Science News Online (12/19-26/98): Tubular Science

 December 19 & 26, 1998 

 Tubular Science

 Tune in for previews of hot new TV science shows!

 By BRUCE BOWER

 Hi, everyone. I'm Celia Lloyd, and you're watching Excess Hollywood. We're the 
nightly television show that rocks your world with the latest superficial dish 
on the entertainment industry. If a celebrity says it, we take it seriously. 
Tonight's top story: Midseason surge of the science series!

 TV executives have taken to heart a programming proposal offered by Leon 
Lederman, physicist and winner of the Noble prize-oh, sorry, Mr. Smarty-Pants 
Set Director is shouting in my headset that it's No-belle prize. It seems the 
esteemed No-belle guy wants Hollywood's television honchos to develop shows 
about scientists and what they really do. And voila, here comes a batch of 
science-y shows to replace the latest bumper crop of prime-time ratings losers. 
Professor Lederman says the new programs will boost science's credibility and 
popularity with all those folks out there who don't know their asteroids from a 
hole in the ozone.

 At a press conference today, ambiguously gendered media mogul RuPaul Murdoch 
welcomed TV's torrid embrace of science. The leggy tycoon said, and I quote, 
"From Perry Mason to Law and Order, television has nurtured the public's 
widespread love of lawyers and the good works that they perform. It can do the 
same for scientists."

 CBS launched the TV science trend last month by announcing that it would 
replace The Nanny with Leave It To Beaker. Other networks then rushed their own 
science programs into production. Let's find out more about the exciting lineup 
of new shows and the networks on which they'll appear:

     

 Leave It To Beaker(CBS). Benson "The Beak" Beaker is a precocious third-grader 
at Quantum Elementary School. His unusual science experiments in the basement 
of his parents' suburban house create hilarious problems that he solves with 
help from older brother Drip and live-in housekeeper Chochka, a recent 
immigrant who mangles the English language in amusing ways. The Beak just wants 
the attention of his dad and mom, Deke and Betty, a couple of uptight yuppies 
who are obsessed with running an Internet chat room for computer addicts. Let's 
run a clip from the show: 

 Betty: Deke, there's smoke coming out of the basement and green slime oozing 
up the steps. My new carpet! 

 Deke: Beak! Get your mainframe up here right now, young man. 

 The Beak: Aw, Dad. I was just cloning degraded genetic material that mutated 
in the nuclear waste dump behind school. I collected it during recess, honest. 
When Drip gets home from his date, he'll find some funky toxic splotches 
festering on his pillow. 

 Chochka: I no clean soxes of Uncle Fester. (Nervous nasal laugh.)

     

 Streets of Santa Fe (ABC). [This science drama contains adult language and 
partial nudity. Viewer discretion is advised.] By day, Buddy Bodhisattva 
quantifies complex biological interactions at New Mexico's Institute of 
Highfalutin' Obtuse Processes (IHOP). At night, the high-strung mathematician 
moonlights as a detective on the Santa Fe Police Department. He and his 
partner, laconic detective second-class and freelance shaman Carlton Kumbaya, 
work homicide. Buddy uses his advanced knowledge of chaos and complexity theory 
to track down murderers. Carlton is left to deal with clues, witnesses, and 
other reductionistic anachronisms of Western thinking.

 In his few spare moments, Buddy seeks solace and instant gratification from 
his girlfriend, an exotic dancer named Abyssinia Lader. In the first episode, 
Buddy and Carlton search for a serial killer of local art shop owners. In this 
clip, the detectives check out the latest victim, whose blood-spattered body 
lies in a tony modern art gallery:

 Carlton: Hey, man, check it out. Someone slashed that Mondrian painting on the 
far wall to shreds. I wonder if the killer had a past traumatic experience with 
non-objective art. Or maybe brightly colored geometric patterns trigger violent 
epileptic seizures in our man, during which his brain compels him to murder 
pretentious people with humanities degrees.

 Buddy: Stow the linear thinking, Carlton. Given the complex web of interacting 
forces in the life of your average homicidal maniac, we'll never be able to 
predict when his murderous urges will emerge. But if my new computer model 
works out, I'll generate a three-dimensional display of this crazed dirtball's 
dynamic action potentials and all of his magazine subscriptions since 1984. 

