizzie took the condom from Jonathan’s hands and opened it. Then she guided it over his cock with a wicked grin on her face. Leaning back on her elbows, Lizzie smirked at Jonathan before sucking her lip into her mouth. “Fuck me, Jonathan.”

Jonathan growled as Lizzie spread her legs, showing him just how wet and ready she was for him. Pulling a leg up and over his shoulder, Jonathan entered Lizzie slowly, making sure she felt every inch. Lizzie moaned, her hands grabbing anywhere they could on Jon as he fucked her, slow soft strokes turning harder with each thrust.

“Fuck you feel so good,” Lizzie groaned as Jonathan gave her a harder thrust, hips grinding with each stroke.

Jonathan managed to reply, “Your pussy still feels like it was made for me.”

He was already close and Jonathan couldn’t hold off even though he could tell that Lizzie wouldn’t cum with him this time. Jonathan’s lips found Lizzie’s as he kissed her while he came. Lizzie let Jonathan ride his high out, she could feel that she was getting closer but she wasn’t there.

Jonathan slumped against Lizzie for a couple moments before withdrawing from her pussy. He took off the condom, telling Lizzie, “Stay there.”

Dumping the condom into the trash, Jonathan pulled Lizzie to the edge of the bed. Spreading her legs, Jonathan knelt in between, fingers spreading her folds. Then his tongue licked her clit and Lizzie arched off the bed. “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of you,” Jonathan cooed as he played with her clit. Then he dove in, licking her juices from her pussy before tongue-fucking Lizzie’s entrance. His fingers continued to roll her clit with light pressure, enough to keep Lizzie on the edge but not enough to get her to cum. Then Jon sucked her clit into her mouth and bit it very lightly, enough of a shock to get Lizzie to cum with a scream, fingers grabbing sheets to hold on for dear life. Jonathan muttered something in French as Lizzie rode out her high. Then she fell asleep with a light snore.

**

Lizzie laid on the bed, her hair fanned out around her head, body too depleted to move yet. But she peeled herself up as Jonathan was sitting up next to her, a MacBook in his lap.

“Wow, what time is it?”

“It’s a little after midnight,” Jonathan replied. He had changed into a pair of sweats and Lizzie licked her lips. He looked really good in gray sweats.

She shrugged. “At least it’s Saturday.”

“I cleaned you up after you passed out.”

Jonathan gave Lizzie a wicked grin as she blushed. “It’s been a while,” she replied.

Lizzie got up and Jonathan pointed to his left, indicating that was the way to get to the bathroom. Lizzie stepped inside of the master bathroom, still too tired to check it out. After taking care of business and washing her hands, Lizzie walked back into Jonathan’s bedroom. Jonathan handed her a t-shirt and said, “You’re too tired to attempt to drive home. You can stay here; I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

“I like cumming so you don’t have to keep them to yourself.”

Lizzie gave Jon a saucy smile while he groaned.

**

Let yourself be happy. Find that guy again, the one who was before me. I just want you to be happy, don’t shrivel up and die because I’m gone.

Lizzie looked at the note, last note from Greg before he passed from non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Her wedding ring was on next to it, the simple gold band twinkling in the late winter sun.

Today was her seventh month since her move to Chicago, fifth since she met Jonathan for the first time in years. Tonight, she was going to the game, Elise going with her but this time, they were going to sit with the WAGs. Lizzie had met Jonathan’s closest friends and teammates and it was obvious that there was something happening between them. But Lizzie felt the need to look at this one more time.

“I’m going to be happy, Greg,” Lizzie whispered before putting her old wedding ring and the note in a box, setting it next to a vase of nineteen red tulips that Jon had given her. Then she pulled her hair into a ponytail, sent all work calls on her work phone to voicemail. Picking up her personal phone, Lizzie smiled as she looked at the text from Jonathan.

She wasn’t going to run this time. She was going to embrace a future with Jonathan.

[theimpossiblescheme]

“Where do you come from, where do you go?  What is your scene, baby, we just gotta know!”

I said I was gonna make an appreciation post for Yvonne Craig’s ’66 Batgirl, so… here she is, Barbara Gordon, that Dominoed Dare-Doll out to strike at the heart of crime!

The network wanted to introduce Barbara Gordon to the show almost immediately after her “Million-Dollar Debut” in the comics, and being renewed for a third season gave them the perfect opportunity.  After airing a short presentation to introduce the character, featuring Babs in a much pointier mask fighting off Killer Moth and his goons, they were given the green light to properly usher her into the show.  The rest, of course, is network television history; and while a lot of people can agree that the third season of the show was largely a series of missteps, Batgirl was definitely not one of them.

What makes Babs so interesting in this show is that she’s the perfect demonstration of how femininity and badassery don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  She’s naturally a very warm, charming, and eminently helpful person who goes out of her way to look after her family and her community. She’s a bookworm who works at the Gotham City library and studied almost every subject.  She’s very much a daddy’s girl who almost never fights with her father and regularly invites him over to watch TV with her.  She loves to cook and entertain guests.  She loves classical music and museums of all kinds.  She dresses like Jackie Kennedy at a thrift shop.  She loves to surf and swim and has a thing for charming jocks.  She keeps a gorgeous apartment full of trinkets and vintage furniture with a little parakeet named Charlie to keep her company.  And she visibly wears striking eye makeup even under her Batgirl cowl.

For God’s sake, her Batgirl motorcycle has ruffles on it!

But absolutely none of that takes away from what a devastatingly competent crimefighter she is.  In fact, she uses her reputation as an underestimated Girly-Girl ™ to her best advantage, similar to the way Babs does in Batgirl: Year One.  People tend to not pay her any mind because she’s a girl who can’t possibly do anything interesting in her spare time?  Gives her plenty of time to build her own Batgirl Cave in the back room of her apartment, complete with a revolving wall for ease of access to her costume station, an early computer and switchboard with a Lucite screen, a forensic chemistry set, and an elevator lift for her motorcycle!

People expect her to be soft and meek?  Perfect opportunity to take people by surprise by scaring them out of her apartment, even out of costume, and fully turn the tables on them as Batgirl, the fierce bruiser who loves nothing more than a sharp verbal takedown followed by a good scrap!  Punching isn’t a ladylike thing to do?  No rule saying you can’t ballet-kick their noses up into their brains and grab the nearest blunt object to use as an improvised weapon!

Woman crimefighters aren’t expected to be as clever as the Dynamic Duo?  Time to surprise everyone by using common sense and book smarts to solve cases instead of Bat-Deduction and breaking out of deathtraps by being genuinely resourceful rather than relying on deus ex machina (she does get the occasional assist, but this girl freed herself from self-tightening garotte wire.  That counts for something.)! 

Every time someone on the show tries to sell her short, she gets around to proving them wrong within seconds, and it’s the most satisfying thing to see.  Her biggest flaws as Batgirl were that she could be a little too rough and sometimes unintentionally cruel (such as the time she sprayed Louie the Lilac with sentient rot because she thought he was just bluffing).  But with time and experience she learned better and continued to improve as Gotham’s newest protector—a job she took very seriously, but still had a sense of humor about.

Interestingly, in her first couple of appearances, Babs seemed to be very aware of the fact that people were going to end up comparing her to Batman and Robin, and it manifested in a rather competitive spirit.  She constantly kept secrets from them, even ones that pertained to the case they were working on, and she would even hide evidence from them so she could have the satisfaction of busting the bad guy first.  They didn’t seem to trust her on principle at first, especially Batman, who believed that it was in women’s nature to try to outdo men in everything (holy sexism, ya douchecanoe); and she apparently decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to change their minds.  When they asked her about where she got her information, she would be deliberately vague and mention things like tarot cards and tea leaves—“all part of a woman crimefighter’s arsenal”—as a sort of Take That against them.  And at the end of almost every episode, she would disappear without a trace while their backs were turned, making them wonder where the hell she could have gone.  Eventually the three came to trust each other much more and fall into an easier and more cheerful rapport, but she would still disappear on them when the job was done.

One of the biggest shakeups on the show was that the member of the original “Batfamily” she was closest to was none other than Alfred!  He was the first to stumble upon her secret identity, and she made him swear to secrecy “as a gentleman’s gentleman.”  And he kept his word and continued to serve as her confidante, meeting with her in secret when she didn’t know if she could trust Batman. Every opportunity there was to help Babs, Alfred took it, no matter what, whether it was freeing her from a particularly tricky trap or helping her track a criminal across Gotham.  The two of them quickly developed a really adorable familial relationship based on mutual trust and affection, and you could tell how fond of each other Yvonne Craig and Alan Napier must have been.

The one vastly different addition you could possibly quibble with about this Babs is that there’s this rather aggressive effort to try to pair her up with Bruce.  Her father is very in favor of the idea of the two settling down together (even though Babs is fresh out of college and Bruce is at least in his late thirties).  And while Babs thinks Bruce is a nice enough guy, all of their “dates” end up being rather awkward since Bruce is a colossal dork out of costume, and she honestly just finds him a bit boring.  Besides, “he’s no Batman.”  She has a rather thinly disguised hero-crush on Batman and often wonders who he is under the mask—one can only imagine her reaction to finding out it’s the same guy who would rather watch the news in the back of his limo than talk to her. The attempt at shipping is there, but it never really goes anywhere, so… dodged a bullet there.

And in case anyone is wondering about her and Dick, while they aren’t romantically interested in each other at all, they do make a fantastic team and seem to view each other as brother and sister or at least good friends.  There are entire subplots of episodes where the two team up to save Batman’s bacon, and it’s glorious.

All in all, Yvonne Craig—once a dancer for the Ballet Russe and then a character actress who’d performed opposite Perry Mason and Elvis Presley—gave the world one of the defining heroines of the 1960s.  One who never stayed a damsel in distress for long and was spunky, witty, rebellious, kindhearted, determined, free-spirited, and more than capable of holding her own with the boys.  If anyone remembers anything about the third season of Batman, it’s Batgirl in all her purple glory, and her legacy has endured for so long that even Gail Simone has gone on record saying that when she writes Barbara Gordon, it’s Craig’s voice she imagines.

Unfortunately, Batman’s third season would be its last; even with hopes for a fourth season on the horizon, the destruction of the sets meant that the Terrific Trio would never set forth again on the small screen.  Fortunately, though, this wouldn’t be the end of this Batgirl—she was given another chance in cartoon and comic book form!

In The New Adventures of Batman, she takes on Catwoman to clear her own name from the taint of crime, singlehandedly rescues Robin from both the Joker’s and the Riddler’s henchmen with nothing but brute force, and adds a whole new passel of gadgets to her utility belt, including her own grappling hook gun and a makeup compact that conceals pocket sand she can use to blind her assailants.

In the recent Batman ’66 standalone comics, she gets to help Batman face off against Lord Death Man in Japan, takes on the Joker and Catwoman multiple times, helps free her father from Bane’s clutches, outwits all of the Big Four through simple office politics out of costume, and singlehandedly fends off the Bookworm and Queen Cleopatra with ingenuity and a good pimp slap respectively.

In Batman ’66 Meets the Man From U.N.C.L.E., she battles Poison Ivy’s plant goons (accidentally decapitating one of them with a single kick) travels with the Dynamic Duo, Napolean, and Illya to Monte Carlo to face off against Hugo Strange and his new international crime syndicate, and almost throws hands with Strange all by herself.

In Batman ’66 Meets Wonder Woman ’77, she graduates from Batgirl to Batwoman (Kate Kane’s initial appearance never caught on, it would seem) and takes her place as the new police commissioner of Gotham City after her father retires.

And most recently, in Archie Meets Batman ’66, she and Dick Grayson go undercover as transfer students to help flush out the new supervillain threat plaguing Riverdale and its students, facing off against the Joker and Catwoman in particular so far while dealing with the rabid crushes Archie and Betty have on them.

And as long as people still show an interest in this iteration of Babs, there will probably be more content still to come.  Not gonna lie, this is my favorite version of Barbara Gordon in any medium—I love her personality, her approach to challenges, her fighting style, her relationships with the rest of the cast, and even her costume.  Maybe one day, in a new Batman ’66 comic, we’ll get to see more of a supporting cast for her—bring in Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Frankie Charles, Jason Bard, and all of the characters we’ve come to know and love from the greater DC canon!  Hell, even better, give her a chance to become Oracle and pave the way for new Batgirls inspired by the good she’s done for Gotham!  But for now, we should all take the opportunity to appreciate the most iconic Barbara Gordon and the legacy she left behind.

Before I go, I thought I’d leave you guys with a snippet from the Man From U.N.C.L.E. crossover comic that I think best encapsulates this Batgirl and why she does what she does.  If ever Barbara Gordon had a mission statement, this is it, and I can never commend the comics enough for recognizing what makes her so special.

[seajudge70-blog]

The Gifted is over for now, and so are a couple of its major characters

Since we last left the beleaguered mutants and mutant-adjacent characters of Fox’s possibly-doomed X-Men spinoff series The Gifted, they’ve been doing what they do best: constantly changing sides. Say this for a series that sometimes threatens to move quickly while going nowhere: It didn’t save a bunch of reversals for the season finale, a move that would have shamelessly mimicked the events that ended Season 1. No, before the finale even aired, there were change-ups and switch-backs and feints aplenty: Andy Strucker, the wayward aspiring edgelord, finally returned to his family. His fellow Inner Circle member Polaris, the smart-mouthed, revolution-hungry daughter of Magneto, became a spy for the Mutant Underground, accidentally got Sage killed, made the same reversal, after (further) revelations about Reeva’s extreme methods for her pro-mutant group. Blink left the Mutant Underground to join the Morlocks, then got killed... or, it seems, stuck in some kind of portal purgatory. (Wherever she is, it’s no longer in the MU.) Less officially, Caitlin Strucker has pivoted from reluctant and protective mom figure to fiery freedom fighter, and Reed Strucker is now a murderer! Which Andy finds very relatable.

I’m not trying to recap every development of the past couple months. Suffice to say, there’s been a lot of group-hopping, and a lot of those groups getting backed into different corners and shooting powers and/or bullets at each other. “oMens” dispenses with voluntary side-switching, though it also quickly dispenses with the Strucker family reunion, as Andy and Lauren get snatched back up by the Cuckoos just as they’re plotting their latest out-of-the-corner escape, from their Purifier-surrounded apartment building. Reeva, mostly undaunted by the defections in her ranks, wants to use the combined Strucker powers to destroy the Sentinel Services building.

And she succeeds! A whole damn building gets destroyed without a whole lot of fanfare before Esme’s slight hesitation allows the Mutant Underground to recapture their youngest members. None of this feels as momentous as it probably should, because “oMens” performs an uncommonly adroit—for this show anyway—act of refocusing the story from a multitude of drawn-out, season-long arcs to a particular character’s particular fate in a kind of back-to-basics move.

Usually back to basics is not where I want The Gifted to go, because it involves returning to the Struckers, who are consistently the least interesting and most irritating characters on this program (sometimes actively, sometimes just by default). But while the episode’s additional flashbacks are written in the same clunk-on-the-nose style as the typical cold opens without the benefit of brevity, the scenes from the marriage of Caitlin and Reed do build to something: Reed’s sudden decision to go up against Reeva, knowing that her attempts to knock out his powers will backfire, destroying her... and him.

And he succeeds! And there is the episode’s more momentous explosion, despite the smaller number of casualties. Reed Strucker dies, and Stephen Moyer is presumably off of this show, if there’s even still a show for him to be off of. (More on this in a moment.) Reed was, as mentioned, never my favorite character on the show, and Moyer’s performance always felt a bit too workmanlike to transcend how stodgy the character has been written. But I admit, I found his sacrifice, and his family’s devastation, affecting. On a less emotional level, I admire Gifted creator Matt Nix (who penned this installment, his first one in a while) for seeming to understand what a corner Reed had been written into, either defined by suppressing his powers, or defined by not being able to control them. To make such a serious, controlled personality realize that his destiny in all this (ugh, but I’ll allow it) involved surrendering control—at least of his body.

This move takes out season-long Big Bad Reeva, too, and I have to say, she turned out to be sort of a disappointing villain. Grace Byers certainly cuts a stylish figure in the part, but Reeva pretty quickly settled into the predictable kind of movie/TV ideologue, willing to game the results in order to hasten violent revolution on her side, blah blah blah. The most notable aspect of her character wound up being the strange visual cue that through some combination of framing, the Byers performance, and a profoundly dopey-looking depiction of her mutant power, Reeva often looked like she doesn’t have use of her arms. Now she has use of nothing.

It’s a satisfying end for Reed and a relief to be done with Reeva, but “oMens,” in typically fast-paced and mostly entertaining fashion, does point to just how much of this season has consisted of rapid piece-moving, a sort of perpetual motion that’s often fun in the moment but can feel wearying and repetitive over the course of 16 episodes; I think the slightly extended season was a mistake, and if anything, this is the type of show where 10 would be fine. Especially considering that even with more episodes at their disposal, the resolution of the finale felt a little rushed: Reed dies, the Struckers mourn, Polaris and Eclipse are reunited with their daughter, Morlock Erg (Michael Luwoye, whose increased role has been a pleasure of the last bunch of episodes) joins the group for real, as does Esme (great additions, also basically not commented upon at all). Another reconfigured group—and another cliffhanger, as Blink returns, looking futuristic and Future Past-y, ushering everyone through a new portal.

Whether we’ll get to actually see what’s on the other side is, as ever, in some doubt. The Fox-Disney deal is about to close, and if the new studio doesn’t want a mostly pretty successful X-Men movie franchise on its hands (it doesn’t) and already has MCU and Star Wars plans for its streaming service (it does) and can wash its hands of ancillary X-Men stuff (it can), and wants to treat anything that’s not Ryan Reynolds playing Deadpool as ancillary (it does), well, it doesn’t look great for the modestly rated, if somewhat appreciated, The Gifted Season 3... though maybe it will get yet another stay of execution based on the Fox Network as we know it maybe not having time to wind all the way down and reboot itself as largely sports and reality by September 2019. There are definitely moments in “oMens” that feel like they’re protecting the show’s fans for both possibilities: Most of the characters get some resolution to their emotional journeys, while the Blink thing assures fans that it’s not over, unless it is.

But that’s sort of an X-Men thing, too, isn’t it? I mean, it applies to a lot of superhero comics, but the X-Men in particular feel like a neverending strife generator. The movies reflect this, too: Days Of Future Past fixes the timeline, but Logan’s timeline still leaves plenty of room for heartbreak. The Last Stand gets justifiably erased from continuity, but then Dark Phoenix comes around and Jean looks like she’s wearing almost the same stupid goddamn Evil Jacket. Some of this, as in the comics medium, is pure franchise-driven cynicism: We gotta keep the series going even if we don’t have a plan, until such time as the plan gets scotched for unrelated corporate-merger reasons. But I think one reason I respond well to the X-Men characters on film and TV is that this neverending fight isn’t entirely mercenary. It’s also sometimes how the world works. If there’s any non-obvious, non-telegraphed truth in the earnest pulp of The Gifted, that might be it.

Stray observations:

OK, comics nerds, get to nerding: Are they just teasing a second, lower-budget Days Of Future Past riff with that Blink thing, or is there another storyline this Blink reappearance is queuing up?

There were such big doings a-transpiring with the Struckers this episode that I didn’t have rom above to mention how the mutants’ latest escape involved Thunderbird subjecting himself to an all-out chain-wrapping, speed-ramped, mailbox-throwing brawl, with a coda where he punches powers into Erg! I don’t have anything smart to say about any of that; I just thought it ruled.

Did Polaris say “the whole dang government” in her first scene? Dagnabbit, she really is softening.

“In a way, I feel like we’ve been preparing for this for a long time,” Lauren says about powering up with Andy, without so much as a wink. Yeah, Lauren. Like maybe 16 episodes? Or 29?

Caitlin, explaining her cache of guns: “I don’t have an X-gene. I figured it was the next best thing.” Her superpower is a bunch of guns; Caitlin is basically the Punisher now.

This season of The Gifted has really leaned into its stylized camera angles; canted angles have been all over these episodes, and “oMens” used plenty of low-angle shots, too. A nice way of keeping the show comic-book-y without getting too crazy.

Maybe I missed more details on this earlier in the season when I was watching merely for fun and not for recappery, but... the Purifiers are a crazed race-war militia, right? And law enforcement never really bats an eye at this? This episode includes a tossed-off explanation that the cops are willing to look the other way when they surround the apartment building, but Jace Turner (whose big journey seems to be a never-ending circle) is leading a full-on gun battle in the streets, and it’s not the first time. I get that maybe the show thinks it’s doing commentary here, but I feel like after a series of escalating firefights, the cops would not be looking the other way, or if they did, they’d just see another Purifier gun battle.

Is this the end of me writing about The Gifted?! If so, thank you guys for watching along with me! I’ve really enjoyed taking this regular dose of X-Men methadone in between the movies, and I’ll be bummed if there’s truly no more Fox-era X-Men stuff after this summer. Don’t let Tony Stark be the one who builds Cerebro!

Source: https://tv.avclub.com/the-gifted-is-over-for-now-and-so-are-a-couple-of-its-1832881840

[theconservativebrief]

Just when you thought it was safe to relax, for no further new TV shows were coming to humbly request your eyeballs, The CW decided to start premiering most of its shows this week.

The tiny network — home to some of TV’s best shows, like Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — traditionally waits for October to debut its series, where they can premiere slightly outside of the biggest crush of fall TV season. But with the network expanding to Sunday nights for the first time this fall, it’s got more new series to flaunt than usual, to say nothing of all of its returning shows.

Thus, this week, we offer thoughts on The CW’s new high school drama All American, as well as its reboot of the venerable witch show Charmed. Finally, we have thoughts on HBO’s new series from Girls producers Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, Camping, which also marks Jennifer Garner’s return to TV.

Few of these shows are great, and as critics, we often have limited information on whether they’ll get better. (It’s rare to impossible for broadcast networks, especially, to send out many episodes for review beyond the first couple.) But there’s something in all of these shows worth checking out, especially if you’re a particular fan of their genres.

(A note: We’ve only given ratings to shows where we feel we’ve seen enough episodes to judge how successful they will be long-term.)

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Who doesn’t like a teen drama about a boy from an underprivileged background getting a hand up into the world of the rich and comfortable? It’s been the story of many, many teen soaps over the years, but perhaps most famously on The O.C., where Chino-born Ryan Atwood found himself suddenly living among the spoiled and pampered denizens of Orange County.

The CW’s new series All American takes that format and mixes it with Friday Night Lights for one of the strongest new dramas of the fall. It has its rough edges, but there’s something hard to beat about a good-hearted kid discovering the excesses of money and power, while those who have the money and power discover just how much they have in common with the new kid.

At the center of All American is Spencer (winning British newcomer Daniel Ezra), a football star at South LA’s public Crenshaw High. Spencer is black, and he comes from a majority-black neighborhood. (He’s also based on the real NFL player Spencer Paysinger.) When a coach for a Beverly Hills high school — played by Taye Diggs, who I never thought would make a great Coach Taylor but makes a great Coach Taylor — turns up to offer Spencer a chance at a role on a higher-profile team, Spencer worries about betraying his community before eventually realizing going to Beverly Hills could cement his future.

You can sort of see where this is going from there, but creator April Blair shows a refreshing willingness to keep the story moving throughout the first three episodes, unveiling a healthy dollop of plot twists and soapiness, while also giving her characters a whole lot of heart. Indeed, the twist at the end of the pilot takes the show from “pretty good” to “something I’ll give at least a season to figure itself out.”

There are issues here and there (the ensemble is perhaps a little too large for a show this young, and there’s way too much music to drive every emotional point home), but All American is an intriguing stew of teen soap tastes that taste great together. —Todd VanDerWerff

All American debuted Wednesday, October 10, on The CW and is available on the network’s website. Future episodes air Wednesdays at 9 pm on The CW.

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For whatever reason, The CW’s new spin on Charmed has been embroiled in controversy over its status as a reboot starring brand new actors, rather than a revival starring the show’s original cast. And, sure, the original series has die-hard fans, and in a climate where seemingly every other popular show from the ’90s is being revived just as it was back then, it’s not hard to imagine a world where that happened with Charmed, too.

But if those disgruntled Charmed fans tune in to the new version, they’re likely to find a show that, despite a pilot that’s a bit of a mess, has the right elements in place to become just as fun as that earlier series (if not more fun — that original show could be a bit of a mess itself). Most importantly, Jessica O’Toole, Amy Rardin, and Jennie Snyder Urman (of Jane the Virgin fame), who developed this new Charmed, have nailed the single most important element of the show: the casting.

To make a show about three sisters who are witches — and so much more powerful when together than when apart — you really need three actors who simultaneously exude raw supernatural power and a sisterhood that feels real, not assembled right before shooting the pilot. (Even if you know that’s what happened.) And Madeleine Mantock, Melonie Diaz, and Sarah Jeffery absolutely seem like sisters, with all the attendant benefits and baggage that relationship carries.

Plus, revamping this show to be about a Latina family offers a subtly powerful twist on the idea of those without traditional political power having untapped reserves of raw power. The pilot could do more with this idea (and the series hopefully will), but at least the sisters never feel like they’ve been made Latina to score empty diversity points.

The pilot gets stuck trying to do too much, establishing the sisters’ powers and setting up a longer mystery about an unsolved murder and offering up a #MeToo metaphor as its monster of the week. But with this cast (including a very game Rupert Friend as guardian angel Harry) and smart writers behind the scenes, Charmed will hopefully find itself very quickly. —TV

Charmed debuts Sunday, October 14, at 9 pm Eastern on The CW.

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Watching the four episodes of Camping that were sent out for review, I couldn’t help but think of another recent HBO series: Vice Principals. The shape of that series wasn’t immediately apparent in the first couple of episodes, and what it ended up being was vastly different from (and better than) what its beginning suggested. It rewarded the viewer for watching through to the end.

It seems as though Camping might fit a similar bill, though I would hesitate to presume that it’ll pull off the same gambit. Created by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, and adapted from the British series of the same name, Camping doesn’t really make any progress in the first half of its season.

The reasons to watch are apparent from the start: The cast is absolutely stacked, with Jennifer Garner simultaneously playing to type and against type as Kathryn, who works day in and day out to make her life as flawless and meticulously ordered as her Instagram account. David Tennant is perfectly cast as her husband, Walt; he’s as easygoing as Kathryn is wound-up, as embodied by his lankiness and penchant for bucket hats.

Filling out the rest of the group of friends (just imagine quotation marks around the word) out camping in celebration of Walt’s 45th birthday, there’s Ione Skye, Chris Sullivan, Janicza Bravo, Brett Gelman, Arturo Del Puerto, Juliette Lewis — there’s not a weak performance in the bunch.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite enough. By the season’s halfway point, Camping seems to be fixated on showcasing people behaving badly — whether on their own or due to outside influence — without necessarily having a larger point to make. It’s thin ice for any series to skate on, but even more so when a series asks its audience to invest in characters written to be annoying or self-involved. These people are poison to each other — why keep watching them?

A few moments shine — again, the cast is terrific, and manages to find bits of truthfulness in the way these characters tear at each other — but without a firm sense of plot or structure to keep it all together, the show falters. —Karen Han

Camping debuts Sunday, October 14, at 10 pm Eastern on HBO.

As mentioned, basically everything on The CW is back this week. (Some shows — notably Jane the Virgin — are being held for midseason, of course.) That includes the final season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Friday at 8 pm), which kicks off with a bang, as Rebecca Bunch finds herself in prison. A happy ending to this saga might seem a stretch at this point, but we’d settle for a “mostly okay” ending, honestly.

If you love streaming shows, this is a hectic week, too. Netflix brings the terrific new cooking docu-series Salt Fat Acid Heat (Thursday), based on the book of the same name, and the superbly spooky Haunting of Hill House (Friday). Amazon, meanwhile, launches the first season of Mad Men creator Matt Weiner’s The Romanoffs (also Friday), while the new streaming service DC Universe unveils the gritty Teen Titans reboot Titans (whaddaya know, it’s debuting on Friday). We’ll have full reviews of some of these in the days to come.

If you’re a fan of podcast hosts, HBO launches its TV version of Pod Save America (Friday at 11 pm) and ABC launches The Alec Baldwin Show (Sunday at 10 pm), should you require a TV version of something originally designed to appeal to your earballs.

Finally, if you’re me (Todd), then the only thing you care about is adult swim’s Harvey Birdman: Attorney General (Monday at midnight), a brand new special reuniting the voice cast of the original Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, one of the great, silly spoofs of the 2000s. Sing it with me now! Whooooooo is the man in the suit? Whooooooo is the cat with the be-eak!

Original Source -> This week in TV: a teen drama to check out, a new spin on Charmed, and Jennifer Garner

via The Conservative Brief

[beautifulboycast-blog]

Nat's TV round up - 2017 in Review

Television is an unusual beast when we discuss how great it is. The last year marked a few key notes, notably the increasingly large presence that streaming services have thanks to A Handmaid’s Tale, which went on to win Best Drama at the Emmy's, becoming the first streaming show to do so. Normally, it would be smarter to discuss television in the middle of summer when most notable series are in-between seasons. That's no longer the case, thanks in large part to streaming services, as well as basic and premium cable.

I don't have a list of every show I watched this past year and I won't be handing out a dozen awards for how great a singular show was. Instead, I'll offer up three separate awards: Best Returning Series, Best New Series and Best Animated Series. It's pretty self explanatory. Best Returning series is for shows that are in their second season or beyond. Best New Series is for shows in their first season, mini-series included. Best Animated series is simply for animated shows in general which are no longer following the strict yearly season format of live action shows.

