February 2007 Archives
This may come as news to those who thought John McCain was already in the 2008 Presidential race, but he'll announce his candidacy officially tonight on "Late Show with David Letterman" (11:35 p.m., CBS Channel 2).
From CBS's press release: Letterman later asked Sen. McCain if he would consider “the possibility President/Vice President, that kind of a thing, you divide that sort of deal up. You’re not interested in splitting that?” Sen. McCain said, “Well, you may remember that in the last election there was some conversation about me being Vice President of the Untied States, it wasn’t clear which party,” which garnered laughter from Letterman and the audience. “And I was on one of the shows and the guy said, ‘Well, what’s this about you being Vice President of the United States?’ I said, ‘You know, I spent all those years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, kept in the dark, fed scraps – why the heck would I want to do that all over again?’”
So it’s come to this: A news organization has made news for making the bold decision not to cover news that isn’t news at all, which is to say: anything concerning Paris Hilton.
The Associated Press does plan, however, to report a story in the future on “the repercussions of our blackout for AP both editorially and business-wise, and most importantly the forces that cause the world to be fixated on this person who, despite her shallow frivolity, represents an epochal development in our culture.”
Lest you fear you’ll be utterly deprived of future editions of the Paris Review, exceptions will be made in case of “major, major news.” So Hilton’s going to have to step up her game and start prepping for an overdose STAT.
That, or you can still follow her antics via the thousands of other media outlets who just can’t help themselves.
They need to set up a triage unit over at “Grey’s Anatomy;” that, or just get a high-pressure water hose to blast the attitude off cast members.
Where to begin? Well, for starters, everyone’s in a snit over the fact that Kate Walsh got the “GA” spin-off series and they didn’t. "The rest of the cast seemed instantly resentful of [Walsh]. … now they're giving Kate the cold shoulder," a tabloid quotes a blind source. Even Ellen Pompeo, who plays the title character on the show and therefore couldn’t be spun off of her own show, is miffed she wasn’t consulted on the decision.
Are these people that vain and that stupid? There’s no guarantee Walsh’s show will be a success, so she could wind up unemployed next season, and all these poor, sad actors have are jobs on one of the top-rated shows on TV.
And it doesn’t end there. Katherine Heigl, T.R. Knight’s knight in shining armor, has dropped out of contract negotiations with the show, upset that she’s not making as much as the more veteran actors Sandra Oh and Isaiah Washington. Though she may have a point: She starred in the movie “Zyzzyx Road,” a film that earned a whopping 30 bucks in its theatrical release, so she’s clearly a bankable starlet.
* UPDATE: ABC is saying the Heigl story isn't true. (But then, networks aren't exactly known to be paragons of honesty.)
With all that going on, it only makes sense that Washington’d be the one drawing the least negative headlines: The noted homophobe has hired a publicist, and an openly gay one, at that. Took long enough, but well-played, anyway.
Soon, “GA” will be the first series in production where all cast members will have to pass through a metal detector to get on the set. One wonders how bitter and back-biting they’d all be if the show only got so-so ratings.
If you think the uproar over and/or premise of the Discovery Channel’s upcoming documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” is bizarre, try getting an advance screener.
“The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” of course, suggests that archaeologists discovered back in 1980 a tomb in Jerusalem that some people now think contained the remains of Jesus and his family, including his wife, Mary Magdalene, and a son, Judah (certainly not a shout out to Judas Iscariot). This, of course, would run counter to Biblical accounts which neglected to mention Jesus’ big wedding-day bash (he converted water into wine at someone else’s wedding) and suggested that since He ascended to heaven, there wouldn’t’ve had been any remains, as Tim LaHaye might have it, left behind.
First, a little “inside baseball” that’ll give you “deep cover” in order to sneak into the “secret mechanisms” of the “entertainment-industrial complex:” Traditionally, networks and cable channels will send critics DVD or (if they’re hopelessly passé) VHS screeners of shows they’d like said critics to write about. Barring that, they’ll at least send out a press release about a program, with the name, number and email address of a publicist one can contact if you want a screener. Pretty standard stuff, really.
However, in the case of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” Discovery sent out a press release for the show Monday (the same day as the New York press conference) that read a little like the conspiracy-fueled fever dream of someone who keeps the government from controlling his mind by wearing tin foil on his head. No publicist was name-checked; no phone number was included; the Email address from which the missive was sent had been created specifically for this event (and if I don’t hear back from these clowns soon, I’ll share it so you can clog up their system).
Your Mayor, a conscientious servant determined to supply his constituency with the most current trends in transgressive historical revisionism, replied Monday requesting a copy of the documentary. An email appeared Tuesday informing me my email had been “received.” Not “read,” mind you, and certainly not “acted upon,” just “received.” The email also helpfully provided a link to the Discovery Channel’s online store, where I could buy all manner of – well, I don’t know, since the link didn’t actually work.
Dogged in my pursuit of this bombshell story, I phoned a publicist at Discovery, who gave me a number to call; when I asked her who I should ask for, she said she didn’t know. And, indeed, she didn’t, because it was a phone-mail box taking “media requests” for the show. Again, no names of whom one should contact to expedite service; no promise that anyone would ever contact you about this in this lifetime.
This seems a particularly arcane and even slightly sinister approach to television publicity, particularly for a show about Jesus. Discovery Channel publicity seems to have cribbed a page from Opus Dei, that unnervingly secretive group demonized in “The Da Vinci Code,” only working to utterly contradictory ends. But, wait: If Discovery Channel really wanted critics to write about this, they’d make it easy to get screeners; if Opus Dei wanted to squelch this, of course they’d create an utterly obfuscating publicity campaign. So apparently Discovery Channel was duped into outsourcing publicity services on “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” to Opus Dei, who operates under the same shroud of secrecy as Yale University’s Skull and Bones. Which is precisely what was found in those Jerusalem ossuaries – mere coincidence? I think not.
Anyway, a lot of critics are grousing that it seems quite a stretch to make the claims the documentary posits, and yes, having not seen the documentary but having heard various experts weigh in, there doesn’t seem to be enough persuasive evidence to tilt two millennia of spiritual faith in their direction. Were the film right, however, what, really, is the big deal? It seems to me that following Christ’s teachings because they’re inordinately humane and square with one’s own moral beliefs is a lot more noble and true than adhering to them because if you don’t, you’re afraid you’ll go to hell.
* UPDATE: A screener of "Jesus" has ascended to my hilltop duplex.
Bill O’Reilly likes to call viewers of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” stoners and slackers. Here’s another name he can give them: Readers (or, at least, patrons) of serious current-events literature.
The New York Times reports that both shows actually help sales of books written by the historians and political analysts who sit and chat with Stewart or spar with Colbert.
In recent weeks, Stewart has hosted Nobel Prize-winning economics guru Muhammad Yunus, Ishmael Beah, whose book “A Long Way Gone” details life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, and Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, who was peddling his memoir “In the Line of Fire:” Great targets for high comedy, all.
In the Times story, Martha Levin of Free Press calls the programs “the television equivalent of NPR. You have a very savvy, interested audience who are book buyers, people who do go into bookstores, people who are actually interested in books.”
Another publicist in the story says, “If I had my choice between Charlie Rose and Jon Stewart, I’d pick Jon Stewart, no question.”
Now that serious discourse on television is allowed only on a couple of comedy shows, perhaps the Fox News Channel will take a tip from Keith Olbermann and add a laugh track to all of its shows, not just “The 1/2 Hour News Hour.”
That is, if last night’s ratings for “The Black Donnellys” are any indication.
Despite tons of hype – there were about a half-dozen promos for it during “Heroes” just before it alone – the show managed to average a mere 8.4 million viewers in its premiere, which is what “Studio 60” averaged in its entire run. Worse, it suffered from a spectacular fall-off in viewers as the episode progressed: It began with an average of nearly 10 million viewers in its first half-hour – a number that was inflated, no doubt, by the fact that “Heroes” ran long, not signing off until 10:03 p.m. – and slunk to a lowly 6.9 million in its second half. So it didn’t lure many people to begin with and those who did watch weren’t overly impressed. Hence, we’ll no doubt be seeing Matthew Perry’s Matt returning to dithering over Sarah Paulson’s Harriet come April, if not sooner.
ABC News was not able to get a screener of “To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports” out in time to writers outside of New York, but they did send a copy of its script, and it’s powerful, absorbing and disturbing stuff. Woodruff retraces his steps and rehabilitation after his injury in Iraq in January 2007 when he absorbed the force of a bomb in his face and chest, and then explores the stories of soldiers similarly injured in the war.
Fragments were embedded in his skull, a portion of which caved in (and has been replaced). Woodruff was in a medically induced coma for 36 days. He still remembers nothing of what happened.
Selected quotes from the film, airing tonight at 10 on ABC:
SECRETARY JAMES NICHOLSON
You know, there's no, not enough money in the world really that you can give people to make up for the loss that these people are suffering, physically, uh, mentally, and emotionally.
*
PAUL REICKHOFF
Those of us who've served in Iraq face kind of a second fight coming home. The VA is coming apart at the seams. And everybody sees it who deals with the VA on a daily basis and the people within the VA are, are working hard, and they're doing a great job, and we've got a lot of people who are really devoted and, and, and working hard for veterans. But we need to give them all the tools at this country's disposal to be able to be able to take care of our veterans.
*
PAUL SULLIVAN
What you have are two sets of books. The Department Of Defense saying that there's 23,000 wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Department Of Veteran's Affairs is actually treating 205,000 veterans from these two wars.
*
DR. STEVEN SCOTT
I, I can’t give you an absolute number. But I think the 10 percent is a good, is a good estimate. But it could be higher based on the fact that the more times and the longer you are over there, the higher frequency, higher percentage that they will have these.
BOB WOODRUFF
THAT COULD MEAN THAT OF THE 1.5 MILLION WHO HAVE SERVED OR ARE NOW SERVING IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN – MORE THAN 150,000 PEOPLE -- COULD HAVE A BRAIN INJURY THAT MAY BE UNDIAGNOSED -- AND UNRECOGNIZED BY THE CASUALTY NUMBERS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
*
BOB WOODRUFF
Why is it not being told, generally, officially by the government?
PAUL SULLIVAN
Sadly, Bob, what you have is the Department of Defense issuing gag orders.
BOB WOODRUFF
Gag orders?
You think as a nation we're ready to take care of all of our veterans that have come back?
PAUL REICKHOFF
No. Not even close. I don’t even think it’s on most people’s radar. I think that the willingness is there. I think inside the hearts of America's population we want to do the right thing. But they don't even know this is on their radar.
*
This dovetails neatly but sadly into last week’s story of abject conditions in sections of Walter Reed Hospital, where soldiers are being treated for injuries sustained in Iraq, which prompted this extraordinary exchange during a session with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow:
Q The White House doesn't want to be on record with a more emphatic expression of amazement and upset about this?
MR. SNOW: No.
Q Do you think the President is going to say something about this later?
MR. SNOW: No.