 Carlton: I told you to stay away from my peyote buttons, man. Those are for 
religious ceremonies only.

 The clip segues to a scene in which Buddy and Abyssinia recline in bed, the 
darkened room creating silhouettes of their bare upper torsos.

 Buddy: You are the yin to my yang, Aby. Our mathematical possibilities are 
endless. 

 Abyssinia: How come you only want to see me late at night in sleazy motels 
with easy access to the Interstate? Are you ashamed of me, Buddy? 

 Buddy: No, baby, no. It's just that I'm bummed out by this case I'm working on 
with Carlton. It's got us stumped. You know, the art dealer murders. 

 Abyssinia: What does that have to do with meeting me in these run-down dives? 
I perform in one all evening, usually to more applause. A lady likes some 
pampering. 

 Buddy: Aby, Aby, my strange, oscillating little attractor. Let me explain. A 
butterfly beating its translucent, multicolored wings in a Brazilian rain 
forest can set off a chain of events that results in a tidal wave scattering 
retirement condos in South Florida like so many mah-jongg tiles. Life is a 
nonlinear web of interrelated forces that in our case converge on Billy Bob's 
Ride-On Inn. 

 Aby: Wow. You're so complex. I hope the IHOP customers leave you good tips.

     

 Dolly the Werewolf Slayer(UPN). Werewolves are killing the sheep of Scotland 
and callously upsetting the region's delicate balance of nature. A team of 
agricultural scientists creates a second clone of Dolly the sheep, beefs up her 
DNA so that she can talk, and sends her out to lecture the bloodthirsty beasts 
about the need for biological diversity in complex ecosystems. But watch 
out-this sheep packs heat. She'll shoot excessive growlers and droolers full of 
silver bullets before you can say, "Pass the mint jelly." Dolly and her 
sidekick, Babe the genetically engineered talking pig, scour Scotland's moors 
and discos by night in search of hairy, scary creatures with toothy 
grins-they're everywhere.

 New-and-improved Dolly (Babe affectionately calls her "Ewe Two") also kicks up 
her front legs and fights kung-fu style. In a pinch, Babe turns tail and passes 
climate-endangering gas at attacking werewolves, cunningly exploiting their 
heightened sense of smell to paralyze them. Here's the clip:

 Dolly: The moors are quiet tonight, Babe. Why don't you shear my legs while I 
watch CNN? That Wolf Blitzer uncurls my fleece.

 A snarling, slobbering werewolf jumps out from behind a tree. He attacks.

 Dolly: Species preservation is more important than your animal urges, fella! 
No lamb chops tonight, but how about a karate chop in the kisser? Hiiiya!

 The werewolf blocks Dolly's karate chop and throws her to the ground.

 Dolly: Babe, where are you? I need help. 

 Babe: Pffffffft.

     

 When Researchers Attack(Fox). They're bad boys-whatcha gonna do? On this 
reality-based show, host Peter Graves screens videos taken by graduate students 
and FBI agents of senior scientists creatively abusing and humiliating the 
lesser beings that they're forced to work with. Computer-generated black bars 
cover perpetrators' eyes to ensure their anonymity and to keep you guessing.

 Watch as a distinguished anthropologist presenting a paper at a scientific 
meeting is repeatedly interrupted and then shouted down by a rival in the 
audience. Chuckle as a leading biologist shreds his hair, insults his 
secretary, and plots revenge upon learning the identity of a peer reviewer who 
trashed his latest research submission. Cover the kids' ears as an eminent 
geneticist goes off-the-record in a telephone interview with a journalist and 
employs a vivid string of expletives (sorry, some had to be bleeped out!) to 
describe the quality of work by other DNA researchers. Get ready for a clip:

 Graves: Here's a psychology postdoctoral candidate who got more than she 
bargained for when presenting her research to the tenured toughs at a major 
university. (He smiles knowingly. His hair is perfect.)

 Grainy footage shows a nervous-looking young woman stepping to the lectern in 
a small auditorium. She adjusts her glasses warily and looks out at a modest 
gathering of grad students and professors. With a quiver in her voice, she 
begins to explain her research project.