Best Returning Show: Game of Thrones (Season 7) There really wasn't another option. Despite the season being a few episodes shorter and arriving in the middle of summer as opposed to its usual spring premiere, game of thrones remains the best show currently airing. Season 7 had a slower start, but quickly catalyzed into one grand moment after another. The thrilling seven episodes that aired featured massive battles on the water, on the ground and in the frozen wastes beyond the wall. Gone are the slow politically driven conversations that were featured in earlier seasons, only fitting and satisfying conclusions to loose ends remain.

Perhaps the only detractor for this season is the smaller episode count. While the cast is much smaller this season, the missing few hours of content would have been appreciated to once again flesh out conversations and character motivations. And while the finale promises even greater things for season 8, the wait until then is an unpleasant one. The final season probably won't see light until 2019.Game of Thrones remains the only show on tv that sends the collective masses into hysteria. Season 7 led to more “Did you catch that?” moments than any other season yet and we hope the wait for season 8 isn't too long. Perhaps some news on those spin offs would be enough to keep us from going insane? Your move, HBO.

Highlight moment: Episode 4 - The Spoils of War This episode features the single greatest battle in game of thrones yet. It's the only time in recent memory where my jaw was on the floor in awe. I actually had a fork in my hand when the scene started and by the end it had fallen to the floor. For what was only about half an hour, I was 100% drawn in with zero distractions to my television screen. It wasn't a plot twist or a satisfying end to a subplot. No, the greatest moment in television last year was something that only multi-million budgeted movies get right and it was glorious.

Other Notable Series

Stranger Things (Season 2): This is probably the closest a returning series got to beating out Game of Thrones and it wasn't even close. Stranger Things continued the story of the first season with all of its 80’s charm. This season, however, loses points for splitting up its characters too often and the pacing issues it suffers. While there is some great action and character moments (Dustin is the star of this season), it just doesn't hold a candle to Thrones.

Comedy Series (Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Modern Family, The Good Place): This is my junk food. I love comedy series and these are the four most notable ones that I keep track of. Always Sunny continues to be one of the best written shows on tv and the season finale was fantastic. Here's hoping for at least one more season from the gang. Brooklyn Nine-Nine had an excellent year notably for tackling issues like police brutality and the rights of the accused, something that would have never happened on a network comedy ten years ago. Modern Family had a decent year and here's hoping that the series reaches its conclusion soon. Some of the jokes are starting to get old and the lack of interesting new characters has made the series start to become stale. The Good Place is the most recent series on the list. I loved the twist ending to season one and the direction season two has taken so far. There's a lot of potential here.

House of Cards (Season 5): Oh how the mighty have fallen. A year ago I was so excited for House of Cards to return and now I'm ready to put it out of its misery. Production issues aside, season 5 was a bloated mess that took an idea and spent an entire season trying to make it come off as a big deal. All it left was the watering down of Frank Underwood as a character and a sloppy gateway for a sixth season. Luckily season 6 is coming so our other lead, Claire Underwood, will have a fitting conclusion.

Orange is the New Black (Season 5): After struggling to find its footing a few seasons ago, Orange is the New Black is stronger than ever, mixing comedy with real drama. Most of season five deals with the aftermath of the final episode of season 4 and the writers run with it. My only concern is the show’s main character, Piper, taking a back seat for most of the season. Here's hoping she plays a larger role in season 6.

Better Call Saul (Season 3): With it's best season under its belt, Better Call Saul remains one of the best shows on tv that unfortunately isn't garnering the audience it deserves. Season 3 picked up the pace and is slowly transforming into its own beast of a show outside of its predecessor’s shadow. While AMC isn't the Titan it was a few years ago, their commitment to this series gives me hope that its wings won't be clipped too soon as there's a lot of potential here. Please, please check this show out. It's well worth it.

Best New Series - Glow: I made it a goal in 2017 to check out new series whenever I could. While I didn't watch as many new shows as I had hoped, I found myself struggling to crown a winner for best new series. I ultimately settled on Glow, a new series from Netflix starring Community-alumni, Alison Brie. Set in the 1980’s, Glow is a show about a group of wannabe actors and wash ups, trying their hand at women’s professional wrestling. As someone who has always loved the absolute cheesiness of professional wrestling, watching a show about it is a treat. The series is a comedy with some dramatic moments, similar to Orange is the New Black. In fact, the series has a lot in common with Orange is the New Black, but wins out for having a greater sense of theming. It knows it's a comedy and plays with it perfectly.

The biggest detractor is the length. At ten episodes with a 30 minute run time, the show is over just as it really begins to get good. Netflix has renewed the series for a second season, but still at only 10 episodes. An additional 5 episodes in the season would have been perfect. It would also give the large supporting cast a chance to shine.

I'm eager to watch more of Glow and I think it has the legs to replace some of the older shows in Netflix’s line-up in the coming months. Highlight moment: Episode 10 - Money’s in the Chase The entire season is building up towards their first public performance and the season finale spends its entire run time showing us that performance. I loved this as it really feels like we're watching the show with the audience. It's full of some great twists and some absolutely corny wrestling moves. Here's hoping season 2 features more of these performances.

Other Notable series:

Ozark: My runner up for best new series. I really enjoyed this show, especially Jason Bateman as the lead. It has a similar theme to Breaking Bad, which is always fantastic. The biggest problem for Ozark is that I'm afraid it won't have the legs to last more than a few seasons. I could be wrong, but that and some pacing issues are what made me choose Glow over it for best new series.

Mindhunter: This show has an absolutely horrible pilot, but a pretty solid show follows that. I'm excited to see where the series goes from here. The pilot almost killed the series for me and hints of its problems last throughout. Poor direction, awkward camera angles and bloated writing aside, the show gets better the more you watch.

A Handmaid’s Tale: I believe I'm one of the few people out there who did not enjoy this series. It's well made and the acting is top notch. I have no major problems with the series from a design standpoint. It's the story and characters that lose me. Everything is so drab and dull. I never cared for the characters because they kept trying to keep things a mystery. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood or mind set for this show. I found the most interesting character to be on who barely appears in the show and one that they inevitably cut out entirely. I expect a season 2 for the show and hopefully it'll grab me. Until then, I would say to watch the first episode and see if it's your style. If not, it's worth skipping.

Girl Boss: There is nothing notable about this show. It isn't good. It's not necessarily hot garbage either. It can be funny, but it isn't hilarious. It's 100% average, or perhaps, mediocre. Why does that matter? Because this was the first “Netflix original series" that I experienced like this. Netflix has pumped out some garbage before, but they usually let you know in advance. Not this time. Girl Boss was hyped up to be another great series from the streaming giant and it failed to make an impact. I guess that explains why it was cancelled, a rarity for Netflix.

Best Animated Series: My Hero Academia (Season 2) If there’s one thing I watched more of in 2017 than previous years, it was anime. While it was mostly re-watching various Dragon Ball related shows, I decided to check out a new series that my friends had been raving about. That new series was My Hero Academia. I thought the 13 episode season one was good enough. It had an amazing set up for the world and the characters started to grow on me towards the end. Season 2 is fantastic. It covers three arcs from the manga in 25 episodes and really begins to put the series into perspective. I normally avoid long running series like this until they’re closer to the end, but this is my exception. Season 3 is coming sometime in 2018 and I’m excited to start reading the manga soon. This is an absolutely fantastic series with some great fight scenes, interesting characters and really well done animation.

Highlight Moment: Episode 10 - Shoto Todoroki: Origin Season 1 introduced us to a lot of new characters, but only a handful got enough time to be fleshed out. Season 2 began to fix this immediately by turning Todoroki into Deku’s (Our protagonist) main rival. The entire arcs lasts for most of the season, but it’s the fight between Todoroki and Deku that puts this show as my favorite of the year. Weaving an origin story into the series’ biggest fight yet is a major undertaking, but doing it this well is a masterstroke. Much like the massive battles in game of thrones, I was left speechless while watching this episode. What makes it even better is that the entire arc has no villain. It’s simply our heroes battling for the spotlight in one of the best made tournament arcs in recent memory.

Other Notable Series:

Attack on Titan (Season 2): I watched the first season of AoT back in 2015 and fell in love with the series. I dropped it after catching up on the manga, however. With Season 2 releasing in the states finally, I picked the series back up and I’m in love once more. Season 2 has better pacing than season 1, but suffers from a shorter episode count (12 episodes vs the 25 from season 1). Because of that the story can feel a bit uneven especially with a major plot reveal happening at the very end of the last episode. The animation is still top notch though, perhaps even better than season 1. And thankfully, season 3 will be airing sometime next year. No more half decade wait times. Rick and Morty (Season 3): Speaking of wait times, thank god Rick and Morty is back. I was considering giving this my best animation series award, but it came up short compared to My Hero. I had a blast with season 3 however. It was laughing the entire time, even if some of the episodes weren’t as funny as others. Bob’s Burgers, South Park (Season 21) and Bojack Horseman (Season 4): I guess this is like my catch all category? Regardless, I enjoy all three of these series and felt like each of them had a somewhat decent 2017. Bob’s Burgers is basically my junk food cartoon show, even if it’s starting to wear a bit thin. South Park had a decent season; one that I enjoyed more as I watched it while playing the latest south park game. And of course, Bojack came around for a fourth season. It wasn’t quite as good as season 3, but I still enjoyed it.

That wraps it up for my favorite shows of 2017. I mentioned quite a few shows that I’m looking forward to in 2018 before, but I’ll give special mention to Westworld which is returning for its second season soon. I should also mention that there are a few shows from 2017 that I’ve been meaning to catch up on, but haven’t had the time. It mostly includes seasons released in December and I’ll get to them eventually. If I feel the need to discuss them further, I’ll write up a separate piece.

Until next time. Continue enjoying the new year and stay beautiful.

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This small child – Wow, kids can be cruel. (But don't worry kiddo, Peter Chiarelli will have traded that pick for a sixth-rounder from the 2026 draft who's hard to play against.)

The second star: Evgeny Kuznetsov – This is me every time I make a joke on the podcast and Dave doesn't laugh.

The first star: The Joe Thornton bobblehead – In a callback to one of the greatest fan photos ever, the Sharks are actually giving these out:

Debating the Issues

This week’s debate: The annual Forbes report on NHL franchise values, revenues and incomes was released this week. But can fans really believe the publication's numbers?

(Programming note: Unfortunately, "opposed" could not make it for this week's debate. Luckily, we were able to arrange for a special guest debater: The NHL owners.)

In favor: Fans should take the rankings seriously. Sure, they won't be perfect, but the whole thing is pretty much the only insight we get into NHL finances from a neutral third-party.

NHL owners: Don't be naïve. The Forbes rankings are nonsense. We tell you this every year.

In favor: Well, yes, you do, but you'll excuse the fans if we don't completely trust you guys when it comes to this stuff.

NHL owners: But even Forbes itself acknowledges that these are only estimates. They're basically guessing.

In favor: Well, they're estimates, sure, but they're based on publicly available information and other data points. And it's not like this is some random blogger—Forbes knows a thing or two about money, right?

NHL owners: Not when it comes to the NHL. They're miles off base.

In favor: OK. So enlighten us. Where are they wrong?

NHL owners: Well, all you have to do is look at the bottom two-thirds of the list. Once you get past the Rangers, Leafs, Habs and Blackhawks, they make it sound like everyone else is barely breaking even. They show plenty of teams losing money every year, including a few listed as eight figures in the red.

In favor: And that's not correct?

NHL owners: Come on! Business is booming!

In favor: Well, maybe overall, but isn't that basically because a small handful of teams make almost all of the profit?

NHL owners: Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. Gary Bettman is a visionary, and the salary cap is his signature work of genius. He says so himself. Pretty much every time he speaks, actually.

In favor: Huh. OK, so Forbes is wrong and the league is doing great top-to-bottom.

NHL owners: We are swimming in it, my friend. Times have never been better. This league is run by financial wizards, and we are all rolling in cash.

The final verdict: I guess that settles it. Thanks for clarifying. I suppose that when it comes to Forbes, smart fans will just have to block out the…

NHL owners: Wait, did someone say "lockout?"

In favor: What? No, he said…

NHL owners: It's already lockout time? Wow, that one snuck up on us. OK boys, you know the drill.

In favor: What are you doing?

NHL owners (feebly) : We are so poor…

In favor: Why are you turning your pockets inside out?

NHL owners: We're barely scraping by. Can hardly keep the lights on. We desperately need a new financial system, because this one just isn't working.

In favor: Stop shaking that cup at me.

NHL owners: Please, kind sir. Our poor, sickly mothers can barely afford their medicine. Surely you can see your way to giving up a half-season or two of hockey so that we can make ends meet?

In favor: Look, you guys, he said "block out," not "lockout."

NHL owners: He did?

In favor: He did.

NHL owners: Oh. Well this is awkward.

In favor: Yeah.

NHL owners: Well, anyway… Ignore the Forbes numbers, we're all filthy rich and business has never been better.

In favor: We hate you.

NHL owners: See you in three years, suckers.

The final verdict: I'm sure the NHL is telling the truth, I don't think they'd lie about something like this.

Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators (feebly) : And remember that anyone who needs a new arena is very very poor.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Earlier this week I wrote about Jacob Markstrom and his quest to catch Pokey Reddick's seemingly unbreakable record for most games played by a goalie who's never recorded a shutout. It's one of those weird hockey flukes—based on his number, it should be borderline impossible for Markstrom to have made it this far without a single shutout, especially in the dead puck era. Yet here we are.

Or were, at least. Markstrom went out that very night and finally got his first career shutout after eight years. It was pretty great to see. So Reddick keeps the record.

But with all due respect to Pokey, who was awesome, he holds the record based on semantics. After all, we're talking about goalies who never recorded a single shutout, meaning that once a goalie gets his first goose egg, he drops off the list. That leads to the question: Which goalie had the longest start to a career without a shutout but did eventually record one?

The best guess I could come up with was Ed Staniowski, and apparently I was right:

I think that warrants giving Ed our obscure player honors this week.

Staniowski was the Blues' second-round pick in 1975 after winning the CHL player of the year award in junior. Staniowski broke into the NHL that year, playing 11 games, and was a part-time starter for the Blues for the next six years. He never played more than 40 games in any of those seasons, and by the end of them he'd played 137 career games without recording a shutout.

That streak continued after he was traded in 1981, to the Jets along with Bryan Maxwell and Paul MacLean for Scott Campbell and John Markell, all of which sounds like made-up names you'd get if your hockey simulator didn't have an NHL license. He played a career-high 45 games for the Jets that year. And on March 20, 1982 against the Maple Leafs, in his 176th NHL game, he made 33 saves to finally record his first shutout.

He'd play one more full year in Winnipeg (collecting a second and final shutout) before a midseason trade to the Whalers, where his career ended in 1985. All told he played 219 games, winning 67, and posted a career 4.06 goals-against which wasn't all that bad for the era. After his playing days were over, he went on to a distinguished military career.