Here’s ABC’s online coverage of Woodruff’s remarkable story:
Woodruff’s wife Lee’s perspective
Cameraman Doug Vogt’s perspective
- “To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports:” 10 tonight, ABC Channel 7
Excellent episode of "Heroes" tonight - Horn-Rimmed Glasses' (Jack Coleman) surprisingly resonant backstory (though still no explanation of what it is exactly that he's up to); lots of action, inspired use of Eric Roberts' grizzled mug, grisly makeup effects and Hayden Panettiere spitting blood. Just one question:
How was Parkman (Greg Grunberg) captured and sedated after sort of, for once in his life, having the upper hand? Particularly given that the cops and neighbors were all around when the house exploded? (The one set I really hung out at when I visited the "Heroes" set, and now it's ashes. Does that make me a jinx?) How was all this explained to the police and neighbors, anyway? Why did it take the cops so long to respond to a call in a small Texas town? (Last time I had to call cops in a small Texas town - yes, it sounds unlikely, but true story - they were there within a minute.)
OK, so that's four questions. But questions, quite likely, that the show's creators hope we overlook and/or forget pretty quickly because, quite frankly, I'm not sure they have any good answers.
Ah, well, I'm sure that over on "24" tonight they had twice as many and even bigger plot holes.
ABC announced it's bringing "Six Degrees" back. Imagine my excitement. Set your TiVo's for March 23.
The network also announced a new show, "October Road," will debut March 15. Odd, because the network not only didn't feature a press conference for this series during Press Tour last month (and they had more than plenty of time; they had to pad to almost fill the day), they didn't even mention its existence. (Well, almost; its title appeared buried on the page listing the publicists and the shows they handle.) This can't really be construed as a huge vote of confidence for the show and, to be fair, the show's synopsis doesn't suggest it deserves much:
"'October Road' centers on the young, popular author, Nick Garrett, who is at a crossroads in his life. To get over his writer’s block, he goes back to his hometown and must now face the family and friends he has avoided for the past ten years. Once back home on October Road, he quickly discovers that the circle of friends whose teenaged lives he wrote about have trouble forgiving him for leaving them behind, and that his ex-girlfriend, Hannah Daniels, may have had his child."
So where did you drop out on that description? Most, I'm guessing, bailed after the phrase "at a crossroads in his life;" some may have gotten as far as "writer's block." But the real b.s.-detecting aesthete choked on his or her bile right at "young, popular author." This show fairly screams omphaloskepsis. (Look it up.)
You know, I'm pretty sure The WB did a show pretty much exactly like this, and that it flopped. (Research update: Yep, I'm right; It was called, with some most egregious miscalculation, "Glory Days," and aired in 2002; not even imdb.com knows or seems to care how few episodes got on the air.) Just spit-balling here, but if an idea failed on The WB, what are the chances it's going to lure a crowd big enough to satisfy ABC?
I wrote about this in my voluminous Oscar coverage - and I'm just one of the people writing about the ceremony tonight, so you can imagine how stuffed with obsessive details the Daily News will be when it lands on your driveway tomorrow (I'm assuming, of course, that it will land in your driveway tomorrow) - but it's the sort of passing detail that can easily get excised from copy to make room for, say, very justifiable photographs of Reese Witherspoon and Beyonce.
Al Gore finally received his coronation tonight, about six years too late, but still. And everyone has discussed his comic moment where he was mock-cut-off during his mock-announcement that he'd be running for President again.
But, for me, the best moment during his exchange with Leonardo DiCaprio was more subtle. After Gore thanked DiCaprio, one of the first stars to drive a hybrid car, for his work on environmental issues, the director cut to a bored-looking Jerry Seinfeld - who owns a full fleet of gas-guzzling Porsches.
After sitting through the bloated four-hour leviathan that is the Oscar ceremony tomorrow evening, you’ll no doubt be starved for entertainment, so “Family Guy’s” MySpace site will happily appease you with a new short flash-animated talk show that will double as a bald promotion for Seth MacFarlane’s latest production, “The Winner.”
In “Up Late,” Stewie and Brian will interview Rob Corddry, who stars in the new sitcom (created by Ricky Blitt) as a socially inept doofus who starts to turn his life around. No idea if it will be an animated Rob Corddry or a Rob Corddry brought alongside Stewie and Brian via the magic of greenscreen, but they’ll banter and do everything in their power to ensure that you watch “The Winner” next Sunday.
Don’t go there now – if you do, you’ll have to sit through a commercial for the “Family Guy” Stewie DVD. They’re throwing it up sometime Sunday evening, so it might be a good idea to check in somewhere between the honorary award to Sheri Lansing and the montage of dead people.
We’ve discussed the upcoming Paley Television Festival already, but The Museum of Television and Radio has a slew of other events in the coming weeks and months, concerning a number of topics as you will see as I regurgitate the contents of their press release.
The “Media as Mirror” series will feature the premiere of the Canadian series “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” about a Muslim family living in Saskatchewan, on April 4. No word whether the show’s a comedy or drama, but I’m guessing comedy, because you can’t really put the words “drama” and “Saskatchewan” in the same sentence.
“Media/Mirror” also will feature “Political Satire in the Digital Age: Salih Memecan and JibJab” on April 5. Memecan, a Turkish cartoonist, and the founders of the comedy site JibJab will discuss, uh, political satire in the digital age. I’m guessing they mean “now” more than the “digital age,” because current events dictate political satire more than the medium, but putting "digital age" in the title of any panel discussion makes it sound more cutting-edge.
Finally, “Arab and Muslim Characters on Prime-Time TV: The View from Hollywood,” on May 22, will feature a panel of producers from the shows “24,” “Lost,” “Sleeper Cell” and “Law & Order,” who will no doubt implore the Arab and Muslim worlds to assume new character tics they can stereotype.
But the Museum also realizes that media can provide entertainment, as well, and so, as part of its “Media as Entertainment” series, it will feature panels of shows that apparently weren’t quite prestigious enough to rate the Paley Festival: “Friday Night Lights” (April 13), “The New Adventures of Old Christine” (April 16) and a “Cagney and Lacey” reunion (April 30).
Mitzi Gaynor will chatter on April 10, the Turner Movie Classics documentary “Brando” will be screened and, afterwards, dissected by, of all people, Penelope Ann Miller on April 24 (OK, there’ll be other folks there, too). “Oswald’s Ghost,” an upcoming PBS documentary about the JFK assassination, will be presented and discussed June 12, and Morgan Spurlock will recall doing prison time and other antics enacted for his FX series “30 Days” on June 19.
And apparently, the Museum believes that someone out there is interested in “the role of the writer in the creation of video games,” because, verily, a panel discussion entitled “Video Games: The Writers Speak” is scheduled for May 9.
And former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will reminisce about her appearance on an episode of “Blossom” on a June date to be determined. Well, no, she won’t talk about “Blossom,” I gather; she’s part of this series because, um, well, she has been on TV.
The event Your Mayor is most interested in occurs on April 23, when epic documentarian Ken Burns will offer a sneak peak of his upcoming “The War” (that war in question being WWII). His film won’t air until September, so you’ll be able to say you were the first on your block to see at least some of it, and find out if he and PBS and those Draconian rascals at the FCC have determined whether or not he can allow members of the Greatest Generation drop some scatological epithets during the miniseries without the FCC fining PBS affiliates out of existence.
Tickets for events go on sale March 1 and range between $15-$25, less for members of the museum; ticket packages are also available. Call the Museum, which is at North Beverly Drive and Little Santa Monica in Beverly Hills, at 310-786-1000. Not necessarily for more information; just give them a call. I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.
“Countdown with Keith Olbermann” did a stellar job this week with its Judge Larry coverage – oh, wait, the story was supposed to be about the fate of Anna Nicole Smith’s remains. But someone forgot to tell Judge Larry about it.
So “Countdown” edited the footage down to the good jurist’s most inanely self-aggrandizing moments, and it’s good, old-fashioned knee-slapping fun. At the expense, of course, of a dead woman.
The above link takes you to last night’s coverage, but you can root around to find earlier, similar and similarly hilarious coverage. If not, this should help, as well as this.
All for one and one for all! But wasn’t that the Three Musketeers’ motto, not the Knights of the Round Table?
Never let it be said that Your Mayor does not read nor respond to mail from his constituency. Today, I received three Emails from “Gilmore Girls” fans anxious to see their favorite show onto an eighth season and perhaps beyond. This follows an earlier note from a fan expressing the same wishes and wondering, realistically, what the chances are for the series continuing after this season’s end.
One, a fan in Australia, wrote, “I believe we need more time. More time to see Luke and Lorelai back together, but not in a rushed blur. More time to experience Rory’s first steps in the world after college, but not have it handed to her just to wrap up the season neatly. More time to see Lane and Zach experience the trials and tribulations that come with parenthood. Just more time!” She then proceeded to butter me up: “A quality article (about renewing the show), from you, a respected industry journalist, would indeed speak volumes.”
(To be fair, she does live in Australia, so her confusion as to my being “a respected industry journalist” is understandable.)
Another correspondent was even more deft at buttering me up, addressing me as “The Distinguished Mayor of Television” (emphasis mine, naturally). She echoed her Aussie counterpart’s concern: “I also unfortunately realize that if there is any truth that the series could be ending soon, that there couldn’t possibly be enough time left this season for the much beloved town folk of Stars Hollow, not to mention the key characters, to bring their delightful stories full circle. I truly believe that the captivating characters and imaginative storylines deserve at least one more season to do them justice.”
Both directed me to a fan site determined to help the show continue behind an initiative called The Great8Mandate. It includes the names and addresses of CW executives and Warner Bros. TV production executives, cast members (through the production studio), even some journalists.
In the nascent stages of their crusade, these folks are more mobilized than the fans of “Deadwood” trying to resurrect their favorite show. Of course, they had to scramble when HBO unexpectedly and rather surprisingly announced the show was cancelled before its third season even premiered. “GG” fans are benefiting, if that’s the word, of media speculation that the show wouldn’t be returning and are able to make a pre-emptive strike, something denied “Deadwood” die-hards (or “Everwood” fans, for that matter).
Herewith, reasons for said fans to both take heart and/or prepare for the worst:
REASONS “GILMORE GIRLS” MIGHT NOT RETURN
* There’s been a distinct sense – even among hardcore “GG” fans – that the show has lost the spin off its fastball since series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino departed after a contract dispute last season, and ratings have declined fairly steeply from its halcyon days. An eighth season wouldn’t likely get much better, and shows of that age rarely increase their viewership. A season eight could limp to an ignominious conclusion that might leave a bad taste in fans’ heads.
* There’s not a lot of financial incentive to continue. Luring cast members back could prove costly – too costly for a mini-network like The CW to afford. And the show has more than enough episodes to play in syndication forever, so all involved have plenty of royalties coming their way, so there’s not a lot of incentive for anyone to continue.
* It seems highly unlikely that Alexis Bledell would be interested in continuing in the show. At her appearance at TV Press Tour last July, she seemed to be extremely disinterested; she was a no-show at a magazine photo shoot and, in general, just seems to want to get on with her career.
