I was out in the car today, flipping through XM channels and pausing at Taylor Hicks's "Do I Make Your Proud." And began thinking about Ben Kingsley.

During the 1982 Oscars, you may recall, Kingsley's performance in "Gandhi" was nominated, against among others Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie." A friend of mine argued that Hoffman should win, and not only because he gave a good performance. In addition, my friend insisted that Hoffman could have played "Gandhi" well, while Kingsley couldn't have done "Tootsie," so Hoffman was obviously the better actor.

Well, having watched Kingsley in the years since, I suspect he could have been very good and funny in "Tootsie." (One piece of evidence: His performance on "The Sopranos.") But that doesn't matter, since Kingsley got that "Gandhi" Oscar anyway.

So where does Mr. Hicks come in? Because "Do I Make You Proud" is such a big piece of cheese, it's like a gigantically recycled, overdone (and far less likable) version of "I Don't Want To Miss a Thing." And that brings us the Taylor-Tyler test. I don't think Taylor could do "I Don't Want To Miss a Thing" was well as Steven Tyler. But I think Steven Tyler could sing "Do I Make You Proud" better than Taylor does.

And, having written this all out, I am thinking that in the car I should just focus on my driving.

This was in the e-mail:

NEW YORK - June 30, 2006 - The Arena Football League and NBC Sports have failed to reach an agreement to extend their broadcasting contract, both organizations jointly announced today. The AFL will immediately begin broadcast discussions with numerous organizations.

"NBC has been a great partner," said AFL Commissioner David Baker. "We are forever grateful to them for exhibiting our game with the utmost respect and integrity. We wish them well, but are also excited to begin a new chapter that will continue our unprecedented growth."

Ken Schanzer, President, NBC Sports said: "Unfortunately we were unable to reach an agreement. We've enjoyed our partnership with the Arena Football League. It's a great game with great people. We wish them all the best."

Arena football was supposed to be NBC's more economical way of having punts and passes than paying the NFL freight. Then it recognized what the NFL could do for its prime time fortunes, making the deal for Sunday night games this fall — and a deal with arena football was no longer a priority.

One sign of the length of my sports-watching life: "AFL" makes me think of the American Football League…

Right now I'm watching the 11th episode of the Showtime series "Brotherhood," which premieres on July 9. The 11th is the last of the show's inaugural season and yes, I have watched the 10 preceding it, the TV on my desk running while I went through papers, organized press releases, answered e-mails and planned some projects.

Sitting on my desk is a packet with seven episodes of the fourth season of HBO's "The Wire," which begins in September. Since I've already received some other episodes, I'll be able to sit down and watch the entire fourth season before a press conference about the show during the upcoming TCA press tour.

This is one of the great things about doing what I do — the advance screening writ large.

And in the era of serialized storytelling, it's good to have a complete season, to see where a show is going, to avoid the long wait. It also reflects the way a lot of people watch TV shows now — waiting for an entire season on DVD, or stockpiling episodes on the DVR so they can all be watched at once. I think some shows are actually improved that way — that the craziness of "24," to use the most obvious example, is more forgivable when you're watching it all at once than when you have a week to think about how nutty the previous episode was.

But the Big Gulp approach to TV watching has its drawbacks — and not just the time demand that comes with a season-long set of episodes. For one thing, you can't talk to people who haven't seen what you've seen, restricting conversations, especially when folks are chewing on some plot twist that you know the outcome of. (Of course, that's a risk even when I'm an episode or two ahead, as happened when I got mixed up about which episodes of "Rescue Me" were televised in a recent post.) And I like talking to people about TV, to see what their reactions are to an episode or a scene, to find out if their reactions match mine, and if they have better reasons for their reaction than I did for mine.

And it doesn't even have to be about a big plot twist. I can't wait for people to see Paul Haggis's upcoming role — as himself — on "Entourage." If you thought James Cameron had fun "being" himself on that show, wait until you see what Haggis does. (The episode airs on July 9.)

Beyond that, too, the Big Gulp takes a weekly ritual out of your life — the whole thing of knowing that on a given night, you have an hour set aside to watch a show you love, often with family and friends sharing the experience.

But it's tough to wait when you're caught up in a show's plot, and the next episode is right in front of you.

So my question for all you commenters is, what's the best way to watch a TV show — week to week or in large quantities?

From today's e-mail:

TNT’s blockbuster original series THE CLOSER - which ranks as ad-supported cable’s top original scripted series of the year and which kicked off its second season with record-breaking numbers - has been renewed for a third 15-episode season, according to an announcement today by Steve Koonin, executive vice president and chief operating officer for TNT and sister network TBS.

Glad to hear it. "The Closer" has been off to a good start this season, and I'm looking forward to more this year and more in the next season.