Be It Resolved

The IOC announced this week that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics due to their doping scandal. Some Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete, but will have to do so under a neutral flag, meaning any medals they win won't be officially credited to Russia. Man, the 2018 hockey tournament is shaping up to be terrible. The Russia/IOC issue is complicated, and we probably can't do it justice here. Yes, doping is bad, and it sure seems like Russia was doing an awful lot of it. But there is an argument to be made that this decision will end up punishing some athletes who were clean all along. And that might include the nation's hockey players.

The key word there is "might," since at this point the country's various sporting bodies have largely lost any benefit of the doubt we might give them. Remember, the nation's entire under-18 team was yanked out of a major tournament just a year ago after almost all of the players failed a doping test. That doesn't mean that the Olympic players were cheating, but it's not hard to wonder.

The bigger picture, at least as far as hockey fans go, is what happens next to the 2018 tournament. There's already talk that the KHL might decide that it won't allow its players to go to the Games after all. We already know the NHL isn't going, and neither are AHL players on two-way contracts. So the talent pool was already thin. The combination of Russia not having a formal team (if they even go at all) and the KHL pulling out would decimate the tournament even further.

We've already covered the awkwardness of the 2018 Olympics in a previous grab bag, and its only getting worse. There will be a tournament, and the players who participate will be busting their tails to try to win gold. Some great stories will emerge, and you'll want to root them on. But it's just not going to be the same as the last five times. It won't be close. And plenty of fans won't bother watching.

This tournament is going to be a mess. And there's only one way to save it.

So, be it resolved: The 2018 Olympics needs to feature a best-of-seven between the Canadian and American women's team.

You can still have a men's tournament, one that hopefully includes Russia (even if it's under a different name). And you can have the women's tournament too, under the usual rules. But we all know that barring a huge upset, the women's final is coming down to the USA and Canada. So let's make that a best-of-seven. The two programs already hate each other—well, OK, almost all of them hate each other—and the last time they met in the Olympics it was quite possible the most ridiculous game of the year in any sport. What could be better than that? How about: That, but times seven.

Help us out, IOC. Hockey fans are hurting here. If we're going to get up in the middle of the night, at least give us as much as possible of the best possible product.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Have you ever forgotten an important anniversary, then halfheartedly tried to make up for it a few days later? That's what we're doing today, as we break down the Rob Brown/Sylvain Lefebvre fight.

So it's December 5, 1992—in other words, 25 years ago Tuesday, an anniversary I completely missed until a TV network kindly reminded me. The Blackhawks and playing the Maple Leafs on a Saturday night at the Gardens. It's a Norris Division matchup, so the fighting will start any second now. Ah yes, there we go.

This clip, as you may have already realized, is not actually the infamous "Down goes Brown" audio. That's because that was a radio call, by immortal Maple Leafs play-by-play man Joe Bowen. I've met Joe a few times over the years, and each time he's greeted me warmly, shook my hand, then leaned in an ominously said "I'm sending you an invoice someday." He's a joker, that Bonsie. I'm pretty sure he's joking. He might not be joking.

You can hear the Bowen call at the end of this short clip, which also includes the Bob Probert/Tie Domi rematch that happened a few days earlier. But the clip we're using is the longer Bob Cole version, which needless to say is also fantastic.

A line brawl between Toronto and Chicago isn't a surprise, but the main event sure is, as Lefebvre and Brown square off at center ice. Lefebvre was a solid defensive defenseman who was an underrated part of that 1992-93 Leafs team, but as fans we didn't think he was much of a fighter. Apparently Rob Brown didn't either. Turns out we were all wrong.

You can hear the crowd perk up before they even start, including the traditional moment where a small child temporarily blocks the Maple Leaf Gardens camera view. I was at this game, and man did it get loud. It was partly the Saturday night atmosphere, partly the novelty of seeing Brown and Lefebvre decide to go, and partly because this was 1992 and it didn't take much to pass for a highlight if you were a Leafs fan. Mostly the last thing, actually.

They take their time to get going, which brings back memories of the Gary Leeman/Denis Savard dance-a-thon from a few years earlier that ended with Dave Manson doing this. Lefebvre finally lunges and misses, which draws Brown in close enough that they can each get a grip and start throwing.

Nothing lands for the first few rounds, although Brown is winning on the scorecard because he's throwing more. Eventually Lefebvre decides to settle things down and focus on landing a few. It's super effective!

"Three in a row, and Brown is down!" So close, Bob, so close.

The always amazing Harry Neale immediately starts sarcastically mocking anti-fighting types. "Look at the fans, they hate this!" By the way, during the early 90s this exact phrase was uttered roughly a dozen times a night during Leaf home games.

Lefebvre heads to the penalty box, where he's greeted by Nikolai Borschevsky, serving what at the time was just his third career penalty. We cut back to Brown, who's already up and heading off the ice because it's 1992 and it hadn't occurred to anyone that getting knocked out by a punch might be bad for you. Because it's the Gardens, that means he has to make the long skate all the way to the other end of the ice, which must have been fun.

"Oh no. No no, fighting, no no." That's not even a sentence, but I'm enjoying Neale's work nonetheless.

And yes, this fight is indeed where the "Down Goes Brown" name comes from. It's not, as some people apparently believe, a reference to Dustin Brown diving, to Dave Brown losing a fight, or to the director's cut ending of a General Hospital episode.

Two things on Rob Brown: First, he's always had a sense of humor about the whole thing. The guy had a 200-point season in junior and once scored 49 goals in the NHL, but half of today's fans mainly remember him for this fight and the time Ron Hextall tried to murder him. You'd think that would wear on a guy, but if it does he hides it well. He even tells a great story about getting back to the dressing room and telling Michel Goulet "I think he got me on the chin," and Goulet deadpanning "Well you're probably right since that's where all the blood is coming from."

The second thing: Can we at least admit that, while he obviously loses the fight, his reaction is just a little bit badass? He just got TKO'd in front of 16,000 screaming fans. And instead of laying there feeling sorry for himself, he just kind of gets up, shrugs, and heads off. He even seems to tell Belfour that he's fine on the way. I'm not sure what else you'd expect, but if I got hit like that one time you'd never see my face again. Mostly because it would be in the upper deck.

Where does this fight rank among the all-time bouts that have zero involvement from the linesmen whatsoever? I'm guessing pretty high.

We close by heading back to the scrum, which is still going on, and our clip cuts out. You're not missing anything, as nothing else really developed. This turned out to be the only fight in an eventual 2-2 tie. In the Norris days, that should have resulted in everyone in the game winning an automatic Lady Byng.

And that's it. Happy belated anniversary. Don't worry, I've already marked my calendar for 2042 to make sure I won't forget the next one.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This small child – Wow, kids can be cruel. (But don’t worry kiddo, Peter Chiarelli will have traded that pick for a sixth-rounder from the 2026 draft who’s hard to play against.)

The second star: Evgeny Kuznetsov – This is me every time I make a joke on the podcast and Dave doesn’t laugh.

The first star: The Joe Thornton bobblehead – In a callback to one of the greatest fan photos ever, the Sharks are actually giving these out:

Debating the Issues

This week’s debate: The annual Forbes report on NHL franchise values, revenues and incomes was released this week. But can fans really believe the publication’s numbers?

(Programming note: Unfortunately, “opposed” could not make it for this week’s debate. Luckily, we were able to arrange for a special guest debater: The NHL owners.)

In favor: Fans should take the rankings seriously. Sure, they won’t be perfect, but the whole thing is pretty much the only insight we get into NHL finances from a neutral third-party.

NHL owners: Don’t be naïve. The Forbes rankings are nonsense. We tell you this every year.

In favor: Well, yes, you do, but you’ll excuse the fans if we don’t completely trust you guys when it comes to this stuff.

NHL owners: But even Forbes itself acknowledges that these are only estimates. They’re basically guessing.

In favor: Well, they’re estimates, sure, but they’re based on publicly available information and other data points. And it’s not like this is some random blogger—Forbes knows a thing or two about money, right?

NHL owners: Not when it comes to the NHL. They’re miles off base.

In favor: OK. So enlighten us. Where are they wrong?

NHL owners: Well, all you have to do is look at the bottom two-thirds of the list. Once you get past the Rangers, Leafs, Habs and Blackhawks, they make it sound like everyone else is barely breaking even. They show plenty of teams losing money every year, including a few listed as eight figures in the red.

In favor: And that’s not correct?

NHL owners: Come on! Business is booming!

In favor: Well, maybe overall, but isn’t that basically because a small handful of teams make almost all of the profit?

NHL owners: Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. Gary Bettman is a visionary, and the salary cap is his signature work of genius. He says so himself. Pretty much every time he speaks, actually.

In favor: Huh. OK, so Forbes is wrong and the league is doing great top-to-bottom.

NHL owners: We are swimming in it, my friend. Times have never been better. This league is run by financial wizards, and we are all rolling in cash.

The final verdict: I guess that settles it. Thanks for clarifying. I suppose that when it comes to Forbes, smart fans will just have to block out the…

NHL owners: Wait, did someone say “lockout?”

In favor: What? No, he said…

NHL owners: It’s already lockout time? Wow, that one snuck up on us. OK boys, you know the drill.

In favor: What are you doing?

NHL owners (feebly) : We are so poor…

In favor: Why are you turning your pockets inside out?

NHL owners: We’re barely scraping by. Can hardly keep the lights on. We desperately need a new financial system, because this one just isn’t working.

In favor: Stop shaking that cup at me.

NHL owners: Please, kind sir. Our poor, sickly mothers can barely afford their medicine. Surely you can see your way to giving up a half-season or two of hockey so that we can make ends meet?

In favor: Look, you guys, he said “block out,” not “lockout.”

NHL owners: He did?

In favor: He did.

NHL owners: Oh. Well this is awkward.

In favor: Yeah.

NHL owners: Well, anyway… Ignore the Forbes numbers, we’re all filthy rich and business has never been better.

In favor: We hate you.

NHL owners: See you in three years, suckers.

The final verdict: I’m sure the NHL is telling the truth, I don’t think they’d lie about something like this.

Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators (feebly) : And remember that anyone who needs a new arena is very very poor.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Earlier this week I wrote about Jacob Markstrom and his quest to catch Pokey Reddick’s seemingly unbreakable record for most games played by a goalie who’s never recorded a shutout. It’s one of those weird hockey flukes—based on his number, it should be borderline impossible for Markstrom to have made it this far without a single shutout, especially in the dead puck era. Yet here we are.

Or were, at least. Markstrom went out that very night and finally got his first career shutout after eight years. It was pretty great to see. So Reddick keeps the record.

But with all due respect to Pokey, who was awesome, he holds the record based on semantics. After all, we’re talking about goalies who never recorded a single shutout, meaning that once a goalie gets his first goose egg, he drops off the list. That leads to the question: Which goalie had the longest start to a career without a shutout but did eventually record one?

The best guess I could come up with was Ed Staniowski, and apparently I was right:

I think that warrants giving Ed our obscure player honors this week.

Staniowski was the Blues’ second-round pick in 1975 after winning the CHL player of the year award in junior. Staniowski broke into the NHL that year, playing 11 games, and was a part-time starter for the Blues for the next six years. He never played more than 40 games in any of those seasons, and by the end of them he’d played 137 career games without recording a shutout.

That streak continued after he was traded in 1981, to the Jets along with Bryan Maxwell and Paul MacLean for Scott Campbell and John Markell, all of which sounds like made-up names you’d get if your hockey simulator didn’t have an NHL license. He played a career-high 45 games for the Jets that year. And on March 20, 1982 against the Maple Leafs, in his 176th NHL game, he made 33 saves to finally record his first shutout.

He’d play one more full year in Winnipeg (collecting a second and final shutout) before a midseason trade to the Whalers, where his career ended in 1985. All told he played 219 games, winning 67, and posted a career 4.06 goals-against which wasn’t all that bad for the era. After his playing days were over, he went on to a distinguished military career.

Be It Resolved

The IOC announced this week that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics due to their doping scandal. Some Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete, but will have to do so under a neutral flag, meaning any medals they win won’t be officially credited to Russia.

Man, the 2018 hockey tournament is shaping up to be terrible.

The Russia/IOC issue is complicated, and we probably can’t do it justice here. Yes, doping is bad, and it sure seems like Russia was doing an awful lot of it. But there is an argument to be made that this decision will end up punishing some athletes who were clean all along. And that might include the nation’s hockey players.

The key word there is “might,” since at this point the country’s various sporting bodies have largely lost any benefit of the doubt we might give them. Remember, the nation’s entire under-18 team was yanked out of a major tournament just a year ago after almost all of the players failed a doping test. That doesn’t mean that the Olympic players were cheating, but it’s not hard to wonder.

The bigger picture, at least as far as hockey fans go, is what happens next to the 2018 tournament. There’s already talk that the KHL might decide that it won’t allow its players to go to the Games after all. We already know the NHL isn’t going, and neither are AHL players on two-way contracts. So the talent pool was already thin. The combination of Russia not having a formal team (if they even go at all) and the KHL pulling out would decimate the tournament even further.

We’ve already covered the awkwardness of the 2018 Olympics in a previous grab bag, and its only getting worse. There will be a tournament, and the players who participate will be busting their tails to try to win gold. Some great stories will emerge, and you’ll want to root them on. But it’s just not going to be the same as the last five times. It won’t be close. And plenty of fans won’t bother watching.

This tournament is going to be a mess. And there’s only one way to save it.

So, be it resolved: The 2018 Olympics needs to feature a best-of-seven between the Canadian and American women’s team.

You can still have a men’s tournament, one that hopefully includes Russia (even if it’s under a different name). And you can have the women’s tournament too, under the usual rules. But we all know that barring a huge upset, the women’s final is coming down to the USA and Canada. So let’s make that a best-of-seven. The two programs already hate each other—well, OK, almost all of them hate each other—and the last time they met in the Olympics it was quite possible the most ridiculous game of the year in any sport. What could be better than that? How about: That, but times seven.

Help us out, IOC. Hockey fans are hurting here. If we’re going to get up in the middle of the night, at least give us as much as possible of the best possible product.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Have you ever forgotten an important anniversary, then halfheartedly tried to make up for it a few days later? That’s what we’re doing today, as we break down the Rob Brown/Sylvain Lefebvre fight.

So it’s December 5, 1992—in other words, 25 years ago Tuesday, an anniversary I completely missed until a TV network kindly reminded me. The Blackhawks and playing the Maple Leafs on a Saturday night at the Gardens. It’s a Norris Division matchup, so the fighting will start any second now. Ah yes, there we go.

This clip, as you may have already realized, is not actually the infamous “Down goes Brown” audio. That’s because that was a radio call, by immortal Maple Leafs play-by-play man Joe Bowen. I’ve met Joe a few times over the years, and each time he’s greeted me warmly, shook my hand, then leaned in an ominously said “I’m sending you an invoice someday.” He’s a joker, that Bonsie. I’m pretty sure he’s joking. He might not be joking.

You can hear the Bowen call at the end of this short clip, which also includes the Bob Probert/Tie Domi rematch that happened a few days earlier. But the clip we’re using is the longer Bob Cole version, which needless to say is also fantastic.

A line brawl between Toronto and Chicago isn’t a surprise, but the main event sure is, as Lefebvre and Brown square off at center ice. Lefebvre was a solid defensive defenseman who was an underrated part of that 1992-93 Leafs team, but as fans we didn’t think he was much of a fighter. Apparently Rob Brown didn’t either. Turns out we were all wrong.

You can hear the crowd perk up before they even start, including the traditional moment where a small child temporarily blocks the Maple Leaf Gardens camera view. I was at this game, and man did it get loud. It was partly the Saturday night atmosphere, partly the novelty of seeing Brown and Lefebvre decide to go, and partly because this was 1992 and it didn’t take much to pass for a highlight if you were a Leafs fan. Mostly the last thing, actually.

They take their time to get going, which brings back memories of the Gary Leeman/Denis Savard dance-a-thon from a few years earlier that ended with Dave Manson doing this. Lefebvre finally lunges and misses, which draws Brown in close enough that they can each get a grip and start throwing.

Nothing lands for the first few rounds, although Brown is winning on the scorecard because he’s throwing more. Eventually Lefebvre decides to settle things down and focus on landing a few. It’s super effective!

“Three in a row, and Brown is down!” So close, Bob, so close.

The always amazing Harry Neale immediately starts sarcastically mocking anti-fighting types. “Look at the fans, they hate this!” By the way, during the early 90s this exact phrase was uttered roughly a dozen times a night during Leaf home games.

Lefebvre heads to the penalty box, where he’s greeted by Nikolai Borschevsky, serving what at the time was just his third career penalty. We cut back to Brown, who’s already up and heading off the ice because it’s 1992 and it hadn’t occurred to anyone that getting knocked out by a punch might be bad for you. Because it’s the Gardens, that means he has to make the long skate all the way to the other end of the ice, which must have been fun.

“Oh no. No no, fighting, no no.” That’s not even a sentence, but I’m enjoying Neale’s work nonetheless.

And yes, this fight is indeed where the “Down Goes Brown” name comes from. It’s not, as some people apparently believe, a reference to Dustin Brown diving, to Dave Brown losing a fight, or to the director’s cut ending of a General Hospital episode.

Two things on Rob Brown: First, he’s always had a sense of humor about the whole thing. The guy had a 200-point season in junior and once scored 49 goals in the NHL, but half of today’s fans mainly remember him for this fight and the time Ron Hextall tried to murder him. You’d think that would wear on a guy, but if it does he hides it well. He even tells a great story about getting back to the dressing room and telling Michel Goulet “I think he got me on the chin,” and Goulet deadpanning “Well you’re probably right since that’s where all the blood is coming from.”

The second thing: Can we at least admit that, while he obviously loses the fight, his reaction is just a little bit badass? He just got TKO’d in front of 16,000 screaming fans. And instead of laying there feeling sorry for himself, he just kind of gets up, shrugs, and heads off. He even seems to tell Belfour that he’s fine on the way. I’m not sure what else you’d expect, but if I got hit like that one time you’d never see my face again. Mostly because it would be in the upper deck.

Where does this fight rank among the all-time bouts that have zero involvement from the linesmen whatsoever? I’m guessing pretty high.

We close by heading back to the scrum, which is still going on, and our clip cuts out. You’re not missing anything, as nothing else really developed. This turned out to be the only fight in an eventual 2-2 tie. In the Norris days, that should have resulted in everyone in the game winning an automatic Lady Byng.

And that’s it. Happy belated anniversary. Don’t worry, I’ve already marked my calendar for 2042 to make sure I won’t forget the next one.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[theconservativebrief]

If you’ve been following the world of TV Twitter this spring, you probably know that a certain subset of this nation’s great, professionally paid TV viewers has gone a little goofy for Showtime’s Billions. Observe!

Your occasional reminder that Billions is really good, even if it’s not about a crime-solving business tycoon named Jack Billions.

— Todd VanDerWerff (@tvoti) June 4, 2018

I could go on. But my larger point is this: Billions is a show that a lot of critics wrote off somewhere in early season one, and while it got the typical, “Hey, this show has gotten a lot better” write-ups late in that first season and (especially) in season two, the recently concluded third season seems to have crossed some sort of threshold in terms of its popularity and the willingness of its fans to bug you about it nonstop on various social media platforms.

Billions has managed this rise in its fortunes despite being a show about white-guy antiheroes — a type of series many critics have cut less slack in recent years — and despite being about the mega-rich and the lawyers who fail to prosecute them at a time when nobody’s particularly enthused about either of those things.

It’s managed this rise in its fortunes despite the fact that its entire premise, involving one of said lawyers deciding to make an example of one of those billionaires, was basically torpedoed by reality, where the Trump administration has been, let’s say, much friendlier to the mega-rich.

And it’s managed this rise in its fortunes despite the fact that its storytelling is frequently completely ridiculous, often predicated on its characters hiding incredibly elaborate strategic gambits from each other, to the degree that it’s hard to imagine how they kept something so skillfully from seemingly everybody they knew.

That makes it a fun show to goof on, only helped by just how funny the show has become, thanks to its deep bench of actors who are incredibly agile with a one-liner. From jokes about the show’s potential for a crossover with The Americans to “FUCK ‘EM UP, BILLIONS!” this is a series that can handle a solid bit of snark — a must for social media takeoff.

But Billions is really good and sometimes great TV (in its third season, especially). It’s one of the rare shows that has genuinely been bolstered by the times: In an era of very dour shows about the dark times we live in, sometimes great (The Handmaid’s Tale) and sometimes mixed (Westworld), Billions is pure pulp thriller, but in a way that never loses sight of how poisonous all the vipers within it are. Here are three ways Billions overcame its early shakiness to become its best self.

Chuck and Bobby try to find common ground. Showtime

The original premise of Billions was probably unsustainable. It centered on Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), a US attorney for the Southern District of New York, who grew tired of prosecuting small-time crimes and decided to take down Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis), a titan of finance he knew was crooked. Chuck’s wife, Wendy (Maggie Siff), worked for Bobby and thus became an unlikely figure in both men’s games.

In the early going, it wasn’t always clear what the show was, beyond an excuse to watch its two big-name stars snarl at each other. My review of the first half-season liked some aspects of the show (particularly the acting) but found its attempts to dig into the world of high finance too surface-level and obvious. It was clear the show was interested in income inequality and the corruption of US systems that led to the wealthy abusing them endlessly, but it also flirted frequently with lapsing into straight-up lifestyle porn about how cool it was to be rich.

Slowly but surely, the series corrected some of these flaws in season one, but then the question became what the show would even be once Chuck put Bobby behind bars, or Bobby somehow triumphed over Chuck. On a network that had already had a show that centered on an investigation of Damian Lewis that lasted at least one season past its welcome, Billions felt caught in a trap.

And then somewhere in early season two, Billions started overhauling itself for the long haul. You wouldn’t know it to look at the surface of the series, where Chuck and Bobby were still launching long-range attacks at each other (remarkably, it took until mid-season three for the two to share significant screen time). But underneath that surface, the show’s writers, led by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, were focusing more on other cases that fell under Chuck’s jurisdiction, as well as stories about how the corruption of the mega-rich had so infected the entire system that to try to defeat that corruption meant becoming corrupt yourself.

The second season concluded with a series of revelations that showed just how long of a game the series could play and substantially muddied its ethical waters. The question wasn’t whether to root for Chuck or Bobby; instead, the question was figuring out a way to tear down the entire system they existed within. The show still had the gleam associated with wealth and power, but it was interested in questions beyond its central battle. When it finally moved past it in the middle of season three, there was a wealth of other stories waiting to be told, including…

Asia Kate Dillon plays Taylor Mason. Showtime

Much has been made of how Asia Kate Dillon’s Taylor Mason, a promising new employee of Bobby Axelrod’s company, Axelrod Capital, is almost certainly the first nonbinary regular character on a major American TV show. (Both Taylor and Dillon use they/them pronouns.)

Dillon is one of TV’s most electric performers, and they’ve made Taylor into a force within the show, to the degree that almost all of the third-season finale revolves around major decisions they make. The show even subtly codes which characters are not to be trusted based on whether they use Taylor’s preferred pronouns — and the fact that Bobby and his various cohorts take no time in adjusting to using “they” and “them,” despite being scoundrels in countless other ways, is meant to convey the immense respect they have for Taylor, even when they’re incredibly mad at them.

But Taylor’s nonbinary identity and Dillon’s performance don’t explain, in and of themselves, why the show seemed to take off almost immediately after it introduced Taylor in its season two premiere. Instead, I would argue, the presence of Taylor has immediately pried apart some of the show’s most rigid elements, in a way that has benefited both it and almost every character within its world.

Somewhere near its core, Billions is an exploration of toxic masculinity, of the ways that codes of behavior between men can sometimes curdle and go wrong, most obviously affecting the women around those men but also hurting the men themselves. Billions’ most obvious example of this is in the relationship between Chuck and his father, Charles (Jeffrey DeMunn), a ruthless legal shark who abhorred any signs of weakness in his son and seems most at ease when the two are trying to kill each other.

But it’s also present in the constant dick-measuring at Axe Cap, or the scenes where Chuck and Wendy’s love of BDSM threatens his burgeoning political career. Nothing is more important in the world of Billions than the appearance of raw, masculine strength, but that raw, masculine strength is strangling everybody near it.

In the first season, this resulted in a lot of scenes of guys competing to see who could be the most macho, while Wendy and the handful of other women on the show tried to find places to fit amid the swagger. Simply by their mere existence, Taylor stands out as a rejection of this fruitless binary — a one-character expression of the idea that some of the systems we’ve come to rely upon were rotten to begin with.

If the larger idea of Billions is that a failure to seriously question the status quo will destroy the world, Taylor immediately makes viewers question many things the other characters accept as simply the way their lives are. And that extends to other aspects of the series, where Taylor (who is, after all, really, really good at playing the markets to make lots of money and, thus, part of the same corrupt economic system as everybody else) might not have as much immediate bearing.

I didn’t get a chance to talk about my beautiful boy Wags (David Costabile, left) in this article, so I’ll at least put him in a photo. Showtime

If toxic masculinity is near the center of Billions, then the show’s absolute core is the idea that while unchecked capitalism might be fun to watch a TV show about, it’s destroying the world all the same. The more the characters maneuver to hang on to their power, the more entrenched the horrible systems that need to change become.

Chuck goes from trying to bring down Bobby to more or less propping up the whole system Bobby used and abused to become as rich as he is, and in the third season, the government (a not-that-fictional spin on the Trump administration full of fire-breathing evangelicals and grifters in greasy suits) is only too happy to let him do the propping. In the process, innocent lives are destroyed, a woman who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time is deported to Guatemala, and the titans at the top of the credits don’t even blink.

Billions was still interested in these ideas back in its first season, but it kept shifting awkwardly between the modes of “Chuck and Bobby snarl and hurl invective at each other” and “Unchecked capitalism is destroying everything.” One of the show’s co-creators is journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, and in season one, certain storylines in the series felt more reported than they did written, like the show was trying to get across a point but hadn’t quite settled on what that point was or the best way to sell it.

In season two, however, the series simply shifted all of its eggs into the “pulpy business thriller” basket, and trusted that audiences would notice all the horrible venality that happened in proximity to the long war between Chuck and Bobby. When watching people do very bad things is as fun as it can be on Billions, it makes viewers feel all the more complicit in those bad things — and helps increase the sense that we’re just as complicit in the bad things happening in our own reality.

By wedding its larger concerns to the sheer, propulsive fun of the business thriller, Billions found a way to serve the audience its cake, then keep serving them so much cake they wondered where all the cake came from and desperately wanted to stop eating it. That makes Billions, at times, a show where it’s hard to find someone to “root” for, but the series is canny enough to know that’s the whole point.

We’re not damned; we’re already in hell, and we need to find a way to pull it down around our ears to make something better. But good fucking luck with that.

All three seasons of Billions are available on Showtime’s streaming apps. Season four will arrive in 2019.

Original Source -> How Showtime’s Billions went from dull to dazzling

via The Conservative Brief

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This small child – Wow, kids can be cruel. (But don't worry kiddo, Peter Chiarelli will have traded that pick for a sixth-rounder from the 2026 draft who's hard to play against.)

The second star: Evgeny Kuznetsov – This is me every time I make a joke on the podcast and Dave doesn't laugh.

The first star: The Joe Thornton bobblehead – In a callback to one of the greatest fan photos ever, the Sharks are actually giving these out:

Debating the Issues

This week’s debate: The annual Forbes report on NHL franchise values, revenues and incomes was released this week. But can fans really believe the publication's numbers?

(Programming note: Unfortunately, "opposed" could not make it for this week's debate. Luckily, we were able to arrange for a special guest debater: The NHL owners.)

In favor: Fans should take the rankings seriously. Sure, they won't be perfect, but the whole thing is pretty much the only insight we get into NHL finances from a neutral third-party.

NHL owners: Don't be naïve. The Forbes rankings are nonsense. We tell you this every year.

In favor: Well, yes, you do, but you'll excuse the fans if we don't completely trust you guys when it comes to this stuff.

NHL owners: But even Forbes itself acknowledges that these are only estimates. They're basically guessing.

In favor: Well, they're estimates, sure, but they're based on publicly available information and other data points. And it's not like this is some random blogger—Forbes knows a thing or two about money, right?

NHL owners: Not when it comes to the NHL. They're miles off base.

In favor: OK. So enlighten us. Where are they wrong?

NHL owners: Well, all you have to do is look at the bottom two-thirds of the list. Once you get past the Rangers, Leafs, Habs and Blackhawks, they make it sound like everyone else is barely breaking even. They show plenty of teams losing money every year, including a few listed as eight figures in the red.

In favor: And that's not correct?

NHL owners: Come on! Business is booming!

In favor: Well, maybe overall, but isn't that basically because a small handful of teams make almost all of the profit?

NHL owners: Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. Gary Bettman is a visionary, and the salary cap is his signature work of genius. He says so himself. Pretty much every time he speaks, actually.

In favor: Huh. OK, so Forbes is wrong and the league is doing great top-to-bottom.

NHL owners: We are swimming in it, my friend. Times have never been better. This league is run by financial wizards, and we are all rolling in cash.

The final verdict: I guess that settles it. Thanks for clarifying. I suppose that when it comes to Forbes, smart fans will just have to block out the…

NHL owners: Wait, did someone say "lockout?"

In favor: What? No, he said…

NHL owners: It's already lockout time? Wow, that one snuck up on us. OK boys, you know the drill.

In favor: What are you doing?

NHL owners (feebly) : We are so poor…

In favor: Why are you turning your pockets inside out?

NHL owners: We're barely scraping by. Can hardly keep the lights on. We desperately need a new financial system, because this one just isn't working.

In favor: Stop shaking that cup at me.

NHL owners: Please, kind sir. Our poor, sickly mothers can barely afford their medicine. Surely you can see your way to giving up a half-season or two of hockey so that we can make ends meet?

In favor: Look, you guys, he said "block out," not "lockout."

NHL owners: He did?

In favor: He did.

NHL owners: Oh. Well this is awkward.

In favor: Yeah.

NHL owners: Well, anyway… Ignore the Forbes numbers, we're all filthy rich and business has never been better.

In favor: We hate you.

NHL owners: See you in three years, suckers.

The final verdict: I'm sure the NHL is telling the truth, I don't think they'd lie about something like this.

Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators (feebly) : And remember that anyone who needs a new arena is very very poor.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Earlier this week I wrote about Jacob Markstrom and his quest to catch Pokey Reddick's seemingly unbreakable record for most games played by a goalie who's never recorded a shutout. It's one of those weird hockey flukes—based on his number, it should be borderline impossible for Markstrom to have made it this far without a single shutout, especially in the dead puck era. Yet here we are.

Or were, at least. Markstrom went out that very night and finally got his first career shutout after eight years. It was pretty great to see. So Reddick keeps the record.

But with all due respect to Pokey, who was awesome, he holds the record based on semantics. After all, we're talking about goalies who never recorded a single shutout, meaning that once a goalie gets his first goose egg, he drops off the list. That leads to the question: Which goalie had the longest start to a career without a shutout but did eventually record one?

The best guess I could come up with was Ed Staniowski, and apparently I was right:

I think that warrants giving Ed our obscure player honors this week.

Staniowski was the Blues' second-round pick in 1975 after winning the CHL player of the year award in junior. Staniowski broke into the NHL that year, playing 11 games, and was a part-time starter for the Blues for the next six years. He never played more than 40 games in any of those seasons, and by the end of them he'd played 137 career games without recording a shutout.

That streak continued after he was traded in 1981, to the Jets along with Bryan Maxwell and Paul MacLean for Scott Campbell and John Markell, all of which sounds like made-up names you'd get if your hockey simulator didn't have an NHL license. He played a career-high 45 games for the Jets that year. And on March 20, 1982 against the Maple Leafs, in his 176th NHL game, he made 33 saves to finally record his first shutout.

He'd play one more full year in Winnipeg (collecting a second and final shutout) before a midseason trade to the Whalers, where his career ended in 1985. All told he played 219 games, winning 67, and posted a career 4.06 goals-against which wasn't all that bad for the era. After his playing days were over, he went on to a distinguished military career.

Be It Resolved

The IOC announced this week that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics due to their doping scandal. Some Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete, but will have to do so under a neutral flag, meaning any medals they win won't be officially credited to Russia. Man, the 2018 hockey tournament is shaping up to be terrible. The Russia/IOC issue is complicated, and we probably can't do it justice here. Yes, doping is bad, and it sure seems like Russia was doing an awful lot of it. But there is an argument to be made that this decision will end up punishing some athletes who were clean all along. And that might include the nation's hockey players.

The key word there is "might," since at this point the country's various sporting bodies have largely lost any benefit of the doubt we might give them. Remember, the nation's entire under-18 team was yanked out of a major tournament just a year ago after almost all of the players failed a doping test. That doesn't mean that the Olympic players were cheating, but it's not hard to wonder.

The bigger picture, at least as far as hockey fans go, is what happens next to the 2018 tournament. There's already talk that the KHL might decide that it won't allow its players to go to the Games after all. We already know the NHL isn't going, and neither are AHL players on two-way contracts. So the talent pool was already thin. The combination of Russia not having a formal team (if they even go at all) and the KHL pulling out would decimate the tournament even further.

We've already covered the awkwardness of the 2018 Olympics in a previous grab bag, and its only getting worse. There will be a tournament, and the players who participate will be busting their tails to try to win gold. Some great stories will emerge, and you'll want to root them on. But it's just not going to be the same as the last five times. It won't be close. And plenty of fans won't bother watching.

This tournament is going to be a mess. And there's only one way to save it.

So, be it resolved: The 2018 Olympics needs to feature a best-of-seven between the Canadian and American women's team.

You can still have a men's tournament, one that hopefully includes Russia (even if it's under a different name). And you can have the women's tournament too, under the usual rules. But we all know that barring a huge upset, the women's final is coming down to the USA and Canada. So let's make that a best-of-seven. The two programs already hate each other—well, OK, almost all of them hate each other—and the last time they met in the Olympics it was quite possible the most ridiculous game of the year in any sport. What could be better than that? How about: That, but times seven.

Help us out, IOC. Hockey fans are hurting here. If we're going to get up in the middle of the night, at least give us as much as possible of the best possible product.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Have you ever forgotten an important anniversary, then halfheartedly tried to make up for it a few days later? That's what we're doing today, as we break down the Rob Brown/Sylvain Lefebvre fight.

So it's December 5, 1992—in other words, 25 years ago Tuesday, an anniversary I completely missed until a TV network kindly reminded me. The Blackhawks and playing the Maple Leafs on a Saturday night at the Gardens. It's a Norris Division matchup, so the fighting will start any second now. Ah yes, there we go.

This clip, as you may have already realized, is not actually the infamous "Down goes Brown" audio. That's because that was a radio call, by immortal Maple Leafs play-by-play man Joe Bowen. I've met Joe a few times over the years, and each time he's greeted me warmly, shook my hand, then leaned in an ominously said "I'm sending you an invoice someday." He's a joker, that Bonsie. I'm pretty sure he's joking. He might not be joking.

You can hear the Bowen call at the end of this short clip, which also includes the Bob Probert/Tie Domi rematch that happened a few days earlier. But the clip we're using is the longer Bob Cole version, which needless to say is also fantastic.

A line brawl between Toronto and Chicago isn't a surprise, but the main event sure is, as Lefebvre and Brown square off at center ice. Lefebvre was a solid defensive defenseman who was an underrated part of that 1992-93 Leafs team, but as fans we didn't think he was much of a fighter. Apparently Rob Brown didn't either. Turns out we were all wrong.

You can hear the crowd perk up before they even start, including the traditional moment where a small child temporarily blocks the Maple Leaf Gardens camera view. I was at this game, and man did it get loud. It was partly the Saturday night atmosphere, partly the novelty of seeing Brown and Lefebvre decide to go, and partly because this was 1992 and it didn't take much to pass for a highlight if you were a Leafs fan. Mostly the last thing, actually.

They take their time to get going, which brings back memories of the Gary Leeman/Denis Savard dance-a-thon from a few years earlier that ended with Dave Manson doing this. Lefebvre finally lunges and misses, which draws Brown in close enough that they can each get a grip and start throwing.

Nothing lands for the first few rounds, although Brown is winning on the scorecard because he's throwing more. Eventually Lefebvre decides to settle things down and focus on landing a few. It's super effective!

"Three in a row, and Brown is down!" So close, Bob, so close.

The always amazing Harry Neale immediately starts sarcastically mocking anti-fighting types. "Look at the fans, they hate this!" By the way, during the early 90s this exact phrase was uttered roughly a dozen times a night during Leaf home games.

Lefebvre heads to the penalty box, where he's greeted by Nikolai Borschevsky, serving what at the time was just his third career penalty. We cut back to Brown, who's already up and heading off the ice because it's 1992 and it hadn't occurred to anyone that getting knocked out by a punch might be bad for you. Because it's the Gardens, that means he has to make the long skate all the way to the other end of the ice, which must have been fun.

"Oh no. No no, fighting, no no." That's not even a sentence, but I'm enjoying Neale's work nonetheless.

And yes, this fight is indeed where the "Down Goes Brown" name comes from. It's not, as some people apparently believe, a reference to Dustin Brown diving, to Dave Brown losing a fight, or to the director's cut ending of a General Hospital episode.

Two things on Rob Brown: First, he's always had a sense of humor about the whole thing. The guy had a 200-point season in junior and once scored 49 goals in the NHL, but half of today's fans mainly remember him for this fight and the time Ron Hextall tried to murder him. You'd think that would wear on a guy, but if it does he hides it well. He even tells a great story about getting back to the dressing room and telling Michel Goulet "I think he got me on the chin," and Goulet deadpanning "Well you're probably right since that's where all the blood is coming from."

The second thing: Can we at least admit that, while he obviously loses the fight, his reaction is just a little bit badass? He just got TKO'd in front of 16,000 screaming fans. And instead of laying there feeling sorry for himself, he just kind of gets up, shrugs, and heads off. He even seems to tell Belfour that he's fine on the way. I'm not sure what else you'd expect, but if I got hit like that one time you'd never see my face again. Mostly because it would be in the upper deck.

Where does this fight rank among the all-time bouts that have zero involvement from the linesmen whatsoever? I'm guessing pretty high.

We close by heading back to the scrum, which is still going on, and our clip cuts out. You're not missing anything, as nothing else really developed. This turned out to be the only fight in an eventual 2-2 tie. In the Norris days, that should have resulted in everyone in the game winning an automatic Lady Byng.

And that's it. Happy belated anniversary. Don't worry, I've already marked my calendar for 2042 to make sure I won't forget the next one.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This small child – Wow, kids can be cruel. (But don't worry kiddo, Peter Chiarelli will have traded that pick for a sixth-rounder from the 2026 draft who's hard to play against.)

The second star: Evgeny Kuznetsov – This is me every time I make a joke on the podcast and Dave doesn't laugh.

The first star: The Joe Thornton bobblehead – In a callback to one of the greatest fan photos ever, the Sharks are actually giving these out:

Debating the Issues

This week’s debate: The annual Forbes report on NHL franchise values, revenues and incomes was released this week. But can fans really believe the publication's numbers?

(Programming note: Unfortunately, "opposed" could not make it for this week's debate. Luckily, we were able to arrange for a special guest debater: The NHL owners.)

In favor: Fans should take the rankings seriously. Sure, they won't be perfect, but the whole thing is pretty much the only insight we get into NHL finances from a neutral third-party.

NHL owners: Don't be naïve. The Forbes rankings are nonsense. We tell you this every year.

In favor: Well, yes, you do, but you'll excuse the fans if we don't completely trust you guys when it comes to this stuff.

NHL owners: But even Forbes itself acknowledges that these are only estimates. They're basically guessing.

In favor: Well, they're estimates, sure, but they're based on publicly available information and other data points. And it's not like this is some random blogger—Forbes knows a thing or two about money, right?

NHL owners: Not when it comes to the NHL. They're miles off base.

In favor: OK. So enlighten us. Where are they wrong?

NHL owners: Well, all you have to do is look at the bottom two-thirds of the list. Once you get past the Rangers, Leafs, Habs and Blackhawks, they make it sound like everyone else is barely breaking even. They show plenty of teams losing money every year, including a few listed as eight figures in the red.

In favor: And that's not correct?

NHL owners: Come on! Business is booming!

In favor: Well, maybe overall, but isn't that basically because a small handful of teams make almost all of the profit?

NHL owners: Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. Gary Bettman is a visionary, and the salary cap is his signature work of genius. He says so himself. Pretty much every time he speaks, actually.

In favor: Huh. OK, so Forbes is wrong and the league is doing great top-to-bottom.

NHL owners: We are swimming in it, my friend. Times have never been better. This league is run by financial wizards, and we are all rolling in cash.

The final verdict: I guess that settles it. Thanks for clarifying. I suppose that when it comes to Forbes, smart fans will just have to block out the…

NHL owners: Wait, did someone say "lockout?"

In favor: What? No, he said…

NHL owners: It's already lockout time? Wow, that one snuck up on us. OK boys, you know the drill.

In favor: What are you doing?

NHL owners (feebly) : We are so poor…

In favor: Why are you turning your pockets inside out?

NHL owners: We're barely scraping by. Can hardly keep the lights on. We desperately need a new financial system, because this one just isn't working.

In favor: Stop shaking that cup at me.

NHL owners: Please, kind sir. Our poor, sickly mothers can barely afford their medicine. Surely you can see your way to giving up a half-season or two of hockey so that we can make ends meet?

In favor: Look, you guys, he said "block out," not "lockout."

NHL owners: He did?

In favor: He did.

NHL owners: Oh. Well this is awkward.

In favor: Yeah.

NHL owners: Well, anyway… Ignore the Forbes numbers, we're all filthy rich and business has never been better.

In favor: We hate you.

NHL owners: See you in three years, suckers.

The final verdict: I'm sure the NHL is telling the truth, I don't think they'd lie about something like this.

Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators (feebly) : And remember that anyone who needs a new arena is very very poor.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Earlier this week I wrote about Jacob Markstrom and his quest to catch Pokey Reddick's seemingly unbreakable record for most games played by a goalie who's never recorded a shutout. It's one of those weird hockey flukes—based on his number, it should be borderline impossible for Markstrom to have made it this far without a single shutout, especially in the dead puck era. Yet here we are.

Or were, at least. Markstrom went out that very night and finally got his first career shutout after eight years. It was pretty great to see. So Reddick keeps the record.

But with all due respect to Pokey, who was awesome, he holds the record based on semantics. After all, we're talking about goalies who never recorded a single shutout, meaning that once a goalie gets his first goose egg, he drops off the list. That leads to the question: Which goalie had the longest start to a career without a shutout but did eventually record one?

The best guess I could come up with was Ed Staniowski, and apparently I was right:

I think that warrants giving Ed our obscure player honors this week.

Staniowski was the Blues' second-round pick in 1975 after winning the CHL player of the year award in junior. Staniowski broke into the NHL that year, playing 11 games, and was a part-time starter for the Blues for the next six years. He never played more than 40 games in any of those seasons, and by the end of them he'd played 137 career games without recording a shutout.

That streak continued after he was traded in 1981, to the Jets along with Bryan Maxwell and Paul MacLean for Scott Campbell and John Markell, all of which sounds like made-up names you'd get if your hockey simulator didn't have an NHL license. He played a career-high 45 games for the Jets that year. And on March 20, 1982 against the Maple Leafs, in his 176th NHL game, he made 33 saves to finally record his first shutout.

He'd play one more full year in Winnipeg (collecting a second and final shutout) before a midseason trade to the Whalers, where his career ended in 1985. All told he played 219 games, winning 67, and posted a career 4.06 goals-against which wasn't all that bad for the era. After his playing days were over, he went on to a distinguished military career.

Be It Resolved

The IOC announced this week that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics due to their doping scandal. Some Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete, but will have to do so under a neutral flag, meaning any medals they win won't be officially credited to Russia. Man, the 2018 hockey tournament is shaping up to be terrible. The Russia/IOC issue is complicated, and we probably can't do it justice here. Yes, doping is bad, and it sure seems like Russia was doing an awful lot of it. But there is an argument to be made that this decision will end up punishing some athletes who were clean all along. And that might include the nation's hockey players.