REASONS “GILMORE GIRLS” MIGHT RETURN
* Lauren Graham was recently given a producer’s credit, which clearly is a step towards luring her back for another year.
* The CW needs it more than it needs The CW. Even with its lower ratings, only a handful of other shows on the network have a higher viewership. “Reba’s” gone, “Veronica Mars,” “Seventh Heaven” and “One Tree Hill” are on life support, and its Monday sitcom lineup is hurting. That’s a lot of prime-time real estate for a network with a modest development budget to renovate, so The CW might be willing to pony up to keep a solid audience and critical favorite on the schedule. Even a diminished "GG" is better than most CW programming.
* My correspondents are correct – rushing Luke and Lorelai’s rekindling of their romance would kind of stink.
So what do you think? Would you like to hear Lorelai’s motormouth banter for one more season, or would you tell her, “Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry?”
They’re probably the most self-defeating, watery and pathetically useless words in a personal publicist’s arsenal: “We ask that the media respect [our client’s] privacy as well as those of [our client’s] family and friends at this time.”
Particularly if you’re Britney Spears’ professional handler – well, “handler” is clearly the wrong word because no one’s handling anything when it comes to the new Mrs. Clean, who is obviously anything but clean at this point.
Of course, Britney has reportedly bolted detox again, adding to the loopily torturous nature of this saga, as a benumbed nation watches this slow-motion train wreck somewhat reticently, yet unable to turn away.
Until a more graphics-heavy website begins providing this service 24/7, I’ll hereby helpfully attempt to keep you posted with Ms. Spears’ current rehab situation with a low-tech emoticon:
IN REHAB: ☺
OUT OF REHAB: ☹
I pondered which emoticon was appropriate – the smiley face does seem a little Schadenfreude-esque, but it really means we should be happy she’s trying to help herself. And the sad face – well, that’s because she’s running around untethered, which at this point is obviously not a good thing.
So:
BRITNEY SPEARS’ CURRENT STATUS
☺
Bookmark this entry and check back often for updates! I’ll probably have to hire a round-the-clock staff to keep this appropriately updated, but it’ll be worth it to keep an on-edge nation’s state of mind somewhat more at peace.
* UPDATE: Apparently, we're getting closer to this sort of technology than I would've imagined: A website does offer celebrity-stalker capabilities. Soon, we'll just have our celebrities tagged and micro-chipped.
Unfortunately for this new game from gsn.com, that fun-time astronaut love triangle has ebbed too quickly into the recesses of our minds, supplanted by Anna Nicole Smith’s death and Britney Spears’ impending spectacular splat should she bolt yet again from rehab.
Still, it's a way to kill those dark hours of the soul. In the game "Astronaut Moonstalker," you the astronaut collect hearts, diapers and pepper spray and fight off evil aliens, to boot. Keep an eye on the Diaper Meter. I never managed to fill the diaper, so I don’t know exactly what happens there, but then again, I don’t think I really want to know.
Herewith, a wonderful confluence of corporate sponsorship, actors who probably burble about their characters’ “journey” and abject humiliation.
In order to promote Fox’s upcoming series “The Wedding Bells,” about three sisters – no doubt one too hot, one too cold and one just right – who run a wedding-planning company, the cast will judge a contest in which prospective bridezillas-to-be negotiate an obstacle course before tearing into wedding cakes in search of rings (one three-karat rock; three one-karat consolation prizes).
Talk about conflict diamonds.
Teri Polo, KaDee Strickland and Sarah Jones portray the sisters on the show; other cast members attending include the rather cute-but-also-ickily monikered Missi Pyle (the first name, so perky and feminine, yet mispronounce it in full just a smidgen and the result sounds like you’ve been tromping through a poorly managed dog park).
This “obstacle course” culminating in the savage pulping of perfectly innocent wedding cakes recalls the Monty Python sketch about the “Upper Class Twit of the Year” competition in which posh boors circled a track engaging in all manner of rude behavior. Yet instead of waking the neighbors with car doors and wrenching bras off mannequins, contestants here will rummage through clothing racks in search of the ugliest bridesmaid dress imaginable and scream at their mothers until they reduce them to tears.
Because, after all, the race to the altar is nothing if not strewn with obstacles and few things shout enduring love more than shedding one’s dignity for some bling.
If such spectacle appeals to you, and you have too much free time on your hands, the festivities begin Friday, March 2 at 11 a.m. at The Grove.
So it's come to this: A media analyst is criticizing former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber for not being glib and superficial at a press conference introducing him as "Today's" new correspondent.
"Barber looked inelegant when he criticized his former football coach at NBC's welcoming press conference," groused MarketWatch's Jon Friedman. "Barber should've stuck to the platitudes that Matt Lauer was a role model and that he always wanted to be on the "Today" show and left it at that."
So essentially, what Friedman is saying is that Barber - who's aspiring to raise the bar on the typical ex-jock's career by doing something more substantive than offer color commentary on his previous job's current employees - shouldn't be honest when it comes to addressing questions posed by the media. That, if Barber wants to establish credibility as a journalist, he should lie or obfuscate, right out of the box.
When a media analyst like Friedman automatically expects someone in the spotlight to be shallow and unforthcoming and even chides them when they're not, you know we've stepped through the looking glass in the infotainment world. Perhaps those kind of expectations are what accounts for the generally watery nature of TV news in the first place.
Comic Paul Mooney hosts BET’s “Top 25 Events that (Mis)Shaped Black America,” which takes the glib style and shape of VH1’s “I Love the [Insert Recent Decade Here]” and “Best Week Ever” to forge an oddly cheekily grim production by Black History Month standards. Honest, this one doesn't even mention George Washington Carver.
The events “changed the course of our race for the worst,” Mooney explains, and while the list offers some wry commentary from “critics, comics and celebrities” – Jheri Curls and soul food are on the list, alongside Hurricane Katrina, drugs, AIDS and slavery – the intent is as serious as a stroke. Only the hyperkinetic editing, an overall even-handed tone and the occasional crisp one-liner (Elvis was “the original Puff Daddy,” critic/author Toure explains, because “he took what was hot in the culture and remixed it” – of course, the joke is that Chuck Berry and Little Richard were the original Elvis) prevent the show from becoming mired in anger or despair.
Sometimes, the editing is too hyperventilating, reducing a few soundbites to pabulum and making it look like the interviewees’ words are being taken out of context (though they’re likely just removing pauses – darn those slow, thoughtful speakers). But the brisk pace also forces the producers to just dip their toes into some subjects that deserve a little more nuance.
Other items on the list: The N-word, bling, Hollywood, the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., segregation, the Ku Klux Klan and “black people who are proud to be dumb.”
- "Top 25 Events that (Mis)Shaped Black America:" 10 tonight, BET.
Tom Arnold is Ted Haggard!
And the winner of the “Law & Order” spin-off competition to mold the sordid Ted Haggard saga of a homophobic evangelist in the feverish grip of the manlove that dare not speak its name into a half-baked drama goes to – drum roll, please – and we have an upset! The winner is “Law & Order: Criminal Intent!”
(My money was on “Special Victims Unit.”)
This week, Vincent D’Onofrio wrests himself from the rarefied demons that keep him from maintaining the same ruthless schedule that every other actor in prime-time television manages to elude, in order to investigate the murder of a homophobic evangelist who turns out to be not entirely homophoblic – spiritually, maybe, but not in body. Tom Arnold guest-stars as the quite literally monikered Calvin Riggins (Calvinist? rigorous?), whose wife turns up dead after a melee at a debate between him and a scientist arguing against God’s existence.
Seems Cal’s “rent boy” – the show’s term – handed Cal’s wife an incriminating DVD minutes before the tragedy, adding of Cal, “He likes crystal meth” – in case anyone not be able to pick up on who the “fictional” episode is about – “and, in particular, ‘booty bumps.’” Alas, thanks to FCC constraints, a character gets this reference, denying us the “rent boy's” full explication on broadcast television.
Confronted with this evidence, Arnold’s Cal concedes he knows of such a man, “but it’s always so dark in those (massage parlor) rooms” that he can’t ID him. Having had massages that didn’t end in a booty bump – and, having entered that thought into evidence, I must further add, “having no massages that in fact did end in a booty bump” – I must call b.s. on that explanation, as do the detectives. Arnold’s actually far better than Chevy Chase was as Mel Gibson’s doppelganger in a “Law & Order” episode earlier this season; he crumples quite convincingly when badgered under interrogation. Of course, having been married to Roseanne, he’s no doubt had plenty of experience.
In the end, though the episode manages to get in a few shots at fundamentalist Christianity’s elements of close-mindedness, it absolves it of the worst of sins. Then allows us all to rail: Damn you, secular progressives!
- “Law & Order: Criminal Intent:” 9 p.m. Tuesday, NBC (Channel 4).
The theme of the blog this weekend has turned out to be train wrecks. Today’s subject: Andrew Dice Clay.
Dice was an incredibly and inexplicably popular comic in the late ’80s and early ’90s, celebrated and denigrated in equal measure for his puerile and simplistic material. His basic take was: Women are stupid and good for one thing only. He conveyed this penetrating insight via nursery rhymes in which he inserted dirty words, which some people found hilarious. No, honest.
As his career ran aground, however, and he tried to reinvent himself, fans would nonetheless demand he return to reciting his nursery rhymes. On a later CD, he responded to his fans’ request thusly: "You don't know how much I hate those f@$&ing poems, you have no idea how I hate those f@$&ing poems, I wish I'd never thought of those f@$&ing poems." So he and I at least have one thing in common.
Dice miscalculated once again in 1995, when he tried to star in a CBS family sitcom. Well, CBS miscalculated, as well; it was quickly cancelled.
Even when his career was essentially over, he refused to be chastened. Take this exchange (via Wikipedia) of a CNN interview, when Dice feels insulted by a question:
Clay: Jesus f@$&ing Christ... with these guys. I come on the news for two seconds... an - and you want to say... every time I do an interview a guy wants to open his f@$&ing mouth. Can't even do a little f@$&ing routine here.
Host: All right Andrew, thank you very much; we thought that you could hold back.
Clay: (removing microphone) You know? Go f@$& yourself. You know what? F@$& the whole f@$&ing network. (leaves) … (off camera) F@$&ing jerk-off, @$$hole guy. Half dead.
Pure comic gold. The guy’s still got it.
And now, VH1, who clearly has too many hours in its broadcasting day if it has time for this sort of thing, returns to its gruesome D-List celeb-reality well once again (following such wince-inducing romps with Danny Bonaduce, Tom Sizemore and Flavor Flav) with “Dice Undisputed.”
You know those nursery rhymes Dice hated? Here’s how VH1’s selling the show:
“Hickory, Dickory Dock/Dice Clay Is Back On The Clock/You Thought He Was Through/But We Got A Clue/And Put Him On Our Celebrity Block.” I hope someone wasn’t paid to come up with that.
