Cynthia Littleton On The Air

Requiem for heavyweights lost in '07 -- part one

It's hard to not feel a little melancholy when you're working on a year-end obit package.

Assembling a list of notables who died during a 12-month time span is like taking stock of how much the world you once knew is disappearing. Although I don't often admit it in the company of non-journos, I (usually) like working on obits. It's challenging work, usually against a tight deadline, and I feel a certain responsibility to do right by the person. I often hear Mrs. Loman's famous command in my head: "Attention must be paid."

In that spirit, here is an electronic chronicle of those who left their mark on the TV biz. 2007 saw the  passing of industry titans the likes of Jack Valenti, Merv Griffin, Tom Snyder  and Roger King; influential hyphenates including Sidney Sheldon, Mel Shavelson, Martin Manulis, Mel Tolkin and Bob Carroll, Jr.; and a local TV news icon in Hal Fishman.

It was a tough year for "Match Game" fans, with Charles Nelson Reilly and Brett Somers heading in to the blank hereafter. And no obit in the pages of Variety this year was more heartbreaking than that of Cartoon Network exec Jennifer Davidson, 38, who was a charter member of the cabler's staff and a mother of three.

"Robot Chicken" goes to the museum

Hard to believe a late night cable show involving stop-motion animation and action-figure parodies of celebs, kidvid and other aspects of pop culture (and relentlessly sophomoric sexual humor) could warrant the museum treatment. But sure enough, Adult Swim's utterly ridiculous "Robot Chicken" was the subject of a jawboning "Media as Lens" sesh at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills on Monday night.

Alas, events conspired to keep me from attending but I'm told it was good, surreal fun and that series co-creator/writer/director/voice cast member Seth Green charmed the hard-core fans who showed up. (That must've been a little scary for the Paley Center folks.) For the uninitiated, click here for all the "Robot Chicken" clips and genitalia jokes you could ever want.

(Pictured above, from left: Adult Swim senior veep Keith Crofford, Seth Green and "Robot Chicken" co-creator Matthew Senreich. Pic by Kevin Parry/Paley Center)

"Lucy, Daughter of the Devil": Wicked fun from Adult Swim

The Devil wears argyle sweaters. He likes to croon karaoke tunes, and he owns a small chain of Tequila Sally's restaurants that offer such signature items as the "diet-rita" (a low-cal margarita) and the "A-taco-lypse" carne asada platter.

Underneath his well-honed image as evil incarnate, the Devil is more a misunderstood family man than malevolent dictator of the underworld -- at least that's how he's played for laughs in "Lucy, Daughter of the Devil," the latest animated addition to Adult Swim's latenight lineup. Wickedly funny skein, which bowed this month in the 12:15 a.m. Sunday slot for a 10-episode run, hails from Loren Bouchard, the co-creator of another Adult Swim fave, "Home Movies."

Like most of the shows on Adult Swim, the humor in "Lucy" is surreal and uninhibited by traditional standards of TV decorum, and unbound by the laws of physics as only animation can be. Even non- believers might even feel a bit, well, devilish for giggling at some of the things that "Lucy" pokes fun at. Who knew homicidal nuns, manic-depressive priests and nonsensical setups, like the Devil and Jesus engaging in a dashboard-bongo jam session while driving across the desert to get to the Burning Man festival, could be so much fun?

To Bouchard, "Lucy" is not overtly concerned with skewering sacred cows of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's about a father's relationship with his feisty 21-year-old daughter, who is dating a charismatic guy dubbed DJ Jesus, much to her father's disapproval.

"I don't think that if you really watch the show you'll be offended" by the treatment of the religious themes and Biblical characters, Bouchard says. "There'll be moments here and there people might not like, but I don't think the overall impression you get if you watch the show from the beginning is that we're trying to offend."

Judge for yourself in this clip: