You may recall that a couple of months back, I reported on the rumor that Warner Bros. was going to release the short-lived Bruce Campbell series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., on DVD. Well, Warner still hasn’t made any kind of official announcement confirming the release, but the Web site TVShowsOnDVD.com is currently running a poll to determine which cover fans would most like to see on their Brisco discs. According to the site, this poll is sanctioned by Warner and the results will be taken into account by the studio. In addition, the two possible cover designs are said to be the real deal, actual mock-ups that have been approved by Warner, Bruce Campbell, and Brisco‘s producer, Carlton Cuse.

If you care about this show at all, run on over to TVShowsOnDVD and cast your vote now. It’s a rare opportunity for consumers and fans to actually have a say in an upcoming product package, rather than just taking whatever stupid crap the marketing department comes up with. I think that’s pretty cool. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, my preferred cover is the less goofy one…

Why is it that this season of 24, which is the most cartoonish, over the top, and amoral of the show’s entire run — I think it must be in Kiefer Sutherland’s contract that his character, the indestructible Jack Bauer, has to torture somebody at least once an episode — is also the most compelling and exciting the show has been in several years? Possibly since the first or second season? Seriously, last night’s double-episode “event” had me feeling something I’ve not experienced for a very long time while watching a TV show or movie, a tightness in my belly that was also kind of hollow and fluttery. Now what the heck do you suppose that could that have been? Oh, yeah, I remember what you call that feeling: suspense. Genuine, edge-of-your-seat suspense. And that’s not all. I felt other emotions, too, strong ones, including actual sorrow at the end of the night’s second episode. Enough to produce tears even. I’m amazed and a little bit baffled, considering I was ready to give up on this show only a couple weeks ago. Still, as effective as last night’s segments may have been, the show is definitely starting to creak…

[Warning: Spoilers follow. Don’t read on if you taped it and don’t what to know what happens.]

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Just a few thoughts I had while watching tonight’s exciting episode of 24:

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According to TV comedy writer Ken Levine, there is a meme going around that asks folks to name their ten favorite TV theme songs. Like Levine, who spins this meme into a fairly long rant about the demise of theme songs, I also miss the days when your favorite series was preceded by a memorable tune to help set the mood for whatever was to follow. The best theme songs always captured the tone of the show they represented and helped to hype you up and get you ready for your night’s viewing, whether it was a comedy, a cop show, or a family drama. When a good theme song was combined with a well-designed visual sequence, they could be as entertaining as the show itself. I can think of a number of theme songs that are so inextricably linked in my mind with their accompanying visual images that I can’t hear the music without imagining the picture, too — for instance, the staccato opening of Miami Vice immediately conjures flamingoes and rushing water, and the bombastic first notes of Magnum‘s theme is always accompanied in my head by TC’s little chopper dropping toward the surf in a vertiginous dive. And, as those two examples indicate, a good TV theme often turned up on the radio, too.

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When the series 24 first premiered a few seasons back, I thought it was the most brilliant thing that’d been on television in a long, long time — the conceit that each hour-long episode represented an hour of “real time” was clever and fresh, the suspenseful tone was pretty consistent, and even the plot of that first season was relatively realistic (if somewhat burdened with the “one damn thing after another” flavor of old cliffhanger serials, which, in a sense, is exactly what 24 is). It was also great to see Kiefer Sutherland, an actor I’ve enjoyed since his early roles in the 1980s, land a steady job and some critical respect.

However, I decided early on that show was something of a one-trick pony; after all, how many incredibly intense 24-hour crises in which the fate of the nation hangs in the balance could a single counter-terrorism agent realistically find himself in? One, maybe two in a single lifetime, but after that it would start getting harder and harder to accept that what we’re watching is “real.” Disbelief will only allow itself to be suspended so far. Call it the Die Hard 2 effect.

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This week I’ve been watching the long-form documentary film Country Boys on PBS. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it highly enough; it’s utterly compelling television. And if you haven’t heard about it, you obviously don’t watch enough PBS because they’ve been advertising the hell out of it.

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Whoa, hold the phone! I’ve just run across something far more improbable even than a for-real hyperdrive! According to the official Web site of Bruce Campbell, the King of the B-Movies, Warner Bros. is actually going to release The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. on DVD!

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Thanks to an assist from one of you lovely readers out there, I’m now able to show you Gary Coleman as he appeared in the Buck Rogers episode “Cosmic Wiz Kid,” which first aired on November 15, 1979:

For the record, he hasn’t changed much in the last 26 years. Well, aside from the crow’s feet, a shorter haircut, and an improved sense of fashion, of course…

I’ve been googling around trying to find a photo of Gary Coleman as Heironymous Fox in that Buck Rogers episode I mentioned earlier. No luck on that front, but I did find this gem of an image:

This picture contains just about everything you need to know about television in the early ’80s… I love it!