Again, it’s little more than home movies of the once-rich and staggeringly uninteresting – Dice, hairline receding and Elvis sideburns gone white, spends most of the first five minutes of the first episode making sure we understand he’s set up a bunch of cameras to shoot himself, so we can be edified by footage of him talking to his kids, b.s.ing with his buddies and frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean.
“I’m gonna blow this thing up all over again,” he declares, deluded into thinking he’ll someday play Giants Stadium. Even his agent tells him, “I want you to have dreams but there’s a difference between dreams and fantasies.” Oops – make that ex-agent.
Not much of his actual act is seen – and even less is heard, thanks to copious bleeping. Of course, that means we rarely get to hear punchlines, but perhaps that’s a good thing, because none of the jokes seem too funny. (Again, via Wikipedia: A performance in November 2006 was roundly booed and heckled.)
Perhaps one could make the case that a young Brooklyn guy exuding idiot attitude is a plausible comic persona, but Dice is gonna be 50 this year, and that same sort of material coming from someone whose half-century on the planet should’ve taught him, well, something, well, that’s just – what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, right: pathetic.
And if a guy can’t even find his room at a motel, as Dice has trouble doing in episode two, then you have to think it’s going to be a long, confused trek from Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on VH1 to Giants Stadium.
The indisputably unwatchable “Dice Undisputed” premieres March 4.
Ladies and gentlemen, Anna Nicole Smith II.
Britney Spears, demonstrating the judgment of a demented woodchuck, allowed cameras to follow her as she entered a hair salon and proceeded to shave her scalp. Unable to think up any more radical ways to mutilate herself publicly, she opted to ratchet back and slipped into a nearby tattoo parlor and got a little tattoo on her wrist.
While this sorry spectacle might be good for the general public’s cynical bemusement, it’s rather apparent, particularly in the wake of Smith’s death, that there’s no one in the entertainment industry who’s not an enabler when it comes to overly pampered celebrities. Howard K. Stern, Smith’s – uh, whatever – arranged the deal that plastered her plastered façade across E!’s TV screens; a more reasonable caretaker who actually had his client/friend’s best interests in mind would’ve hidden her from sight and run her through as much therapy as it took. Similarly, whoever should be saying “No” to Spears and isn’t is just allowing this train to hurtle over the nearest cliff.
As your mother used to tell you, a joke’s not a joke if someone gets hurt, and the joke that has been Britney Spears for the past few years looks to be preparing for a very bleak turn, and, judging from those photos, sooner rather than later.
In the meantime: Someone should've mentioned to her they're not remaking "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." Or "Alien 3," for that matter.
Increasingly, and somewhat mysteriously, CBS’s lesser Bruckheimer crime procedural “Cold Case” has opted to incorporate songs by iconic artists into their mystery narratives (previous episodes included U2, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Tim McGraw and the musical “Cabaret;” the show also uses songs from a specific genre – say, a certain jazz era or a particular new-wave-ish trend). Sometimes the fusion of music and mystery makes sense; other times, not so much.
On Sunday’s episode, Bob Dylan is “Cold Case’s” victim du jour. No, Dylan isn’t murdered in the episode, but his songs look to be exploited for no apparent reason.
CBS’s press release, expecting us to be extraordinarily dim, informs us: “Bob Dylan is one of the world’s most popular and acclaimed songwriters, musicians and performers, having sold nearly 100 million albums and performed literally thousands of shows around the world in a career spanning five decades.” Ah, OK, thanks for that -- so he's significant, you're saying?
And yet, while the press release lists the songs that will be incorporated in the episode, the screener itself is such a rough cut that we don’t know where the songs will go. (Actually, it’s pretty easy to guess where “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” will land in the episode – somewhere around the scene of the murder – and “Ballad of a Thin Man” will no doubt underscore a reference to a “Mr. Jones.”) Eight songs in total will be no doubt seamlessly woven into the episode but, based on the silences in the screener’s rough cut, for no more than 30 seconds at a time, suggesting that true Dylan fans will be better off spending the hour listening to old CD’s than watching this wan mystery.
The episode opens with a group of former hippie-pinko radicals who, in 1981, have all become comfortable Yuppies, watching a slideshow of their gloriously ignominious past. Later, the house where this nostalgic romp occurred explodes, killing two people.
One character in the episode is named Johanna. “Visions of Johanna” is not one of the songs in the episode. Another character is named Sara. Also not used: Dylan’s “Sara.” And given the episode’s theme of revolution, it’s also curious that “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” with its then-timely-though-still-nominally-oblique reference to anarchy, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” isn’t in the episode’s iPod shuffle.
Actually, the producers blew a brilliant opportunity: This episode is really a “Big Chill” redux with a body count. So Motown hits would’ve made just as much sense as Dylan’s back catalogue.
And, like a lot of episodes of this show, it’s a sort of simplistic ping-pong of witness/suspect memories that eventually leads to the not-so-shocking solution of the mystery.
One might be surprised that Dylan would agree to lend his songs to an enterprise as prosaic as this, but then, he also agreed to participate in a disastrous Broadway musical choreographed by Twyla Tharp (if you haven’t seen this clip, prepare to have your mind blown worse than any acid could manage, but if you’re a true Dylan fan, keep any razor blades in your domicile well out of reach for its duration). By contrast, this “Cold Case” episode is sorta like Dylan’s “Street Legal:” Loathed when released, but grudgingly admired in retrospect.
- “Cold Case:” 9 p.m. Sunday; CBS (Channel 2).
A couple of things that I couldn’t work into an upcoming feature on the HBO film “Longford,” starring Jim Broadbent as a British politician whose efforts on behalf of a woman in a salacious murder case torpedo his career.
Broadbent on Oscar’s impact on his career (he won for 2001’s “Iris”): “I don’t think it’s changed an awful lot, in terms of the ways that I thought it would. As in, if you’re an actor who wins an Oscar, you have to make mega movies and make millions of dollars a movie every time you get out of bed. But the jobs I enjoy doing don’t really fall into that category. But it has given me the freedom to choose what I want to do, not just the financial freedom, but I don’t have to think of a career arc in terms of a career, that I have to get to this stage and do this sort of work.
“The career’s all right (laughs), and I can choose jobs for their own merit, which is delightful.”
No action films, he says. But Stallone’s still doing them at age 60.
“He’s fitter than me,” Broadbent smiles. “He spends more time in the gym in one week than I have in a lifetime.”
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Lindsay Duncan, who plays Longford’s wife Elizabeth, says another film could be made about their amazing relationship: “She’s a fascinating woman in her own right, but she’s in this (film) to fulfill a function.
“She converted him to socialism; he converted her to Catholicism. This happened in their marriage. He didn’t even tell her he had converted. There was something little-boyish about that. She was appalled by that. It makes for a great story. … It was a busy 70 years (of marriage). At many points, Elizabeth made decisions because her marriage and her family were of such importance to her that she made sure it worked. She could’ve been a politician, and she put her marriage and family before that. She gave up politics and became a very successful biographer. Just to read her diaries makes you feel like someone who hasn’t got out of bed for the last 50 years.”
Longford was a legendary slob. “She loved him, even with the stains on his tie. And she was immaculate; she was fragrant and lovely. It was amazing. She didn’t try to change this man even though he looked like a vagrant.
“Actually, they toned down the amount of stains on his clothes (in the film) because it would’ve been a joke for today’s audiences. Going around looking like that doesn’t help your credibility.
“Oh, there’s an amazing movie there. I wish we could make it. Of course we won’t.”
- “Longford:” 8 p.m. Saturday, HBO, with repeats through the month.
Keith Olbermann, who must be wondering why there aren't more crusading voices jumping in to fill the void of progressive voices on cable news, will happily maintain his position as the lone voice to hold Washington's feet to the fire: It was announced today that he will continue on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" for four more years, as well as contribute occasional pieces to "The NBC Nightly News" and host a handful of "Countdown" specials on NBC.
Not bad for a former local smart-alecky sports guy.
Olbermann's show has caught fire in the past year, with viewers up 89% - granted, it's MSNBC we're talking about, so there was plenty of room for improvement, but that's a significant jump by any measure. Olbermann initially made waves with his ongoing "feud" with Bill O'Reilly, but got serious as the year wore on and Election Day drew near. His series of incendiary "Special Comments" about the Bush Administration's execution of the war in Iraq and its using the spectre of terrorism to justify all manner of extra-Constitutional activity became mainstays on YouTube and crooksandliars.com and led to ever higher ratings. They also hacked off a lot of conservatives: At least one website is devoted solely to picking apart every episode of "Countdown."
Plus, when "Countdown's" not deadly serious, it's actually quite droll, even hilarious at times. Olbermann manages to operate at a perfect pitch that allows the sublime and the absurd to co-exist. NBC News president Steve Capus is not far off the mark when, at a hastily arranged phone press conference today, he called "Countdown" "as creative as a broadcast as there is going these days."
For his part, Olbermann played humble. "If you look at my career track record, I and all of my employers for the past 28 years have probably have awakened every day and wondered if I was staying where I was," he said.
"But I never had that sense that I was going anywhere else. (NBC) presented everything I could ask for in terms of opportunities, in terms of the symbolism of those opportunities, so there wasn’t a lot of deciding to do except what to wear to come over and do this today."
Yesterday, of course, al Qaeda uncorked another video with the latest state-of-their-hatred address; in it, professional nutjob Ayman al Zawahiri took some potshots at President Bush that he must’ve swiped off some kid on a playground. Among other things, he assailed Bush as "an alcoholic, liar and gambler with an addictive personality."
At today’s press conference, Bush showed remarkable restraint in not calling al Zawahiri a “Sunni who could really use a Baathist” or “a fondler of other men’s goats.” He didn’t even note that al Zawahiri is al Qaeda’s second-in-command, and therefore, “a kind of stinky Number Two.”
But I fear that this escalation of al Qaeda taunting (all I can picture is John Cleese as the French soldier in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) will get more personal with more Americans, as al Zawahiri figures such name-calling will hurt our feelings and weaken our resolve (our resolve to do what, I’m not sure). So, as a pre-emptive strike, I offer these future snaps from al Qaeda as a way of toughening our hides:
Al Zawahiri will next proclaim that “Peyton Manning throws like a girl” and “Your Jack Bauer is a wimp.”
Thinking himself on a roll, he’ll then declare that “Rosie O’Donnell is a slob” and that “Donald Trump is a blowhard with bad hair.” Those’ll fizzle, as everyone has heard those things already. His subsequent announcement that “Katie Couric’s skill set is ill-served in her position as anchor of ‘The CBS Evening News’” will likewise land as a dud; our national response will be, “Well, duh.”
He’ll deem Paula Abdul “the closest thing you Americans have to a sane person.” That’ll sting, but only momentarily, for al Zawahiri will then misstep by asserting, “Not only did Justin Timberlake not bring Sexy back, but he sent it scurrying like a wounded animal to a nearby cave,” when Americans will have expected him to take a shot at Mary J. Blige’s appearance on “Ghost Whisperer.”