 Several senior researchers have staked out the front row. Among them sits the 
perp-a master of disaster who regularly reduces scientific pip-squeaks to 
mortified silence with a few razor-sharp queries. Arms folded, the big shots 
whisper among themselves and laugh loudly as the presentation proceeds. The 
perp stretches, looks back at the audience with a smirk, and stands up to 
deliver a question.

 Perp(rolling his eyes): All right, do you mean to tell me . . .

 Before he can proceed with his verbal mauling, the presenter slumps to the 
floor. She's out colder than an undergraduate at an introductory philosophy 
lecture.

 Woman in the back: She's fainted! Do something!

 Two male grad students drag the presenter off the stage and stumble toward the 
campus infirmary.

 Perp(to his front-row mates): I like brief presentations. They're superior 
learning experiences.

 Graves: People who climb ivory towers should try to avoid taking a header.

     

 The Steve Gould Show (Discovery). Who says the variety show is extinct? It's 
simply evolved. Harvard paleontology professor Gould hosts a weekly science 
review that will drive you cladistic.

 Here's the lineup for the first show: Bass drum and kazoo band from Harvard's 
geology department performs classical music, including highlights from 
Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring"; comedy and ventriloquism from artificial 
intelligence guru Marvin Minsky and Chipper, a wise-cracking desktop computer 
with movable eyes and mouth; Steve chats with Topo Gigio and explains how the 
mousy little puppet evolved from an ancient line of rubbery rodents; and for 
the youngsters, heavy metal music and lab demonstrations from four physics 
graduate students who call themselves "Little Galileo and the Superstrings." In 
a regular closing segment, Steve trades hilarious barbs with a panel of 
evolutionary psychologists, who are joined this week by comedian Don Rickles. 
The clip, please:

 Panelist A: Steve, you Marxist biophobe, you wouldn't recognize a mental 
adaptation sculpted by natural selection if it bit you on your cortical sulcus. 

 Panelist B: Good one, heh, heh. 

 Steve: So funny I forgot to laugh, Darwinian fundamentalists. Punctuate this! 

 Rickles: Hey, shaddup you hockey pucks. I thought my agent booked me on the 
new Hollywood Squares, not Planet of the Stiffs.

     

 LabWatch(WB). David Hasselhoff plays molecular geneticist Rafe Testosteroni, 
superintelligent (and shirtless) director of a top-secret science place in Los 
Angeles known as The Top-Secret Science Place. With the power of-you guessed 
it-science, Rafe and his buff colleagues banish yucky pollution from prime 
surfing beaches, thwart blubbery biological terrorists who plan to contaminate 
suntan lotion supplies with acne-inducing chemicals, and blast icky infectious 
viruses plaguing health-club shower stalls. Pamela Anderson plays bikini-clad 
biologist Genie Helix. Richard Dean Anderson reprises his McGyver role in 
recurring cameo appearances. Music videos in each episode present quick shots 
of whirling centrifuges, rhythmic computer printouts, and other action-oriented 
features of lab life accompanied by tunes from Backstreet Boys and Celine Dion. 
How about a short clip: 

 Rafe: If I don't run a PCR on this MTV right away, you can bend over and kiss 
the planet good-bye. Quick, Genie, hand me some electrophoretic gel. 

 Genie: We're fresh out. Will my styling mousse do?

 Rafe: (Adjusts his sunglasses.) Cool.

     

 Can you stand it, America? I'm getting goose bumps. Well, okay, my flesh is 
crawling.

 Tune in tomorrow for our next top story: An interview with Richard Simmons 
about his new aerobic exercise and stress-reduction videotape, Sweatin' to the 
Existentialists. Talk about big fun in a meaningless universe. It's absurd, but 
then, c'est la vie, mes amis. Until then, this is Celia Lloyd for Excess 
Hollywood. Remember, when it comes to entertainment, ex-cess is the secret to 
suc-cess.

 From Science News, Vol. 154, No. 25 & 26, December 19 & 26, 1998, p. 395. 
Copyright O 1998 by Science Service.

copyright 1998