Beacon Journal movie critic George Thomas and I sat down last week and recorded a podcast about our various likes and dislikes regarding Superman, as a tie-in to — what else — "Superman Returns." It was a really nostalgic journey for me, and one that reminded me how much the various incarnations of Superman have been a part of my life.

I was a comic-book kid, for starters, reading not just the "Superman" title but "Lois Lane" and "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen," and "Superboy" and sundry crossovers and team-ups of the superheroes. (Justice League of America sticks in the mind. Snapper Carr. And those parallel-world comics with the old-school Justice Society.) I found Brainiac frightening and Bizarro World funny, and was aware of the various LL's in Superman's romantic life (Lori Lemaris!) and the city-in-a-bottle from Krypton and the ever-growing versions of kryptonite. (Red seemed the most interesting.)

Of course, I also watched the "Adventures of Superman" TV series, although even as a kid George Reeves didn't seem to fit the bill from the comic books. And the suit was baggy. (Watching the show again on DVD, I have come to appreciate Reeves's performance more, although the suit's still a disappointment.I thought Jack Larson's Jimmy Olsen was OK (though the comic-book Jimmy was more daring) and would skip the reruns of the Phyllis Coates episodes, preferring to wait for Noel Neill.

Then, for a long time, I drifted away. The cartoon series were bad. The live-action "Batman" with Adam West suggested that all the old DC heroes were a joke, and by the time I hit college I had discovered Marvel and all the more genuine angst in its characters. Then, for a long time, I pretty much gave up the comic books.

Like so many people, Christopher Reeve brought me back to Superman — although I like the second movie better than the more ambitiously mythic first. I came back to the comics for the wedding and the death of Superman. I came back to TV for "Lois & Clark," at least the early seasons. The Seinfeld commercials were amusing (and Bizarro Jerry is a really good "Seinfeld"). I have tried to like "Smallville," and I respect its ambition, but it never became must viewing.

All of this was stirring in my head when I talked with George, and when I was watching the recent Superman documentary (now on DVD). Both those things have me wanting to see the new movie. Maybe not enough to stand in line in the next few days, but I want to get to it. Superman and I have a long history together, and neither of us is done yet.

Not long ago we had our farewell to Knight Ridder, which ceases to exist today, with the Beacon Journal and other papers going to new owners.

I've been thinking about this moment and decided there were our a couple of things I didn't want to do. First of all, I'm not going to give you some speech about this moment and John S. Knight. It isn't that Knight was a flawed man who became a powerful symbol (not unlike broadcasting's Edward R. Murrow). It's that Knight had been dead a decade before I began working for the company bearing his name, so my connection is that I know people who knew Knight, and the company I worked for went through some un-Knightly turmoil.

I don't want to compare this to a death, especially a death in the family. It's a sad and painful moment, but lately I have seen people dealing with the death of people they loved, and this is not that. A newspaper, even a newspaper chain, is made up of thousands of living, breathing organisms — I am one of them — and we will be out showing what life and breath can achieve tomorrow.

In fact, thanks to a video and talk by the Beacon Journal's Doug Oplinger, today was inspiring. It reminded me of the noble work people do under often trying circumstances. It made me wish I had done a better job along the way — and it made me hope I will do better tomorrow.

I've watched three episodes of the NBC drama "Windfall," and I don't hate it. It's wildly implausible in many ways, but it passes the time. Still, one thing keeps bothering me about it, and it's the way it deals with the lottery money.

Let me first say that I have bought more than one lottery ticket. And when the jackpot gets big, the bride and I will discuss what we would do with the money. Our priorities are not quite those of the people on "Windfall," but we are older than those characters, and considerably more practical. But I understand the whole what-if thing behind viewers' interest in "Windfall."

Still, the show pays so fast and loose with the money won and how people are spending it, that I keep getting jarred out of my escaping into the show's soapy storylines. So let's do a little math.

The show likes to talk about each of the 20 or so winners ending up with $20 million — a jackpot that lets them spend like Paris Hilton on a shopping binge. Only they don't have that much money. The $20 million — or $19.6 million, if you take the onscreen jackpot and cut it 20 ways — probably gets halved by tax obligations. So let's say $10 million.

Then let's think about how the winners decided to get paid. The show was murky about whether each took a lump sum or an annual payment. Since some of the storylines suggest that they have all their money, let's figure they took a lump sum. It's not going to be $10 million. The cash option in big-jackpot lotteries runs around 45 to 55 percent of the total you would receive if you took annual payments. Let's call it 50 percent, and say that each winner is down to $5 million.

That's still a very nice payday, but it's not something that would have me jetting to Paris or buying a $100,000 car or writing a check for six figures worth of school supplies, the way the people on "Windfall" do. Forget that no one has stopped to calculate health-insurance costs once they quit their jobs, or what it's going to cost to maintain those new houses some are buying. They're spending as if they have LeBron money. LeBron makes a reported $4 million-plus every year just from his Cavs salary; he piles endorsement money on top of that.

Just to be even clearer — and since I am in total math-geek mode — let's consider annual payments. That puts us back to that $10 million after taxes, but the payments are spread over 26 years. That averages a little under $385,000 a year. I would welcome that salary, especially since I would be in my eighties before the payments stopped. But I'd have to be a lot more careful than anyone on "Windfall" is. No Vipers on my shopping list.

Star Jones Reynolds can now go somewhere else to show off her alarmingly thin frame; as was widely predicted, she is leaving "The View." Here's her statement, from today's e-mail:

“I’ve spent an amazing nine years as a part of “The View” family, and they have been the most professionally and personally rewarding years of my life.  Through it all, I have appreciated the support of my family, my friends and most importantly the viewers, and I am incredibly grateful for all of the love that has been shown to me.  “The View” is now moving in a new direction, and I will not be returning this fall – but, wherever I go, I will carry a lifetime of memories with me. Thank you all so much for your invaluable love and support.”

You can see links to more stories about Star at www.tvtattle.com.

There's been an ongoing debate about last week's episode of "Rescue Me," because of the scene where Tommy and his ex-wife Janet had a confrontation that looked like a textbook rape. Even worse, it fell back on a pulp-fiction cliche, with Janet becoming aroused during the assault, suggesting as too many things have that conflict with a woman can be settled in a direct physical way.

You can see where I stand on the incident. It bothered me when I watched it, and it seemed even weirder when the episode airing tomorrow night — which FX had made available for preview — acted for the most part as if the incident was just another dispute in the long history of Gavin marital disputes.

But the reaction to the scene has been sufficiently strong that the makers of "Rescue Me" have been trying to address viewer concerns. (You can find a long interview with Peter Tolan and Denis Leary at my friend Alan Sepinwall's What's Alan Watching?) So I wanted another set of eyes to see the scene.

I turned, therefore, to the bride. She is a "Rescue Me" fan, as am I, although I had reservations about this season from the beginning. In fact, "Rescue Me" is a show we usually watch together.

We didn't do that with last week's, and I had seen the scene before she did. I waited until she had watched it, and kept quiet about the controversy. And when she was done, I asked her what had happened in the scene.

"He raped her," she said. No elaboration. No equivocation. No considering what the producers or the writers or the directors or the cast might have had in mind. She knew what she had seen.

So when I read the defenses of the scene, I feel as if someone is repeating the old line about "what are you going to believe — your eyes or me?" I'll believe my eyes, and my bride's. And I have to think the people on "Rescue Me" just didn't see what they were doing — didn't see that Gavin is the guy that we saw beat his own brother bloody not long ago, that Leary is quite capable of conveying a frightening aggresiveness, and that this show for the most part is not kind to the women on it.

Yes, the men are messed up, too, but they're allowed at least to be good at their jobs; the women are allowed to be good at sex but not much else.

The only women I can think of who have been portrayed sympathetically are Theresa, the probie's plus-sized girlfriend (played by Ashlie Atkinson), and Alicia, the new character played by Susan Sarandon. Then I'm not sure what we're to make of the probie's dealing with women given the latest turn in his sex life. And Alicia's taking of Franco's daughter can cause some arguments. I really liked the scene where she explained her motives to Gavin, since she turned the firefighters' views of women back against them. But when I was talking about that scene with Alan, he kept saying, "Yeah, but she stole Franco's kid."

As I mentioned in my notes about Aaron Spelling (below), the producer was especially proud of "Family," the acclaimed ABC drama from 1976-80. Now comes news that it will be released on DVD. Here's the announcement:

One of the most acclaimed dramas of the ‘70s makes its DVD debut when Sony Pictures Home Entertainment presents Family: The Complete First and Second Seasons on September 5.  The collection of 28 episodes will be available in a six-disc boxed set and priced at $49.95 SLP.

Extras look sparse, and the promised "commentary on select episodes" does not say who is doing the commenting.

If you watched and liked "Broken Trail's" premiere on ABC last night, then you may find this of interest:

Broken Trail, the highly-anticipated epic western miniseries, will debut on DVD September 5 from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.  From Walter Hill (48 Hrs., Geronimo: An American Legend), the Emmy®-nominated director of “Deadwood,” and starring Academy Award® winner Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies, Thank You For Smoking) and Academy Award nominee Thomas Haden Church (Sideways, Spider-Man 3, TV’s “Ned & Stacy”), the AMC miniseries will be available in a two-disc set, with bonus features including a “making of” featurette, for $28.96 SLP.

You can find my review of "Broken Trail" here. The headline and first line, as sometimes happens when things are moved to the Web site, are from a photo caption. The actual column starts with my remark about Robert Duvall and westerns.

Those of you intrigued by "Nobody's Watching," which I blogged about last week, can a somewhat longer piece for the Beacon Journal here.