Al Zawahiri’s pronouncement that “You Americans are more interested in the sordid death of that harlot Anna Nicole Smith than whether Douglas Feith cooked the intelligence on Iraq” will be greeted with a “Huh?,” and he’ll list towards irrelevance when his proclamation that “Your ‘Scooby Doo’ movies were cynical products bereft of craft – now, that ‘Smokin’ Aces,’ that was a movie” is issued. By the time of his pronouncement “Your so-called comic Carlos Mencia is not in the least bit funny – we have oxen with cleverer satirical material,” we’ll have lost interest entirely and gone on to check whether parishiltonexposed.com is back online.
Nah, I got nothing. Just wanted to see if the headline’d dupe people into clicking on the site.
What’s kind of amazing is that MSNBC is, still, running a nightly hourlong Anna Update at 7 p.m. As if their fervent coverage throughout the rest of the day is somehow lacking. I’d watch, but that’s around the time when food is being consumed and I don’t want it coming back up. It's almost enough to make you nostalgic for all those inside-yet-another-dangerous-prison shows they ran.
That stuff about her starving her baby so that it’d be “sexy” is pretty icky, though. It'd be nice to bring her back to life just long enough so someone could slap her a good one.
Mainly, though, the coverage and the criticism of the coverage is depressing because it's over Anna Nicole Smith. Who someone actually called "our Lady Diana." (Well, she married well, sort of, but unless there's some men's magazine pictorial I'm unaware of, I think it pretty much ends there.) Even if it weren't for the war in Iraq, the rest of the world would be thumbing their noses at us at this point. What'll happen when Paris Hilton finally OD's? They'll probably have to create whole new cable networks to handle all the coverage.
Given this past Monday's abysmal performance by "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" - the show, you'll recall, that was supposed to single-handedly "rescue" a flailing NBC; a show that managed a mere 6.5 million viewers on Monday, alienating most of the 14.6 million viewers bequeathed to it by "Heroes," the series that in fact did sort of single-handedly rescue the network - NBC announced today that it was moving the premiere of "The Black Donnellys," a New York brothers/gangs/blood-is-thicker-than-water-and-will-flow-and-flow drama from Oscar-winning executive producer Paul Haggis, up one week to Feb. 26.
Here is the entire press release trumpeting this change:
"Please be aware that the new series "The Black Donnellys" will now premiere on Monday, February 26 at 10:00 p.m. ET on NBC..."
Pretty sheepish, it seems. Now we'll never know if all those crazy kids ever found true love or if the show ever managed to cook up a really funny sketch.
NBC's other "SNL"-inspired show, "30 Rock," will be going away soon (March 15, to be precise), too, at least temporarily, to make room for "Andy Barker, P.I.," from executive producer Conan O'Brien and starring his former sidekick Andy Richter as a mild-mannered accountant who gets mistaken for a private detective and sorta likes it.
You can read highlights from my Email in-box so I don’t have to!
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Reports suggest that Britney Spears got a little confused over the weekend and played the “24” drinking game watching this viral video, rather than an actual episode. (Kim Raver admitted to me a while back that Kiefer Sutherland, in an effort to keep the spirits industry and collegiate rehab centers flush, will occasionally infuse an episode with a flourish of epithets.)
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Speaking of “24,” it and “Heroes” manage to draw equally strong audiences on Mondays, with the edge going to “Heroes.” Which is pretty impressive, because just about everyone expected one of those shows to lose a little steam, given that they’re both hyper-charged, apocalyptic action thrillers. Still, CBS’s sitcoms win the hour.
“24’s” success proceeds apace despite concerns that Jack Bauer’s sadistic interrogation methods are making the notion of torture more palatable to Americans, including some serving in the military who watch the show on DVD. It would seem the problem is more about anyone who would take cues on how to conduct their lives from over-the-top TV shows than Jack’s actual behavior, but what do you think? Does fictitious TV violence numb us to the effects of real-life violence?
And while I’m asking questions: If you’re a fan of both “Heroes” and “24,” which do you watch and which do you TiVo? And why?
“Studio 60,” by the way, squandered more than eight million viewers provided it by “Heroes,” dropping to abysmal “What About Brian”-style numbers. Enjoy it while it lasts, which won’t be long: “The Black Donnellys” debuts in its time slot March 5 and could hardly do worse.
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ABC’s “World News,” anchored by Charlie Gibson, managed a rare win over NBC last week, edging Brian Williams by a slender 180,000 viewers (ABC averaged 9.7m viewers). But, while trumpeting this victory, ABC couldn’t help but stick the shiv in CBS’s Katie Couric, noting that not only did it surpass Couric by more than 1 million viewers (1.7m last week, in fact) for the 14th time in 16 weeks, but that ABC is also No. 1 in female viewers aged 25-54. Katie can’t even win in her own demographic.
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Last night, after PBS aired a documentary on New Orleans, the city was again pulverized by a storm, this time thought to be a tornado. Given that track record and given tonight’s draw on PBS is the first in a multi-part report on the news media’s stormy relationship with the current Administration, don’t be surprised if your daily newspaper has a little “accident” on the way to your front porch tomorrow.
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Matt Lauer’s reign as morning show hunk is officially over: Former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber is joining the staff of the “Today” show. A recent profile in The New Yorker suggested this isn’t just stunt casting: Barber watches BBC “World News” to get a global perspective on events; his brother calls him “Sir Barber.”
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Donald Trump, clearly alarmed by the plunge in the ratings for “The Apprentice” despite his best efforts to maintain interest in the show by calling Rosie O’Donnell a “slob,” has apparently abandoned that upscale audience he once touted in favor of viewers with lugnuts for brains: He’ll be appearing on the TV-rasslin’ show “WWE Raw” Thursday night on the USA Channel. Ostensibly, he’ll battle Vince McMahon – in the ring. So if you’ve ever had a desire to see Trump get body-slammed, here’s your chance. I’ll bet even Rosie’ll be watching.
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Two wrestling-affiliated items back to back? The Apocalypse is nigh.
Auditions for the Sci Fi Channel’s reality series “Who Wants to Be a Superhero” will be conducted Friday and Saturday from 1-3 p.m. at Universal Citywalk. (It’s co-sponsored by some rasslin’ outfit.) So if you have a burning itch to utterly humiliate yourself – or, you just like watching other people utterly humiliate themselves – you now know where you want to be and when.
This is why it’s best not to get too involved in those Super Bowl best-commercial competitions: It can break your heart when your favorite doesn’t win.
(I’m led to believe that the same thing can happen with cheering on Super Bowl teams, as well.)
GM is altering its little robot commercial – you know, the one where the car-assembly-line automaton loses his job, is forced to work in demeaning jobs, including serving as a fast-food restaurant’s drive-through squawk box (note that when Kevin Federline is depicted as working at a fast-food joint in a Super Bowl commercial, the National Restaurant Association is offended, but when a robot is shown doing the same – and it’s clearly implied the work is beneath its station in life – the group remains mute).
Eventually, the robot is so distraught that he jumps off a bridge. (Wouldn’t that just make him kinda rusty? Wouldn’t he, like, drink battery acid? Oh, wait, that wouldn’t work; that’s a little treat for him. Watch an “According to Jim” marathon? That’d do anything in.) Anyway, don’t worry, because he wakes up – and it was all a dream! Our hero is still a valued member of the GM work force!
Anyway, some group with a particularly touchy membership (and you know you don’t want to upset these folks, understanding what they’re capable of) found the whole idea of robot suicide upsetting beyond words – well, not beyond words, for in fact words were what they used to complain about the spot and GM agreed to change it.
Now, the robot will enter a post office and go on a shooting spree.
Surely I jest.
Anyway, here I was thinking this was a huge overreaction to the issue of robot suicide (I mean, after all, it’s not like any human watching the spot will think, “You know what? I’m going to going to pattern my life after that CGI-generated contraption!”), but then, you know what, I Google the words Robot Suicide (because, yes, that’s the kind of free time I have on my hands) and come upon this chilling story.
I’m not laughing anymore.
As for the candy-bar ad that got yanked, anyone who actually thought that’d help sell candy bars really needs to rethink his or her career choice.
This is shaping up as the strangest year ever.
Already, we’ve had an American city paralyzed by cartoon-character signs mistaken for terrorist bombs, an astronaut love triangle that may have exploded into a murder plot, the specter of the grim circus that the aftermath of Anna Nicole Smith’s death promises to be, an oil company baldly offering to pay scientists, any scientists (maybe just someone who took science in high school?), to debunk an unequivocal UN report on global warming and a White House that’s still vexingly fuzzy on the definition of “the will of the people” and “partisanship.”
And now we have a televangelist with homicide in his heart.
Pat Robertson, who once famously advocated assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, strode into a courtroom Wednesday and, according to a man suing him, strode up to said gentleman and declared, “I am going to kill you and your family.”
More fun comes from the fact that the guy is suing him for using his image without permission in those ads for Robertson’s snake-oil – er, weight-loss shakes that he touts on his TV show, and that the guy suing him used the shakes after ballooning up to 400 pounds.
So what’s next for Robertson? Declaring war on North Korea and Vatican City? Announcing that God told him to buy his own plutonium? Getting fitted with one of those Hannibal Lecter muzzles?
When does a cable-TV network’s viral marketing schemes, no matter how ill-advised and nation-petrifying, emerge as more clever and amusing than the shows they’re actually airing?
When Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming opts to not, in the remotest way possible, to be animated.
In the past, I’ve been a big fan of Adult Swim’s anarchic sensibility, but lately, it’s seemed that, with a lot of its programming, Adult Swim has been content to truck in sluggard, random jokiness, which, given that genre’s steroidal proliferation of late, is hardly a good thing. AS now seems to be following, rather than leading, the laziest, loopiest trends in contemporary comedy.
The latest pieces of evidence: Adult Swim’s two most recent offerings, neither of which is remotely animated; they just throw willfully bad actors up against cheesy greenscreens.
“Saul of the Mole Men,�" in its initial episode, amusingly can’t even decide what its title should be: It starts out as “Strata: Episode 117: Beneath the Planet of the People,�" but in no time at all, all its characters – members of a scientific team probing the Earth’s core (or something; who knows, given the source?) - are killed in a grisly fashion.
That research team’s sole surviving member, the kvetching, nebbishy geologist Saul Malone (Josh Gardner), soon becomes the show’s putative hero (when he sees bizarre characters, he blurts, idiotically obsrvantly, “Creatures!�"), and whines his way through the rest of Sunday’s episode, which takes up a couple of more titles before coming to a pointedly unsatisfying conclusion (with a song performed by “South Park�" creator Trey Parker).
Should the show continue to evolve into ever-more pointless incarnations (perhaps even involving utterly non-sci-fi variations), it might be funny in a Dali-esque fashion; alas, Adult Swim only provided the first episode, so we can only imagine they’re content to be cheesy, pointedly dumb and mired in awful, “MST3K�"-style sci-fi.
At least “Saul�" has a putative point of view. “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job’s�" only goal seems to be as amateurish as TV can get. Unhappily, they succeed.