The key word there is "might," since at this point the country's various sporting bodies have largely lost any benefit of the doubt we might give them. Remember, the nation's entire under-18 team was yanked out of a major tournament just a year ago after almost all of the players failed a doping test. That doesn't mean that the Olympic players were cheating, but it's not hard to wonder.

The bigger picture, at least as far as hockey fans go, is what happens next to the 2018 tournament. There's already talk that the KHL might decide that it won't allow its players to go to the Games after all. We already know the NHL isn't going, and neither are AHL players on two-way contracts. So the talent pool was already thin. The combination of Russia not having a formal team (if they even go at all) and the KHL pulling out would decimate the tournament even further.

We've already covered the awkwardness of the 2018 Olympics in a previous grab bag, and its only getting worse. There will be a tournament, and the players who participate will be busting their tails to try to win gold. Some great stories will emerge, and you'll want to root them on. But it's just not going to be the same as the last five times. It won't be close. And plenty of fans won't bother watching.

This tournament is going to be a mess. And there's only one way to save it.

So, be it resolved: The 2018 Olympics needs to feature a best-of-seven between the Canadian and American women's team.

You can still have a men's tournament, one that hopefully includes Russia (even if it's under a different name). And you can have the women's tournament too, under the usual rules. But we all know that barring a huge upset, the women's final is coming down to the USA and Canada. So let's make that a best-of-seven. The two programs already hate each other—well, OK, almost all of them hate each other—and the last time they met in the Olympics it was quite possible the most ridiculous game of the year in any sport. What could be better than that? How about: That, but times seven.

Help us out, IOC. Hockey fans are hurting here. If we're going to get up in the middle of the night, at least give us as much as possible of the best possible product.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Have you ever forgotten an important anniversary, then halfheartedly tried to make up for it a few days later? That's what we're doing today, as we break down the Rob Brown/Sylvain Lefebvre fight.

So it's December 5, 1992—in other words, 25 years ago Tuesday, an anniversary I completely missed until a TV network kindly reminded me. The Blackhawks and playing the Maple Leafs on a Saturday night at the Gardens. It's a Norris Division matchup, so the fighting will start any second now. Ah yes, there we go.

This clip, as you may have already realized, is not actually the infamous "Down goes Brown" audio. That's because that was a radio call, by immortal Maple Leafs play-by-play man Joe Bowen. I've met Joe a few times over the years, and each time he's greeted me warmly, shook my hand, then leaned in an ominously said "I'm sending you an invoice someday." He's a joker, that Bonsie. I'm pretty sure he's joking. He might not be joking.

You can hear the Bowen call at the end of this short clip, which also includes the Bob Probert/Tie Domi rematch that happened a few days earlier. But the clip we're using is the longer Bob Cole version, which needless to say is also fantastic.

A line brawl between Toronto and Chicago isn't a surprise, but the main event sure is, as Lefebvre and Brown square off at center ice. Lefebvre was a solid defensive defenseman who was an underrated part of that 1992-93 Leafs team, but as fans we didn't think he was much of a fighter. Apparently Rob Brown didn't either. Turns out we were all wrong.

You can hear the crowd perk up before they even start, including the traditional moment where a small child temporarily blocks the Maple Leaf Gardens camera view. I was at this game, and man did it get loud. It was partly the Saturday night atmosphere, partly the novelty of seeing Brown and Lefebvre decide to go, and partly because this was 1992 and it didn't take much to pass for a highlight if you were a Leafs fan. Mostly the last thing, actually.

They take their time to get going, which brings back memories of the Gary Leeman/Denis Savard dance-a-thon from a few years earlier that ended with Dave Manson doing this. Lefebvre finally lunges and misses, which draws Brown in close enough that they can each get a grip and start throwing.

Nothing lands for the first few rounds, although Brown is winning on the scorecard because he's throwing more. Eventually Lefebvre decides to settle things down and focus on landing a few. It's super effective!

"Three in a row, and Brown is down!" So close, Bob, so close.

The always amazing Harry Neale immediately starts sarcastically mocking anti-fighting types. "Look at the fans, they hate this!" By the way, during the early 90s this exact phrase was uttered roughly a dozen times a night during Leaf home games.

Lefebvre heads to the penalty box, where he's greeted by Nikolai Borschevsky, serving what at the time was just his third career penalty. We cut back to Brown, who's already up and heading off the ice because it's 1992 and it hadn't occurred to anyone that getting knocked out by a punch might be bad for you. Because it's the Gardens, that means he has to make the long skate all the way to the other end of the ice, which must have been fun.

"Oh no. No no, fighting, no no." That's not even a sentence, but I'm enjoying Neale's work nonetheless.

And yes, this fight is indeed where the "Down Goes Brown" name comes from. It's not, as some people apparently believe, a reference to Dustin Brown diving, to Dave Brown losing a fight, or to the director's cut ending of a General Hospital episode.

Two things on Rob Brown: First, he's always had a sense of humor about the whole thing. The guy had a 200-point season in junior and once scored 49 goals in the NHL, but half of today's fans mainly remember him for this fight and the time Ron Hextall tried to murder him. You'd think that would wear on a guy, but if it does he hides it well. He even tells a great story about getting back to the dressing room and telling Michel Goulet "I think he got me on the chin," and Goulet deadpanning "Well you're probably right since that's where all the blood is coming from."

The second thing: Can we at least admit that, while he obviously loses the fight, his reaction is just a little bit badass? He just got TKO'd in front of 16,000 screaming fans. And instead of laying there feeling sorry for himself, he just kind of gets up, shrugs, and heads off. He even seems to tell Belfour that he's fine on the way. I'm not sure what else you'd expect, but if I got hit like that one time you'd never see my face again. Mostly because it would be in the upper deck.

Where does this fight rank among the all-time bouts that have zero involvement from the linesmen whatsoever? I'm guessing pretty high.

We close by heading back to the scrum, which is still going on, and our clip cuts out. You're not missing anything, as nothing else really developed. This turned out to be the only fight in an eventual 2-2 tie. In the Norris days, that should have resulted in everyone in the game winning an automatic Lady Byng.

And that's it. Happy belated anniversary. Don't worry, I've already marked my calendar for 2042 to make sure I won't forget the next one.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This small child – Wow, kids can be cruel. (But don't worry kiddo, Peter Chiarelli will have traded that pick for a sixth-rounder from the 2026 draft who's hard to play against.)

The second star: Evgeny Kuznetsov – This is me every time I make a joke on the podcast and Dave doesn't laugh.

The first star: The Joe Thornton bobblehead – In a callback to one of the greatest fan photos ever, the Sharks are actually giving these out:

Debating the Issues

This week’s debate: The annual Forbes report on NHL franchise values, revenues and incomes was released this week. But can fans really believe the publication's numbers?

(Programming note: Unfortunately, "opposed" could not make it for this week's debate. Luckily, we were able to arrange for a special guest debater: The NHL owners.)

In favor: Fans should take the rankings seriously. Sure, they won't be perfect, but the whole thing is pretty much the only insight we get into NHL finances from a neutral third-party.

NHL owners: Don't be naïve. The Forbes rankings are nonsense. We tell you this every year.

In favor: Well, yes, you do, but you'll excuse the fans if we don't completely trust you guys when it comes to this stuff.

NHL owners: But even Forbes itself acknowledges that these are only estimates. They're basically guessing.

In favor: Well, they're estimates, sure, but they're based on publicly available information and other data points. And it's not like this is some random blogger—Forbes knows a thing or two about money, right?

NHL owners: Not when it comes to the NHL. They're miles off base.

In favor: OK. So enlighten us. Where are they wrong?

NHL owners: Well, all you have to do is look at the bottom two-thirds of the list. Once you get past the Rangers, Leafs, Habs and Blackhawks, they make it sound like everyone else is barely breaking even. They show plenty of teams losing money every year, including a few listed as eight figures in the red.

In favor: And that's not correct?

NHL owners: Come on! Business is booming!

In favor: Well, maybe overall, but isn't that basically because a small handful of teams make almost all of the profit?

NHL owners: Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. Gary Bettman is a visionary, and the salary cap is his signature work of genius. He says so himself. Pretty much every time he speaks, actually.

In favor: Huh. OK, so Forbes is wrong and the league is doing great top-to-bottom.

NHL owners: We are swimming in it, my friend. Times have never been better. This league is run by financial wizards, and we are all rolling in cash.

The final verdict: I guess that settles it. Thanks for clarifying. I suppose that when it comes to Forbes, smart fans will just have to block out the…

NHL owners: Wait, did someone say "lockout?"

In favor: What? No, he said…

NHL owners: It's already lockout time? Wow, that one snuck up on us. OK boys, you know the drill.

In favor: What are you doing?

NHL owners (feebly) : We are so poor…

In favor: Why are you turning your pockets inside out?

NHL owners: We're barely scraping by. Can hardly keep the lights on. We desperately need a new financial system, because this one just isn't working.

In favor: Stop shaking that cup at me.

NHL owners: Please, kind sir. Our poor, sickly mothers can barely afford their medicine. Surely you can see your way to giving up a half-season or two of hockey so that we can make ends meet?

In favor: Look, you guys, he said "block out," not "lockout."

NHL owners: He did?

In favor: He did.

NHL owners: Oh. Well this is awkward.

In favor: Yeah.

NHL owners: Well, anyway… Ignore the Forbes numbers, we're all filthy rich and business has never been better.

In favor: We hate you.

NHL owners: See you in three years, suckers.

The final verdict: I'm sure the NHL is telling the truth, I don't think they'd lie about something like this.

Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators (feebly) : And remember that anyone who needs a new arena is very very poor.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Earlier this week I wrote about Jacob Markstrom and his quest to catch Pokey Reddick's seemingly unbreakable record for most games played by a goalie who's never recorded a shutout. It's one of those weird hockey flukes—based on his number, it should be borderline impossible for Markstrom to have made it this far without a single shutout, especially in the dead puck era. Yet here we are.

Or were, at least. Markstrom went out that very night and finally got his first career shutout after eight years. It was pretty great to see. So Reddick keeps the record.

But with all due respect to Pokey, who was awesome, he holds the record based on semantics. After all, we're talking about goalies who never recorded a single shutout, meaning that once a goalie gets his first goose egg, he drops off the list. That leads to the question: Which goalie had the longest start to a career without a shutout but did eventually record one?

The best guess I could come up with was Ed Staniowski, and apparently I was right:

I think that warrants giving Ed our obscure player honors this week.

Staniowski was the Blues' second-round pick in 1975 after winning the CHL player of the year award in junior. Staniowski broke into the NHL that year, playing 11 games, and was a part-time starter for the Blues for the next six years. He never played more than 40 games in any of those seasons, and by the end of them he'd played 137 career games without recording a shutout.

That streak continued after he was traded in 1981, to the Jets along with Bryan Maxwell and Paul MacLean for Scott Campbell and John Markell, all of which sounds like made-up names you'd get if your hockey simulator didn't have an NHL license. He played a career-high 45 games for the Jets that year. And on March 20, 1982 against the Maple Leafs, in his 176th NHL game, he made 33 saves to finally record his first shutout.

He'd play one more full year in Winnipeg (collecting a second and final shutout) before a midseason trade to the Whalers, where his career ended in 1985. All told he played 219 games, winning 67, and posted a career 4.06 goals-against which wasn't all that bad for the era. After his playing days were over, he went on to a distinguished military career.

Be It Resolved

The IOC announced this week that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics due to their doping scandal. Some Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete, but will have to do so under a neutral flag, meaning any medals they win won't be officially credited to Russia. Man, the 2018 hockey tournament is shaping up to be terrible. The Russia/IOC issue is complicated, and we probably can't do it justice here. Yes, doping is bad, and it sure seems like Russia was doing an awful lot of it. But there is an argument to be made that this decision will end up punishing some athletes who were clean all along. And that might include the nation's hockey players.

The key word there is "might," since at this point the country's various sporting bodies have largely lost any benefit of the doubt we might give them. Remember, the nation's entire under-18 team was yanked out of a major tournament just a year ago after almost all of the players failed a doping test. That doesn't mean that the Olympic players were cheating, but it's not hard to wonder.

The bigger picture, at least as far as hockey fans go, is what happens next to the 2018 tournament. There's already talk that the KHL might decide that it won't allow its players to go to the Games after all. We already know the NHL isn't going, and neither are AHL players on two-way contracts. So the talent pool was already thin. The combination of Russia not having a formal team (if they even go at all) and the KHL pulling out would decimate the tournament even further.

We've already covered the awkwardness of the 2018 Olympics in a previous grab bag, and its only getting worse. There will be a tournament, and the players who participate will be busting their tails to try to win gold. Some great stories will emerge, and you'll want to root them on. But it's just not going to be the same as the last five times. It won't be close. And plenty of fans won't bother watching.

This tournament is going to be a mess. And there's only one way to save it.

So, be it resolved: The 2018 Olympics needs to feature a best-of-seven between the Canadian and American women's team.

You can still have a men's tournament, one that hopefully includes Russia (even if it's under a different name). And you can have the women's tournament too, under the usual rules. But we all know that barring a huge upset, the women's final is coming down to the USA and Canada. So let's make that a best-of-seven. The two programs already hate each other—well, OK, almost all of them hate each other—and the last time they met in the Olympics it was quite possible the most ridiculous game of the year in any sport. What could be better than that? How about: That, but times seven.

Help us out, IOC. Hockey fans are hurting here. If we're going to get up in the middle of the night, at least give us as much as possible of the best possible product.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Have you ever forgotten an important anniversary, then halfheartedly tried to make up for it a few days later? That's what we're doing today, as we break down the Rob Brown/Sylvain Lefebvre fight.

So it's December 5, 1992—in other words, 25 years ago Tuesday, an anniversary I completely missed until a TV network kindly reminded me. The Blackhawks and playing the Maple Leafs on a Saturday night at the Gardens. It's a Norris Division matchup, so the fighting will start any second now. Ah yes, there we go.

This clip, as you may have already realized, is not actually the infamous "Down goes Brown" audio. That's because that was a radio call, by immortal Maple Leafs play-by-play man Joe Bowen. I've met Joe a few times over the years, and each time he's greeted me warmly, shook my hand, then leaned in an ominously said "I'm sending you an invoice someday." He's a joker, that Bonsie. I'm pretty sure he's joking. He might not be joking.

You can hear the Bowen call at the end of this short clip, which also includes the Bob Probert/Tie Domi rematch that happened a few days earlier. But the clip we're using is the longer Bob Cole version, which needless to say is also fantastic.

A line brawl between Toronto and Chicago isn't a surprise, but the main event sure is, as Lefebvre and Brown square off at center ice. Lefebvre was a solid defensive defenseman who was an underrated part of that 1992-93 Leafs team, but as fans we didn't think he was much of a fighter. Apparently Rob Brown didn't either. Turns out we were all wrong.

