Dan LeBatard, go to your room!

While I posted my whole Best of the '00s package of lists last Friday, Fienberg has slowly been working his way through his list of his favorite 31 shows of the decade, one a day since the start of December. (And at much greater length, and with more thought, than I gave any single show on my lists.)

Proving that we are not, in fact, the same person, Dan has a bunch of shows on his list so far that appeared nowhere on any of my lists. And today, he paid homage to the one show I couldn't figure out how to include in any of my lists, short of contriving a "Best Sports-Related But Non-Sports Programming of the '00s" list just so I could salute ESPN's wonderful "Pardon the Interruption."

Fienberg and I disagree vehemently on the merits of Dan LeBatard as guest-host (I'm of the opinion that LeBatard is the one fill-in who, particularly on days when it's him and Tony together, brings the show somewhere into the quality neighborhood of a Tony/Wilbon episode, whereas Fienberg claims to turn off the set when he hears the word "Bam!"), but overall, he says a lot of things I would have said about the only show I watch every weekday.

So go read that, and at the end there are links to all his previous Best of the '00s entries. Click here to read the full post

Pardon all the guest hosts

Okay, one more post before I attempt to find interesting ways to describe shows I haven't seen like "My Own Worst Enemy" and "Surviving Suburbia." After the jump, some thoughts on "Pardon the Interruption," and why we haven't seen too many images like that this summer...

As I've mentioned in the past, I watch or listen to "PTI" every day. It is the first, best, and really only tolerable one of ESPN's "Angry Middle-Aged Newspapermen Yell At Each Other for 30 Minutes" shows. Where the others seem manufactured and stupid (because they are), "PTI" works because of the genuine chemistry and camaraderie between Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. Though both are great writers, neither is a particularly brilliant analyst and have plenty of blind spots, but they're aware of that and don't try to turn "PTI" into a show where they try to lord their intellectual superiority over all of sports fandom. (That would be "Mike and the Mad Dog.") It's less a sports version of Siskel & Ebert than it is a comedy show, and Tony and Wilbon are funny and charming enough together to make it work, day in and day out, no matter how slow the news day or how over-covered the subject.

The problem is, Tony has been AWOL for virtually the entire summer. Since the start of July, I can think of two shows where he's appeared, and one of them was on a day when J.A. Adande was filling in for Wilbon. He's back on the show for the rest of this week, but then "PTI" takes a week off, and he's only scheduled for a couple of days the following week (after which he has to get surgery for the hernia he was complaining about all the time before he disappeared from the show), and I'm losing my patience with this.

An ESPN PR rep says Tony's taken the same number of vacation days as last year, and that it seems longer this summer because "PTI" went dark for two weeks. I'm not going to dispute his figures, but the show inevitably suffers when one of the hosts is out -- and even more when (shudder) both are out on the same day -- and it's not like summer has been a dead period for sports news.

I do like some of the guest hosts. Dan LeBatard has an appropriate sense for the level of absurdity of the show and knows how to push both Tony and Wilbon's buttons. Bob Ryan can be amusing with Wilbon, though he and Tony often seem redundant together. And Rick Reilly wasn't terrible during his two-day stint earlier this week, particularly on the second day. (Again, Reilly's less of a sportswriter/analyst than he is a light comedian, so the format suits him. I heard some complaints that he seemed stiff on-air, but as I only listened to the podcast versions of both, I can't speak to that.) But God help us on the days when the fill-ins are the likes of Adande, or Dan Shaughnessy or the reprehensible Jay Mariotti.

"PTI" is, was, and always should be about this particular relationship between these two guys, and no matter how affable the guests sometimes are, it's not the same. It's the same way "At the Movies" never really recovered from Gene Siskel's death; Richard Roeper's charming and good on camera, and it could be fun to see Ebert strain to conceal his frustration when Roeper was on a particularly populist streak, but the magic was gone.

"PTI" is one of the few oases in my day, something that helps me get through annoying household chores, or rage-inducing traffic, or the latest depressing development in the newspaper business. Is it too much to ask that one of the co-hosts doesn't take an entire season off? Think of us poor slobs south of the Canadian border, Tony. Please. Click here to read the full post

Loudmouths

I'll get back to the episode reviews shortly, but I wanted to post the morning column link and ask a question about "Pardon the Interruption" for those of you who watch it.

The column deals with the continued lameness of "The Apprentice," plus the debut of MTV's "I'm From Rolling Stone" and the cancellation of "The O.C." A snippet:

New city, same blowhard.

Donald Trump's empire has been largely built on hype and an ability to outmaneuver his creditors, and in an attempt to hide from the rapidly-dwindling numbers for "The Apprentice," he's moved season six to Los Angeles. But the location wasn't the problem. The Donald was.

To read the full thing, click here.

Meanwhile, "PTI": While I usually shudder at the appearance of guest hosts, I've developed a weird fondness for Dan Le Batard since he started regularly subbing for Tony on Tuesdays during football season. His knowledge base is much better than Tony and Wilbon's combined, he doesn't mind playing the clown but can also be very thoughtful, and he and Wilbon have good chemistry.

This week, however, it's been him and Tony, and things have, I think, started to get ugly. I started listening to the "PTI" podcast a few months ago as a time-management solution (makes the commute go faster, gives me a chance to watch other stuff at home), which means I may be missing out on some visual cues, and what I'm interpretingg as ugliness could just be more banter.

Anyway, on Wednesday's show, Tony and Le Batard were already approaching "Around the Horn" volume while discussing Nick Saban's departure from the Dolphins. Then they moved over to the legal problems of so many players on the Bengals, and Dan suggested that in a violent sport like football, you need a few guys on your team who will live on the edge of lawlessness. Tony flipped out, and got so loud and angry that Dan even said, "I'm not in love with your tone right now" (though you could hear crewmembers laughing off-stage), and there was a hostile undercurrent to the rest of the show. Things seemed a little calmer yesterday, but Tony was still yelling a lot more than usual.

So am I misreading this, or is there a feud going on that StatBoy can't moderate? Click here to read the full post

Pardon the split screen

So Tony Kornheiser is going to be the third man in ESPN's "Monday Night Football" booth, huh? Not a bad idea. This is the hiring ABC should've made instead of Dennis Miller; Tony's funny, but he also knows sports and doesn't feel a need to prove he's hipper than the room.

But here's my concern: Tony is deathly afraid to fly, so, like John Madden, he's going to travel to and from the games by bus. That works fine for Madden, who has a once-a-week gig, but Tony has a little five-day-a-week show I like to call "Pardon the Interruption." ESPN has already said that Wilbon will fly to the site of that week's game so the Monday show can feature the two of them in person. But if the game's in San Francisco, or Seattle, or Arizona, no way Tony's going to be back in D.C. in time for the Tuesday show, or maybe the Wednesday one. (Depends on whether the Korn-Crusier has more than one driver so it can travel all day and night.)

An ESPN publicist told me that they're still ironing out the details, and if Tony's not back to the studio in time for a show, they'll try to stop at some TV station along the road and do a split-screened show. Makes logistical sense, but anyone who watches "PTI" every day (it and "The Daily Show" are my only daily fixes) knows that the show is never as good when Tony and Wilbon aren't in the studio together. (Though that's still better than a guest appearance by Dan LeBatard.) If they're going to be regularly separated during football season because Tony's on a bus passing through Eau Claire or Tulsa, "PTI" is going to suffer. And because I can't stand the sound of Joe Theisman's voice, I care a hell of a lot more about what's going to happen to "PTI" than I do about the new Monday night team. Click here to read the full post