The sketch-comedy show, from Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (who also created “Tom Goes to the Mayor,�" heretofore the least-animated show on Adult Swim), aspires to mere amateur-hour antics with high-priced talent. The best joke is that these clearly untalented dupes have absorbed the resources of a greenscreen, but it only places them before a background more uninspired and relentlessly grubby than they, themselves, are.
Former Oscar nominee John C. Reilly plays a local-TV news reporter who can’t tell a banana from a squash. (By the way, that’s one of the segment’s better jokes.) Most of the gags follow in kind, suggesting that Television’s vast landscape is just a horribly-trodden path of idiots who can’t tell blue from yellow, who can’t tell paper from lead, who can’t tell idiocy from wit. “Mr. Show’s�" Bob Odenkirk has a moment that almost approaches funny, but you’ll likely have switched off by then.
- “Saul of the Mole Men:�" Adult Swim, midnight Sunday.
- “Tim and Eric Great Job, Awesome Show:�" Adult Swim, 11:45 p.m. Sunday.
Zucker, routinely considered the chief cause of NBC’s spectacular tank job of the past five or six years (the network is buoyed somewhat this year by the success of “Heroes? and the perception that even its struggling scripted shows are more than worthy contributions to the television arts), won’t have any more excuses.
In Television, the product created second only to programming is Schadenfreude, and Zucker’s self-assurance (many others would no doubt choose another term) makes him a ripe target for that. He’s a smart guy, and he knows it; that rankles many industry people, even (or particularly) when the individual in question is correct in his self-assessment.
Yeah, so maybe he can be full of himself; the thing is, he talks a good game and every once in a while he’s not just b.s.ing you. Covering the TV industry was so much more interesting when Zucker and CBS COO Les Moonves would spend their press tour sessions slagging one another with the gleeful heedlessness of combat-video-game characters. Now, pillows should be handed out with NBC’s quietly and humbly intelligent Kevin Reilly and CBS’s aggressively unprovocative Nina Tassler handling the semiannual press conferences. (Actually, that’s not true about Reilly: He’s impressively forthcoming and thoughtful in his sessions. As for Tassler: Not only should they hand out pillows, but blankets, as well.) Zucker and Moonves remain happy to speak at length at their network’s evening events, but then it’s much harder to get to them for significant periods of time, and even more difficult, in the din of the party, to hear what they’re saying.
Earlier this season, NBC drew scads of contempt for some Draconian belt-tightening moves, including announcing that its 8 p.m. hour next season wouldn’t be cluttered with costly scripted shows. (Reilly later stepped away from that announcement.)
Rather than stinginess (and getting his network to rely too heavily on reality shows), Zucker’s true weakness during his tenure as NBC Entertainment president was failing to develop and sustain a single acceptable sitcom (“Scrubs? might’ve been the one, but was torpedoed by numerous timeslot switches). Simply put, the comedies NBC put on the air during Zucker’s tenure as a programmer suggests the guy doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor (or, in the case of “Good Morning Miami,? was also too sweet on shows that had semi-autobiographical Zuckerian touches).
This is more significant than it might sound, as the failure of legendary sitcom network NBC arguably contributed to the other networks’ lazy – or, at least, less than stellar – comedy development as well: When everyone’s sucking wind, there’s less to prove.
So: A lot of people are rooting against Zucker. And that’s when you should seriously reconsider betting against a guy.
In light of breaking news that Anna Nicole Smith has died in Florida after collapsing at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel, this Daily News article on Smith's July 2002 appearance at the Television Critics Association's press tour might make today's events somewhat less shocking.
Remember: This is from 2002. As bemused as we were at her erratic behavior then (and, naturally, since then), it now serves as a cautionary tale for others who seem content to stumble about in the public spotlight.
PASADENA - THE S.S. ANNA NICOLE, a Class D(-cup) destroyer, docked in Pasadena on Tuesday to announce its next assault, on the lower end of the cable spectrum with a "reality" (if such a word can be used in the same sentence with "Anna Nicole Smith") series.
Appearing before members of the Television Critics Association, Smith was attempting to tout her upcoming "The Anna Nicole Show," which will premiere Aug. 4 on E! Taking not just a page but a pile of chapters from "The Osbournes," the show will have cameras following the former model - best known for her ongoing litigation with the family of her late octogenarian husband, J. Howard Marshall, over his estate - as she muddles through her day with her son, Daniel; assistant Kim Walther (whose left bicep sports a tattoo of her boss); attorney Howard K. Stern; and Prozac-gobbling toy poodle, Sugar Pie. A brief clip preceding Smith's press conference had her chirping, "Hi, hi, it's Anna Nicole, hi!" and "I love my paparazzi."
Frankly, it seemed that nothing could top E! President Mindy Herman's introduction, which contained a reference to Sept. 11: "It's been a momentous year for everyone, but it's been especially important for E!" But in a performance that can only be described as bewildering - or, maybe, just bewildered - Smith didn't understand a lot of questions and refused to answer even more. Those she did respond to she did with curt, bland replies; E! seemingly has rooted out the one person more terminally addled than Ozzy Osbourne. It served as a particularly ominous kick-off for the semi-annual TV press tour.
Smith explained that, to her mind, the point of the show was to demonstrate to people her talents. So what, she was asked, was her greatest talent? "I have no idea," she said. So what, she was asked, was she going to show people? "I have no idea," she said. So what, she was asked, makes people so interested in her? "I don't know. I can't answer that," she said.
Her inability to say anything remotely interesting seemed almost physical; at any rate, listening to her struggle to say so little made for a surreal, airless experience. Let's just say that based on the evidence, "The Anna Nicole Show's" editors are going to have their work cut out for them.
In a rare flash of self-awareness, Smith conceded that E! is "probably" making fun of her. "But my life is funny; there are things that happen to me all the time," she enthused, sort of. She said she is doing the show despite her misgivings about a previously produced, unflattering E! documentary on her life. She suggested she attracts a broad demographic fan base, including "large women, children, college boys and older people." Well, maybe one older person, who unfortunately is in no condition to tune in these days.
Other choice Smith bon mots: "That's in the past - I want to go on with my future" (regarding litigation); "I'm not ready to talk about that" (regarding any charity work she may or may not do); ``I'd like to keep that closed'' (regarding her relationship with Marshall); "I didn't come here to talk about my transplants"; "I don't understand the question" (to several inquiries). And, finally, "I speak my mind and tell the truth."
E! executives Mark Sonnenberg and Jeff Shore declared that, after a 45- minute lunch meeting with Smith, they knew they had a TV series. After this 45-minute session, they might be seriously reassessing that initial impression.
"Lost's" midseason return Wednesday night was -- what's the technical term for it? Oh, yeah: Ehhhh.
"Lost" lost in overall viewers to "CSI: New York," 14.68m to 15.78m, respectively, though it won in the viewers-aged-18-to-49 demographic that everyone tiresomely reminds us advertisers crave. Mediaweek's ratings guru Marc Berman goes to great lengths to explain that while those numbers don't represent a full-fledged disaster, yet concludes, "'Lost' is a classic example of a show mishandled by its network." Remember, just last year it was averaging 22m viewers -- and that, opposite "American Idol," not "CSI: NY."
Meanwhile, here's yet another glimpse inside the writers' room at "Lost." Wow, these things look pretty easy to make, and make absurd. Perhaps you should get to work on one.
Oh, and a full nine million folks who cringed through "Criminal Minds"' post-Super Bowl episode didn't bother to check in and see how it was resolved last night, though the show still boasted a whopping 17.23m viewers.
While we’ve already taken a withering peek at the sitcoms ABC has in development, there are many, many other series the networks are fretting over that no doubt merit similar umbrage. Variety has a full list of pilots in production (subscription required), but in a staggering act of selfless community service (and no celebrity DUI to prompt it!), Your Mayor has surveyed the wares, divvied them into categories and summarily found them not terribly original.
First, a little quiz: What do these shows taken together sound like?
Fox’s “Untitled Liz Meriwether Project:? “Four single women post-college.?
ABC’s “Cashmere Mafia:? “Four successful female executives, friends since college, rely on each other as they juggle the demands of career, family and high ambitions in New York City.?
ABC’s “Women's Murder Club:? “Four girlfriends solve tough murder cases.?
A: An effort to cut down on costs caused by sprawling casts.
B: “Four women? is the new black.
C: Thinly veiled variations on “Desperate Housewives.?
D: All of the above.
Add to those: Fox’s “Nurses,? NBC’s “Lipstick Jungle? (powerful women lock horns in NYC) and ABC’s “Football Wives? (version of the lurid British soap “Footballer’s Wives,? only transposed from the world of soccer to professional football), “Judy’s Got a Gun? (single mom solves crimes); “Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office? (“Lipstick Jungle,? only focusing on one “nice girl?) and “See Jayne Run? (woman balances career and motherhood). The networks are trying turning to the Oxygen cable channel for inspiration.
Of course, in ABC’s case, it makes sense, as its two biggest hits are “Grey’s Anatomy? and “Desperate Housewives.? But how many of those “balancing career/family? things have we seen in the past, and don’t most of them sort of feel fairly resolved by the end of the pilot, when the character solves the crime and still manages to get to the bake sale/school play on time, earning a fervent hug from her child, and if she doesn’t it’s OK because the media are still tailing her for a quote and the kid understands because Mommy is a hero and on television, to boot?
But the networks are developing some testosterone-charged shows, as well. Every year, it seems, the networks produce a couple of pilots about bounty hunters; every year, said pilots fail to earn a place on the fall schedule.
But hope springs eternal, and we have a couple more in the works this year: CBS’s “Skip Tracer,? about a “charming rogue? from a couple of “Sopranos? staff writers, and The CW’s “Reaper,? which offers a piquant variation on the theme, focusing on “the devil's bounty hunter, who reclaims souls that have escaped from hell.?
Which brings us to the requisite paranormal offerings: Fox’s “Terminator? spinoff “Sarah Connor Chronicles? and “Them,? about alien spies infiltrating Earth, and CBS’s “zombie dramedy? “Babylon Fields? and “Twilight,? about a private eye who’s also a vampire in love with a mortal. Alas, David Boreanaz is already gainfully employed.
Meanwhile, wheelchairs figure into two new sitcoms: Fox’s “Playing Chicken,? about different brothers who move in together after one suffers an accident, and NBC’s “I’m with Stupid,? in which a guy moves into a group home after meeting a man in a wheelchair. Because nothing says comedy like paralysis. Oddly, according to Variety, “I’m with Stupid? is NBC’s only sitcom in development; they must be praying that “Andy Barker, P.I.? will do boffo business when it debuts in “30 Rock’s? timeslot next month.
And, as usual, cop shows dominate the development landscape. Just a few:
The CW’s “Gravity,? about L.A. rookie cops (hmm, wasn’t that once called “The Rookies??) and “The World According to Barnes,? billed as an “‘Animal House’-like comedic drama about a pair of crime-solving Princeton students.? How can it be “Animal House?-like if it’s a comedic drama? And didn’t the “Animal House? students commit the crimes, not solve them?
Also: Fox’s “K-Ville,? about post-Katrina New Orleans cops, and “New Amsterdam,? about a cop “who is secretly centuries old.?
NBC has “Ft. Pit,? from “Rescue Me’s? Peter Tolan and Denis Leary, only about cops instead of firemen, and “Life,? in which a wrongly imprisoned policeman rejoins the force.
CBS, which may not be happy until its entire schedule is saturated with crime procedurals, has “Protect and Serve,? which rather banally concerns “Cops living in the Los Angeles suburbs (who) deal with the stresses of police life on and off the job.?
Equally uninspired-sounding is ABC’s “Untitled Cop Project,? “a workplace comedy about the eccentric characters in a police precinct.?
And yet, passed over once again by every broadcast network was “Untitled Mayor of Television Project,? “a workplace comedy about the eccentric characters dealing with the stresses of trying to balance personal and professional lives while hunting down in wheelchairs souls who have escaped hell and plague Television with reality series.?
OK, the big question in the diaper-wearing-astronaut-love-triangle/attempted-murder scandal is, which TV series will co-opt it first, and who will play the fictional doppelganger of loopy Lisa Nowak, whose mug shot enters the pantheon of Nick Nolte- and Rip Torn-Bad.
As with last week’s story about those anarchists at Time Warner shutting down the city of Boston, this saga likewise boasts hilarity at every turn. Nowak, in love with another astronaut (who just flew in December’s shuttle mission) – she eloquently and piquantly characterized their frisson as "more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship," – drove a feverish 950 miles from Houston to Orlando, wearing a diaper so as not to have to take pee breaks, to confront a woman she considered her rival in the non-relationship.
All Nowak managed to do was to douse her victim with a little pepper spray, but police found that she had come packing, with “a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, a BB gun, 3 feet of rubber tubing and several garbage bags. A wig was found in a plastic bag in a nearby trash bin.?
Based on all that stuff, whatever Nowak had in mind might’ve accounted for all the atrocities in “Saw IV.?
A NASA spokesman won Understatement of The Day honors for his observation, “There is a feeling that it is all very unfortunate for the families involved.?
Naturally, the smart money for quickest turnaround on this sordid tale of woe goes to “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,? whose writers already have a rough outline and are fervently debating whether to keep the characters astronauts (which, honestly, is what makes the story so weirdly compelling) or to make them U.S. Senators or UN officials or some occupation that might reasonably be expected to show up in Manhattan. And if they stay with astronauts, how do they contrive to place them in New York? A special astronauts’ luncheon? Ehh.
Certainly, “CSI: Miami? is geographically the most logical show to tackle the story. “Without a Trace’s? ability to hop around the country puts it in contention.
But this could go in a number of directions: “Monk? or “Psych? could wring the twisted humor from it without sweating the geographical logic; “Battlestar Galactica? could emphasize the astronaut portion of it; “The Dresden Files? could make one of the astronauts a werewolf (beware those full moons on the shuttle!). “Lost? could fit it into a flashback, with chilling ramifications for our heroes now. “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip? could incorporate it into one of those notoriously unfunny sketches they create. “The Sarah Silverman Program,? which has few rules of logic, could find Sarah and her pals in outer space, where the betrayal and body count starts rising. “South Park? is probably too busy doing the Adult Swim story to cogently address this one so soon after.
The other route is the cheap-o A&E or Sci Fi teleflick, which again, places our astronaut love triangle circling Jupiter, makes one of them a werewolf (with lots of moons to choose from) and ratchets up the body count.
Anyway, whoever does this needs to get right on it. As for the actress? Connie Nielsen (who has “L&O: SVU? experience)? Lili Taylor (accomplished at playing nutcases)? One of the actresses booted off “Lost? after their DUI’s (and who already have embarrassing mugshots)?
Thoughts, anyone?
It’s all well and good that “Lost’s? brain trust is going to offer another recap episode Wednesday night before the second half of the show’s third season – boy, everything is complicated with this show – premieres at 10 p.m. But, as I suggested in my weekly (more or less) fireside chat with the People of Television via podcast, ABC could do worse than to provide some sort of weekly or semi-regular recap episode – exploring certain aspects of the sundry “Lost? mysteries that the writers may have forgotten about, but the rabid fans certainly haven’t.
Keenly and perceptively, I argue that even “Lost? recap shows would do better ratingswise than, say, “What About Brian,? the network’s sitcoms, “Men in Trees? or anything on Friday night. And they just might help lure fans who have abandoned the show back into the fold.
Of course, I don’t think anyone could explain what “Lost’s? writers are thinking better than this short film – even their mascot mutt gets a vote, pulling Post-Its containing plot points off the wall.
As for tomorrow night, Juliet's (Elizabeth Mitchell) past gets plenty murky, as does her present-day situation. And somewhere in between, she mans up.
While the Super Bowl was watched by the traditional gazillions (about 93 million people - 63 percent of all TVs in use Sunday evening - were tuned to the Colts' smackdown of hapless Rex Grossman, the third-highest TV audience in history, following "M*A*S*H"'s finale and another Super Bowl), "Criminal Minds," the show hand-picked by the geniuses at CBS to follow the big event, sent viewers fleeing in droves. True, it was watched by about 26 million people in 17 million homes, making for its largest audience ever, but that was way down from last year's post-Bowl offering, "Grey's Anatomy," which had well north of 30 million viewers in more than 24 million homes stick around.
For one thing, it was a pretty creepy episode - or, as The Washington Post's Lisa de Moreas delights in calling the show, "pervy" - and that's not exactly what families gathered in the name of football are anxious to see. And after paying tribute to Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy and Chicago coach Lovie Smith's Christian faith after the game, viewers probably weren't in the mood to see a show about a religious lunatic chaining up women in negligees. Plus, it was just stupid in general (OK, so the wimpiest Feds on the squad are sent to question the psycho looney, and OK, so their cell phones don't work, but wouldn't their government-issued vehicle still have a radio with which they could contact the tough-guy Feds? Geez).
Oh, and promoting Craig Ferguson's special edition of his talk show like an episode of "Benny Hill?" Seems guaranteed to encourage anyone who didn't tune out of "Criminal Minds" to leave in droves.
As for the commercials, why does the rest of the media play along like dupes in hyping advertising, which most people generally find to be an irritant? Besides, the hype has really seemed to have frozen up the creative minds who create these things; by and large, the commercials really smacked of desperation. The only one I found truly funny was the car ad featuring the sad-faced assembly-line robot dreaming of getting fired and being forced into menial jobs and even contemplating suicide while the sappy pop ditty "All By Myself" played in the background. (Suicide = guaranteed laughs!)
The Daily News ran a New York Times essay on “Extras,? Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant’s latest wallow in cringe-inducing comedy, and it was a bit of a head-scratcher. The writer assailed Gervais for his treatment of all the celebrities who portray heightened versions of themselves on the show (a bawdy Kate Winslet cynically taking the role of a righteous nun only in order to win an Oscar; an even bawdier Daniel Radcliffe randily dangling a condom all around), suggesting that he has a rather dim view of them:
“(I)t leaves you wondering, in the end, whether Gervais down deep imagines no real difference between what motivates Clint Eastwood and what drives Vanna White. … (Celebrities playing “themselves?) are there to enact Gervais' caricature, largely reprising the same dim, self-aggrandizing megalomaniac over and over. Every time they do, they seem to be inadvertently making Gervais' point for him, because by getting in his game, they are betraying the kind of self-regard that leaves us assuming that they consider themselves exempt from his critique. Anyone who subjects himself to Gervais' camera must believe that he does not belong to the class of arrogant jerks that Gervais is making so much fun of.?
Where to begin? Did the writer think Gervais considered all middle-managers as incompetent as "The Office's" David Brent? I think, actually, Gervais found all sorts of different ways for the celebrities to tweak their personae: Some are arrogant, some are foolish, some are downright mean. (My new favorite is Ian McKellan, who is particularly funny in next week’s episode describing the process of acting in a self-important yet utterly imbecilic way. “How do I act so well?? he asks rhetorically. “How did I know what to say?? He then whispers, conspiratorily, “The words were written down for me in a script,? and recalls having to inform Peter Jackson, when asked to play Gandolf in the “Lord of the Rings? films, “You are aware that I’m not really a wizard.?)
Where was this crack Times writer when “The Larry Sanders Show? was on TV? That show did the same thing, and far more truculently; by contrast, “Extras? is fairly benign and even seems fond of celebrity peccadilloes. The main problem with the show as I see it, in fact, is that it feels a little late in the game to have actors parody themselves. Rather than actors doing these shows because they think it shows they don’t “belong to the class of arrogant jerks,? they do it because it’s trendy and they have a sense of humor about themselves and their line of work, not because they’ve been duped by a secretly sinister Gervais.
And besides, “Extras? is, after all, a comedy. To have celebrities play themselves as normal, well-adjusted people, simply put, wouldn’t be very funny.
The essayist then made another point: “Abjection, one of the show's favorite themes, is now almost entirely Maggie's (Ashley Jensen) to bear, and she bears more than a viewer's comfort level can sustain.?
To which I can only respond, at the risk of sounding like Dick Cheney, hogwash. Maggie has been hit on by both Orlando Bloom and Daniel Radcliffe this season, and if that’s this writer’s notion of “abjection,? I can’t even imagine the kind of rich, exotic and fulfilling life she must be leading.
Gervais’s character, Andy, has suffered horribly this season, and he’s not even a quarter of the unrelenting boob that David Brent, Gervais’s inspired creation on “The Office,? was, and therefore hardly as deserving of his routine humiliations. Andy has watched in muted dismay as his TV series, “When the Whistle Blows? (a bizarro-world version, in fact, of “The Office?), has been compromised by his collaborators into something worse, even, than “According to Jim.? (In fact, “Extras? in its second season really isn’t about movie extras, sort of like how “Prison Break? this year hasn’t been about breaking out of prison.) Andy’s “Whistle? character, wearing a doltish wig and a nutter’s coke-bottle spectacles, has been reduced to uttering a spectacularly unfunny catchphrase: “Are you having a laugh?? (And finally, the headline on this entry makes sense.) Despite withering reviews, the show’s a success, but all that manages to do is further thresh Andy’s soul. Now that’s abjection.
So anyway, onto the final three episodes, the first of which airs tonight (long after the Super Bowl will have ended, one would think): Tonight, Chris Martin of Coldplay (whom Gervais once witheringly parodied on his hilarious British radio show, which resulted in his podcasts) shamelessly promotes his new album, whether when doing a public service announcement or when appearing, for no reason whatsoever, on “When the Whistle Blows.? Andy’s further pilloried for that creative decision, which he fought tooth and nail, but on the other hand, he’s up for a BAFTA (England’s Emmy). His cynically clueless (or is it cluelessly cynical?) agent (hilariously played by Merchant) informs him, “It’s all crap this year, so you’ve got as good a chance as anyone.?
And yet, what should be at least a decent evening devolves into an utter horror show for Andy. Yet again. Again, I say: Now that’s abjection.
Next week, Ian McKellan casts Andy in a play that promises to demonstrate that he has real acting chops, except that the play has a gay theme and the homophobic Andy makes a shambles of it. Again, I say: Now that’s abjection.
In the final episode, Andy’s bullied by the mother of a terminally ill son to visit him in the hospital. British actor Robert Lindsay is insulted that he wasn’t asked, and makes a horrible scene at the hospital; Maggie dates a nerd who still lives with his parents, who expect her to satisfy their boy – “You don’t want people saying you’re a pr!ck tease, do you?? mom asks/warns Maggie – and the show employs the most wasted use of Robert De Niro in entertainment history. But, of course, that’s the joke.
This is reportedly the last season of “Extras,? and I can’t imagine that like Gervais’s “Office,? they’ll be asked to do a Christmas special finale. As entertaining as it could be, Gervais and Merchant never really found a clear and driving point to the show (as evidenced by the change in direction from season one to season two). And Andy was hardly as memorable a character as David Brent (or as Steve Carell’s Michael Scott on the American version, for that matter). Gervais allowed, wittingly or otherwise, for the show to be stolen by Merchant and Jensen, who both played dementedly dim characters, albeit ones with precious few redeeming qualities.
Still, I did have a laugh.
- “Extras,? 10 tonight; HBO.
First Amendment Alert: (Oh, wait: England doesn’t have a First Amendment. Never mind.)
Still, you can imagine the drooping heads around Great Britain right about now, given that Channel Four has yanked from its upcoming schedule three separate documentaries about the practice of self-gratification.
(Believe it or not, a couple of the puns in the above sentence were unintentional.)
The documentaries – part of a "package" entitled “wank week? (I’m not making it up; I probably couldn’t say it if I was) – may return at a later date.
But still: three separate documentaries on the subject? How much is there to say, anyway? And did Courteney Cox participate?
Congratulations are in order all around, for Your Mayor and for you, for your Herculean patience: This represents The Mayor of Television’s 300th blog entry. And upon the event of such a rarefied occasion, Your Mayor has agreed to market a series of limited-edition souvenirs to commemorate this landmark event.
For verily, through these dark and troubled times, it has only been Your Mayor who has understood the challenges confronting the Good People of Television, and only I who have been courageous enough to present them in terms euphemized enough so as not to unduly alarm the constituency. Only I have been bold enough to conceal the disturbing truth that your leaders in the Land of Television have egregiously weighted their egos and legacies in favor of what may actually serve the greater good, in the guarded assumption that the history books will be closed on Television (as even Bill Gates believes they will be) before the ruinous errors of our policies will be exposed.
For those of you who churlishly find this endeavor a craven opportunity to cash in the burgeoning avalanche of Mayor-o-mania, not to mention the chance to offer links to some of this blog’s “Greatest Hits? to more recent fans, well, all I can do is chide you for your cynicism and perspicacity. And, of course, invite you to partake of these wares anyway.
* First up, a bronzed imprint of the inaugural “Mayor of Television? blog entry, a heroic and historic document in which I railed against the insurgents of reality television while allowing them to terrorize our viewership untrammeled. True, this handsome item is so oppressively heavy that not even the overpriced nail-and-Y-shaped frame holders at Restoration Hardware will be able to affix it to the cheap plaster walls of most homes, but, still, you’ll want to own this chronicle of a troubled age, no matter how many times it leaves vexing indentations in your hardwood floors.
* Hummel figurines re-enacting Your Mayor’s bold, “Manchurian Candidate?-style assassination attempt on CBS COO Les Moonves. The attention to detail on these porcelain figurines is truly astonishing, from the square, jutted jaws of Moonves’ bodyguards/thugs, to the benign threat proffered by the knives accompanying the melting, sunflower-shaped butter pats on the tables in the far back of the ballroom, where Your Mayor was relegated to absorb Mr. Moonves’ jolly self-aggrandizements.
* A tintype of Larry King composing one of “The Mayor of Television’s? very first weblog entries in the early 1950s. King, a perceptive purveyor of pop culture even a half-century ago, posited the tough observations: “Joe McCarthy has a presence that simply lights up the screen! He could peddle floor wax, and then, I’d have way too much floor wax cluttering up my apartment!? and “Hey, now that television is such a big deal, does anyone know if they’re still making books? This is a rare chance to behold King before he made suspenders the saucy fashion statement they are today.
* A high-definition DVD of Chris Wallace’s hard-hitting and contentious interview with Your Mayor about my contributions through negligence to the bastardization of Television’s body politic, conducted not long before his notorious session with Bill Clinton. This special-edition DVD includes my exclusive commentary of my chest-poking responses, in which I demand whether Wallace “asked Stu Bloomberg, when he was at ABC, how hard he tried to keep Jim Belushi off the air. Did you ever ask Gail Berman when she was at Fox, what she was doing to protect Television from reality programming?? To be honest, the commentary just basically notes camera angles and lighting considerations and the camaraderie circling the crew habituating the craft-services table, but they offer insight nonetheless into the febrile considerations that go into creating something of nominal value that viewers will watch momentarily, then forget.
* A Franklin-Mint plate celebrating Your Mayor leaking, to the New York Times, a bombshell memo entitled, “Television: Illustrative New Courses of Action,? conceding that everything my Administration had attempted and was likely to attempt to take the cudgel of righteousness to the noggin of reality television was doomed to failure now and into the foreseeable future. The plate’s portrait, commissioned to one of Thomas Kinkade’s lesser acolytes, isn’t particularly flattering in its depiction of Your Mayor (my goatee, in particular, looks like a particularly grievous imagining perpetrated by one of those magnet-and-lead-filing toys), but the expression of heroic stoicism upon my face is almost vaguely passable, and anyway, we’ve already commissioned 500 of these things that we have to move at the fairly scandalous price of $49.95, so I can’t badmouth them too much.
Order now! Operators (or, at least, an operator) are standing by – until, at least, the 500th blog entry, at which point these items will be peddled as valuable antique keepsakes, at twice the price.
Of the li’l Lite Brite signs depicting a Mooninite flipping the bird – they were surreptitiously put up all across 10 cities a couple of weeks ago, but only Boston authorities mistook them for bombs and shut down half the city yesterday – Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said, “It had a very sinister appearance. It had a battery behind it, and wires.?
A Wonkette.com commenter (link below) noted with a gasp, “My alarm clock has a battery in the back and wires.? Another wondered, “Does the whole city grind to a halt when someone whips out an iPod??
At ABC News.com, a commenter observed, “Anyone who has seen the show would have immediately recognized the character in the ‘device.’ It appears that the Boston P.D. spends most of their time watching ‘24.’"
How soon before David E. Kelley incorporates this into an episode of “Boston Legal??
The Boston Globe was not amused:
“One wouldn't expect the promoters of the TV program "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" to score high on a maturity index. But anyone older than 8 or 9 should be able to understand the dangers of staging such a stunt in the post-Sept. 11 world. Homeland Security experts will need to review the response of local law enforcement. Public safety personnel may have overreacted; local bloggers apparently identified the guerrilla advertising campaign early on. … Potential criminal prosecution is only one consideration. The tricksters at Turner, a unit of Time Warner Inc., should pay the bill for the consequences of a lame marketing gimmick.?
Adult Swim tried to act chagrined with an on-air apology.
“Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards ‘bomblike’ devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged infrastructure and transportation in the city. Yes, and if prosecutors were actually barrels of sh!t wrapped in dynamite, courthouses around the country could be severely damaged and extremely unhygienic.?
Here’s a sane/amusing reaction to the incident.
And you can be a part of history! Get your own Adult Swim Improvised (non-)Explosive Device on eBay.
For the uninitiated, here are the Mooninites in action on “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.?
While Your Mayor makes no claims of being a seasoned psychiatrist, that does not prevent me from hereby offering just a couple of friendly words of advice to Jimmy Kimmel: Yes, your girlfriend is the funniest, sexiest comic working right now, but for God’s sake, man, slowly back away now.
Kimmel, of course, dates Sarah Silverman, whose new Comedy Central series debuts tonight. Silverman, however, seems to be in denial over the identity of her paramour.
Here are a few excerpts from Ms. Silverman’s recent press conference at TV press tour:
* “I always say, like, ‘All I get to play are these bitches in movies, the bitchy girlfriend or the bitchy roommate or the girlfriend before he realizes what love could be.’ And, like, I hate that so much. And my boyfriend is, like, ‘Yeah, but then you get a chance to do your own thing, and you play a bitch.’ But to me, it's so different because it's a much more layered character. There's something to her.?
Seasoned Psychiatric Evaluation: Note that Silverman doesn’t mention Kimmel by name. This could just be Silverman being coy, or it could mask an underlying hostility that Kimmel is making the big-time broadcast-network bucks, while she toils away for a basic-cable station. Furthermore, Silverman is correcting her boyfriend in public, suggesting that though his analysis of her professional plight may seem reasoned, in fact he doesn’t really understand her. This public scolding can only serve as a seismic psychic event that will rend rifts into chasms and leave hearts fractured in the rubble.
* “My boyfriend is always like, ‘You waste so much time, valuable hours in the day having lunch with your friends, where you could be doing something productive.’ And I'm like, ‘But it's one of the things that makes my life so rich and happy.’?
Seasoned Psychiatric Evaluation: Once again, Silverman declines to concede to Kimmel his true essence, once again reducing him to the generic template of a romantic notion. The first time could be considered coyness; the second time can only be attributed to a seething rage that, in this case, seems to stem from Kimmel’s Jake LaMotta-like refusal to acknowledge that Silverman is allowed to actually enjoy her life. And again, the fact that Silverman points up Kimmel’s seeming thoughtlessness and barely repressed urge to run her life in a public forum can only inspire questions of their dysfunctional behavior in private.
* “Jimmy makes one cameo appearance that if you blink you will miss it. He plays Joan the Dispatcher in a party scene for Jay's birthday. Jay (Johnston) plays a policeman who goes out with Laura (Silverman, Sarah's real-life sister). And it's his birthday party, and Jimmy has one line that he says to Brian (Posehn) by the punch bowl -- two, actually. He says, as the camera pans, you just see him and he's dressed as a woman, but it's very not tranny-ish. It's very like a woman's short haircut, very little makeup. And he says, ‘They call me Joan the Dispatcher because there's another Joan in accounting.’ And Brian goes, ‘Huh.’ And he takes a beat, and then he improvised, ‘You're tall.’ That's it. But it's very sweet.?
Seasoned Psychiatric Evaluation: It wasn’t until the final question of the press conference that Silverman actually mentioned Kimmel by name. And then, it was to boast about how she has emasculated him, by dressing him up as a woman and giving him precious little screen time on her show. The only way she could have been crueler and more cutting was to add, “But he wasn’t very funny, so we left his scene on the cutting-room floor.?
So, Jimmy: Get out now. This is for your own good. I promise you: I have no ulterior motives.
- "The Sarah Silverman Program:" 10:30 tonight and midnight Friday on Comedy Central.
About this blog
David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place.
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