You can hear the crowd perk up before they even start, including the traditional moment where a small child temporarily blocks the Maple Leaf Gardens camera view. I was at this game, and man did it get loud. It was partly the Saturday night atmosphere, partly the novelty of seeing Brown and Lefebvre decide to go, and partly because this was 1992 and it didn't take much to pass for a highlight if you were a Leafs fan. Mostly the last thing, actually.

They take their time to get going, which brings back memories of the Gary Leeman/Denis Savard dance-a-thon from a few years earlier that ended with Dave Manson doing this. Lefebvre finally lunges and misses, which draws Brown in close enough that they can each get a grip and start throwing.

Nothing lands for the first few rounds, although Brown is winning on the scorecard because he's throwing more. Eventually Lefebvre decides to settle things down and focus on landing a few. It's super effective!

"Three in a row, and Brown is down!" So close, Bob, so close.

The always amazing Harry Neale immediately starts sarcastically mocking anti-fighting types. "Look at the fans, they hate this!" By the way, during the early 90s this exact phrase was uttered roughly a dozen times a night during Leaf home games.

Lefebvre heads to the penalty box, where he's greeted by Nikolai Borschevsky, serving what at the time was just his third career penalty. We cut back to Brown, who's already up and heading off the ice because it's 1992 and it hadn't occurred to anyone that getting knocked out by a punch might be bad for you. Because it's the Gardens, that means he has to make the long skate all the way to the other end of the ice, which must have been fun.

"Oh no. No no, fighting, no no." That's not even a sentence, but I'm enjoying Neale's work nonetheless.

And yes, this fight is indeed where the "Down Goes Brown" name comes from. It's not, as some people apparently believe, a reference to Dustin Brown diving, to Dave Brown losing a fight, or to the director's cut ending of a General Hospital episode.

Two things on Rob Brown: First, he's always had a sense of humor about the whole thing. The guy had a 200-point season in junior and once scored 49 goals in the NHL, but half of today's fans mainly remember him for this fight and the time Ron Hextall tried to murder him. You'd think that would wear on a guy, but if it does he hides it well. He even tells a great story about getting back to the dressing room and telling Michel Goulet "I think he got me on the chin," and Goulet deadpanning "Well you're probably right since that's where all the blood is coming from."

The second thing: Can we at least admit that, while he obviously loses the fight, his reaction is just a little bit badass? He just got TKO'd in front of 16,000 screaming fans. And instead of laying there feeling sorry for himself, he just kind of gets up, shrugs, and heads off. He even seems to tell Belfour that he's fine on the way. I'm not sure what else you'd expect, but if I got hit like that one time you'd never see my face again. Mostly because it would be in the upper deck.

Where does this fight rank among the all-time bouts that have zero involvement from the linesmen whatsoever? I'm guessing pretty high.

We close by heading back to the scrum, which is still going on, and our clip cuts out. You're not missing anything, as nothing else really developed. This turned out to be the only fight in an eventual 2-2 tie. In the Norris days, that should have resulted in everyone in the game winning an automatic Lady Byng.

And that's it. Happy belated anniversary. Don't worry, I've already marked my calendar for 2042 to make sure I won't forget the next one.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This small child – Wow, kids can be cruel. (But don't worry kiddo, Peter Chiarelli will have traded that pick for a sixth-rounder from the 2026 draft who's hard to play against.)

The second star: Evgeny Kuznetsov – This is me every time I make a joke on the podcast and Dave doesn't laugh.

The first star: The Joe Thornton bobblehead – In a callback to one of the greatest fan photos ever, the Sharks are actually giving these out:

Debating the Issues

This week’s debate: The annual Forbes report on NHL franchise values, revenues and incomes was released this week. But can fans really believe the publication's numbers?

(Programming note: Unfortunately, "opposed" could not make it for this week's debate. Luckily, we were able to arrange for a special guest debater: The NHL owners.)

In favor: Fans should take the rankings seriously. Sure, they won't be perfect, but the whole thing is pretty much the only insight we get into NHL finances from a neutral third-party.

NHL owners: Don't be naïve. The Forbes rankings are nonsense. We tell you this every year.

In favor: Well, yes, you do, but you'll excuse the fans if we don't completely trust you guys when it comes to this stuff.

NHL owners: But even Forbes itself acknowledges that these are only estimates. They're basically guessing.

In favor: Well, they're estimates, sure, but they're based on publicly available information and other data points. And it's not like this is some random blogger—Forbes knows a thing or two about money, right?

NHL owners: Not when it comes to the NHL. They're miles off base.

In favor: OK. So enlighten us. Where are they wrong?

NHL owners: Well, all you have to do is look at the bottom two-thirds of the list. Once you get past the Rangers, Leafs, Habs and Blackhawks, they make it sound like everyone else is barely breaking even. They show plenty of teams losing money every year, including a few listed as eight figures in the red.

In favor: And that's not correct?

NHL owners: Come on! Business is booming!

In favor: Well, maybe overall, but isn't that basically because a small handful of teams make almost all of the profit?

NHL owners: Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. Gary Bettman is a visionary, and the salary cap is his signature work of genius. He says so himself. Pretty much every time he speaks, actually.

In favor: Huh. OK, so Forbes is wrong and the league is doing great top-to-bottom.

NHL owners: We are swimming in it, my friend. Times have never been better. This league is run by financial wizards, and we are all rolling in cash.

The final verdict: I guess that settles it. Thanks for clarifying. I suppose that when it comes to Forbes, smart fans will just have to block out the…

NHL owners: Wait, did someone say "lockout?"

In favor: What? No, he said…

NHL owners: It's already lockout time? Wow, that one snuck up on us. OK boys, you know the drill.

In favor: What are you doing?

NHL owners (feebly) : We are so poor…

In favor: Why are you turning your pockets inside out?

NHL owners: We're barely scraping by. Can hardly keep the lights on. We desperately need a new financial system, because this one just isn't working.

In favor: Stop shaking that cup at me.

NHL owners: Please, kind sir. Our poor, sickly mothers can barely afford their medicine. Surely you can see your way to giving up a half-season or two of hockey so that we can make ends meet?

In favor: Look, you guys, he said "block out," not "lockout."

NHL owners: He did?

In favor: He did.

NHL owners: Oh. Well this is awkward.

In favor: Yeah.

NHL owners: Well, anyway… Ignore the Forbes numbers, we're all filthy rich and business has never been better.

In favor: We hate you.

NHL owners: See you in three years, suckers.

The final verdict: I'm sure the NHL is telling the truth, I don't think they'd lie about something like this.

Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators (feebly) : And remember that anyone who needs a new arena is very very poor.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Earlier this week I wrote about Jacob Markstrom and his quest to catch Pokey Reddick's seemingly unbreakable record for most games played by a goalie who's never recorded a shutout. It's one of those weird hockey flukes—based on his number, it should be borderline impossible for Markstrom to have made it this far without a single shutout, especially in the dead puck era. Yet here we are.

Or were, at least. Markstrom went out that very night and finally got his first career shutout after eight years. It was pretty great to see. So Reddick keeps the record.

But with all due respect to Pokey, who was awesome, he holds the record based on semantics. After all, we're talking about goalies who never recorded a single shutout, meaning that once a goalie gets his first goose egg, he drops off the list. That leads to the question: Which goalie had the longest start to a career without a shutout but did eventually record one?

The best guess I could come up with was Ed Staniowski, and apparently I was right:

I think that warrants giving Ed our obscure player honors this week.

Staniowski was the Blues' second-round pick in 1975 after winning the CHL player of the year award in junior. Staniowski broke into the NHL that year, playing 11 games, and was a part-time starter for the Blues for the next six years. He never played more than 40 games in any of those seasons, and by the end of them he'd played 137 career games without recording a shutout.

That streak continued after he was traded in 1981, to the Jets along with Bryan Maxwell and Paul MacLean for Scott Campbell and John Markell, all of which sounds like made-up names you'd get if your hockey simulator didn't have an NHL license. He played a career-high 45 games for the Jets that year. And on March 20, 1982 against the Maple Leafs, in his 176th NHL game, he made 33 saves to finally record his first shutout.

He'd play one more full year in Winnipeg (collecting a second and final shutout) before a midseason trade to the Whalers, where his career ended in 1985. All told he played 219 games, winning 67, and posted a career 4.06 goals-against which wasn't all that bad for the era. After his playing days were over, he went on to a distinguished military career.

Be It Resolved

The IOC announced this week that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics due to their doping scandal. Some Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete, but will have to do so under a neutral flag, meaning any medals they win won't be officially credited to Russia. Man, the 2018 hockey tournament is shaping up to be terrible. The Russia/IOC issue is complicated, and we probably can't do it justice here. Yes, doping is bad, and it sure seems like Russia was doing an awful lot of it. But there is an argument to be made that this decision will end up punishing some athletes who were clean all along. And that might include the nation's hockey players.

The key word there is "might," since at this point the country's various sporting bodies have largely lost any benefit of the doubt we might give them. Remember, the nation's entire under-18 team was yanked out of a major tournament just a year ago after almost all of the players failed a doping test. That doesn't mean that the Olympic players were cheating, but it's not hard to wonder.

The bigger picture, at least as far as hockey fans go, is what happens next to the 2018 tournament. There's already talk that the KHL might decide that it won't allow its players to go to the Games after all. We already know the NHL isn't going, and neither are AHL players on two-way contracts. So the talent pool was already thin. The combination of Russia not having a formal team (if they even go at all) and the KHL pulling out would decimate the tournament even further.

We've already covered the awkwardness of the 2018 Olympics in a previous grab bag, and its only getting worse. There will be a tournament, and the players who participate will be busting their tails to try to win gold. Some great stories will emerge, and you'll want to root them on. But it's just not going to be the same as the last five times. It won't be close. And plenty of fans won't bother watching.

This tournament is going to be a mess. And there's only one way to save it.

So, be it resolved: The 2018 Olympics needs to feature a best-of-seven between the Canadian and American women's team.

You can still have a men's tournament, one that hopefully includes Russia (even if it's under a different name). And you can have the women's tournament too, under the usual rules. But we all know that barring a huge upset, the women's final is coming down to the USA and Canada. So let's make that a best-of-seven. The two programs already hate each other—well, OK, almost all of them hate each other—and the last time they met in the Olympics it was quite possible the most ridiculous game of the year in any sport. What could be better than that? How about: That, but times seven.

Help us out, IOC. Hockey fans are hurting here. If we're going to get up in the middle of the night, at least give us as much as possible of the best possible product.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Have you ever forgotten an important anniversary, then halfheartedly tried to make up for it a few days later? That's what we're doing today, as we break down the Rob Brown/Sylvain Lefebvre fight.

So it's December 5, 1992—in other words, 25 years ago Tuesday, an anniversary I completely missed until a TV network kindly reminded me. The Blackhawks and playing the Maple Leafs on a Saturday night at the Gardens. It's a Norris Division matchup, so the fighting will start any second now. Ah yes, there we go.

This clip, as you may have already realized, is not actually the infamous "Down goes Brown" audio. That's because that was a radio call, by immortal Maple Leafs play-by-play man Joe Bowen. I've met Joe a few times over the years, and each time he's greeted me warmly, shook my hand, then leaned in an ominously said "I'm sending you an invoice someday." He's a joker, that Bonsie. I'm pretty sure he's joking. He might not be joking.

You can hear the Bowen call at the end of this short clip, which also includes the Bob Probert/Tie Domi rematch that happened a few days earlier. But the clip we're using is the longer Bob Cole version, which needless to say is also fantastic.

A line brawl between Toronto and Chicago isn't a surprise, but the main event sure is, as Lefebvre and Brown square off at center ice. Lefebvre was a solid defensive defenseman who was an underrated part of that 1992-93 Leafs team, but as fans we didn't think he was much of a fighter. Apparently Rob Brown didn't either. Turns out we were all wrong.

You can hear the crowd perk up before they even start, including the traditional moment where a small child temporarily blocks the Maple Leaf Gardens camera view. I was at this game, and man did it get loud. It was partly the Saturday night atmosphere, partly the novelty of seeing Brown and Lefebvre decide to go, and partly because this was 1992 and it didn't take much to pass for a highlight if you were a Leafs fan. Mostly the last thing, actually.

They take their time to get going, which brings back memories of the Gary Leeman/Denis Savard dance-a-thon from a few years earlier that ended with Dave Manson doing this. Lefebvre finally lunges and misses, which draws Brown in close enough that they can each get a grip and start throwing.

Nothing lands for the first few rounds, although Brown is winning on the scorecard because he's throwing more. Eventually Lefebvre decides to settle things down and focus on landing a few. It's super effective!

"Three in a row, and Brown is down!" So close, Bob, so close.

The always amazing Harry Neale immediately starts sarcastically mocking anti-fighting types. "Look at the fans, they hate this!" By the way, during the early 90s this exact phrase was uttered roughly a dozen times a night during Leaf home games.

Lefebvre heads to the penalty box, where he's greeted by Nikolai Borschevsky, serving what at the time was just his third career penalty. We cut back to Brown, who's already up and heading off the ice because it's 1992 and it hadn't occurred to anyone that getting knocked out by a punch might be bad for you. Because it's the Gardens, that means he has to make the long skate all the way to the other end of the ice, which must have been fun.

"Oh no. No no, fighting, no no." That's not even a sentence, but I'm enjoying Neale's work nonetheless.

And yes, this fight is indeed where the "Down Goes Brown" name comes from. It's not, as some people apparently believe, a reference to Dustin Brown diving, to Dave Brown losing a fight, or to the director's cut ending of a General Hospital episode.

Two things on Rob Brown: First, he's always had a sense of humor about the whole thing. The guy had a 200-point season in junior and once scored 49 goals in the NHL, but half of today's fans mainly remember him for this fight and the time Ron Hextall tried to murder him. You'd think that would wear on a guy, but if it does he hides it well. He even tells a great story about getting back to the dressing room and telling Michel Goulet "I think he got me on the chin," and Goulet deadpanning "Well you're probably right since that's where all the blood is coming from."

The second thing: Can we at least admit that, while he obviously loses the fight, his reaction is just a little bit badass? He just got TKO'd in front of 16,000 screaming fans. And instead of laying there feeling sorry for himself, he just kind of gets up, shrugs, and heads off. He even seems to tell Belfour that he's fine on the way. I'm not sure what else you'd expect, but if I got hit like that one time you'd never see my face again. Mostly because it would be in the upper deck.

Where does this fight rank among the all-time bouts that have zero involvement from the linesmen whatsoever? I'm guessing pretty high.

We close by heading back to the scrum, which is still going on, and our clip cuts out. You're not missing anything, as nothing else really developed. This turned out to be the only fight in an eventual 2-2 tie. In the Norris days, that should have resulted in everyone in the game winning an automatic Lady Byng.

And that's it. Happy belated anniversary. Don't worry, I've already marked my calendar for 2042 to make sure I won't forget the next one.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: An Important Anniversary, A Bearded Bobblehead, and an Olympic Fix published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv