April 2007 Archives
Last night, L.A. was in thrall to an all-star concert taped for the June 6 episode of PBS’s “Great Performances” (how do they know it’s going to be a great performance before they tape it?), “We Love Ella! A Tribute to the First Lady of Song.” Ella, of course, is the legendarily eclectic vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, who missed out on turning 90 this past Wednesday when she died in June of 1996.
Natalie Cole and Quincy Jones co-hosted the event (Cole also sang “A Tisket, A Tasket” and “Stardust”). Other performers sang songs associated with Fitzgerald – given how many songs she recorded, though, they had a pretty wide net to cast with.
Stevie Wonder covered “Too Close for Comfort,” Dave Koz and Ruben Studdard collaborated on “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me,” Lizz Wright sang a sultry “Reaching for the Moon,” Ledisi knocked “Blues in the Night” out of the park, Wynonna Judd belted out “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and Patti Austin and Take 6 stopped the show while scatting “How High the Moon.”
No, honestly – they literally stopped the show. Austin was so electrifying the electricity in the production’s exterior mobile unit imploded (it was described as an “electrical hit”). In an evening of “Great Performances,” there was a pretty shoddy performance on the behalf of the tech guys. Austin and the guys had to try it again – and again. Fortunately, they got it on take three, not take six.
Judd also had to re-do her song, and, about two and a half hours after the production was to begin, the entire thing ground to a halt due to more electrical problems. Though a lot more performers were due to appear – James Moody, Nancy Wilson, k.d. lang, Cyndi Lauper – a fair chunk of the crowd (honed, clearly, by years of experience attending Dodger games), took this as a cue to beat the traffic home.
Having attended many tapings in the past, I’m accustomed to the halting, start-and-stop nature of the beast. But tickets were also sold to the public, for prices ranging from $50-$125, and had I forked over that kind of money for the sort of Keystone Tech Guys antics on display Sunday, I likely would not have been quite so sanguine about the experience.
In today’s Daily News, Bill O’Reilly performs his autopsy on the meshuga kerfuffle that was Rosie O’Donnell v. the world on “The View.”
O’Reilly doesn’t like O’Donnell, to be sure, but what really raised his hackles was Rosie’s buying into 9/11 conspiracies suggesting the White House somehow masterminded the tragedy. (We took note of this inanity, as well.)
What’s truly inspiring is how blind O’Reilly is to the fact that Rosie’s the flip side of his own coin. He recently opined, “Surely, you cannot allow someone to come on the air every day and vent hateful, dishonest propaganda – you just can’t allow that.” Sounds like he’s just begging to be fired.
He pursues this theme in today’s column:
“Here's how I process all of this. Rosie O'Donnell is a far-left individual who has the sympathy of many who believe what she believes, including some in the mainstream press. … O'Donnell's anti-Bush, anti-conservative tirades were useful to the radical left.”
(Uh, not really all that useful, because liberals prefer not to sound like wacko nutjobs; they like to have their arguments tethered to reality and a few facts – that’s how reasonable people are able to have rational discussions. Not that Bill would be aware of this fact.)
And:
“If O'Donnell's opinions could become mainstream, then other radical bomb throwers could get away with a lot more on the tube.”
Many of O’Donnell’s opinions – the troops should come home; Bush could be doing a better job; it’s OK to be gay; Donald Trump has gnarly hair; food is yummy – are, in fact, mainstream. But O’Reilly seems to be trying, somewhat dishonestly, to lump those in with her loopier proclamations. As for “other radical bomb throwers could get away with a lot more on the tube:” Uh, Bill, have you looked in the mirror lately?
And:
“(W)hile Fox News and a few newspapers covered Rosie O'Donnell's wild adventure, most of the other media ignored it.”
Huh? Where has he been? Even his good enemies at MSNBC have been all over this.
And, finally:
“And so this columnist has reached oracle status, at least for this week.”
To which of these definitions of “oracle” does O’Reilly imagine himself to have ascended?
“In ancient Greece and Rome, a shrine dedicated to a particular god where people went to consult a priest or priestess in times of trouble or uncertainty.”
“An ancient Greek or Roman deity that a priest or priestess would consult for advice on behalf of troubled or uncertain people.”
“A piece of advice, often in the form of a puzzle or an enigmatic statement, handed down by a Greek or Roman deity.”
Since today’s Daily News entertainment section truncated its books pages a smidgen to make room for an expanded summer movie preview, we herewith offer a diminutive online countermeasure:
The Death of the Novel, and of Books in General.
Key quote: "I don't understand why newspapers, when they want to cut space, they immediately think of depriving people who like to read."
Questions for the literate amongst us: How dire is this situation, really? And if it’s pretty worrying, then what can one do?
In related news: The CW is repeating its season finale of their Pussycat Dolls reality show tonight.
Just as Adult Swim did yesterday, the Sci Fi Channel announced three new programs debuting this summer, leaving us no choice but to make fun of them.
"Flash Gordon" (premieres August 10), unfortunately, has nothing to do with Will Ferrell and Jon Heder’s climactic figure-skating sequence in “Blades of Glory;” instead, it’s yet another take on the old comic strip about space adventurers exploring planets and battling an evildoer who goes by the moniker of Ming the Merciless. Wouldn’t it be great if people still went by names like that? Get to it, Kim Jong-il.
"Destination Truth" (premieres June 6) is “Ghost Hunters,” only with different guys and a much better travel budget – they trek to Malaysia, Chile, Argentina and Papua, New Guinea in search of mythical monsters. (I can see the show’s tagline: “We get paid handsomely to fail.”) They also go to Thailand, but I’m not sure I want to know what they get up to over there.
Derren Brown Project (premieres July 25) has yet to be titled, but at least they know who’s going to star in it: British “mentalist” Derren Brown, who, per Sci Fi, “knows your mind better than you do.” In the case of people who buy into this stuff, I’m not so sure that’s so difficult. How about for the title “At Least It’s Not That Hack John Edward?”
Those last two shows remind me how odd it is that the Sci Fi Channel airs reality shows (or, perhaps I have it all backwards, and all reality shows belong on the Sci Fi Channel). Your assignment: Cook up a “reality” series for Sci Fi; they’ve told me they’ll actually produce the best entry (well, actually, they haven’t returned my calls, but I’m sure it’s a slam dunk).
TV Guide.com, intrepidly dedicated to keeping its finger on the pulse of our society and feverishly regurgitating back to us whatever concerns us most, leapt into action and polled concerned Americans on … what else? Rosie O’Donnell and “The View.”
54.3 percent of those polled said they won’t miss O’Donnell when she takes her bungee-cord-that-dangles-her-upside-down-and-thereby-turns-that-frown-around and goes home. 33 percent said they’d like to see Megan Mullally – who, conveniently, just happens to be looking for work – replace Rosie. Another 10 percent thought O’Donnell should be replaced with another loudly kvetching plus-sized comic, Roseanne (is she using a surname these days? I lost track).
And an astonishing five percent endorsed the idea of allowing Joan Rivers back in front of TV cameras again to serve as co-host (and, no doubt, underscore how gracefully Barbara Walters has aged, by comparison). Attention, FBI profilers seeking unhinged lunatics whose psychoses might escalate into violence: Your search should begin with that five percent.
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Meanwhile, the site is also reporting that “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” will be returning – post-May sweeps. Which seems a bit odd, given that the shows that subsequently aired in its 10 p.m. Monday timeslot – “The Black Donnellys,” “Thank God You’re Here” and “The Real Wedding Crashers” – have all done even worse ratingswise.
In the first episode of its return, Matt Albie (Matthew Perry) rails against philistine Internet commentators – who make far, far less money than he does, he points out – who lack the wit and income level to appreciate just how brilliant his writing is. Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford) asks Matt whether such critics would be kinder to his program if they, in fact, made as much money as he does. Confused, Matt quietly ponders this for a long, long time – marking the longest sustained period of silence in an Aaron Sorkin script – until Tom Jeter (Nathan Corddry) enters the office, whining about a splinter in his butt he got from shoddy set construction by the unionized crew, with Simon Stiles (D.L. Hughley) in tow, cackling, making the incident seem a lot wackier than it actually is.
The infallibility of the Internets was sadly disproved yet again when Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” reported that Muslim children in a town in Maine were terrorized by a ham sandwich.
Reporters sited the town’s new “anti-ham response plan” and quoted an official as saying, “These children have got to learn that ham is not a toy.”
All well and good, but it turns out the story was a parody from a site called Associated Content, whose operators have subsequently had to go so far as to add this caveat to its posting: “EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN ACTUAL NEWS STORY. IT IS A PARODY.” Nothing like explaining a joke to kill it.
To be fair, the Fox News geniuses do reference the Onion when discussing the story. “I hope we’re not being duped,” one co-host frets. “We’re not being duped,” another declares authoritatively.
Not to worry, guys: I’ve been taken in by wily, dubious reports in the past. Why, I remember when I used to believe that the Fox News Channel was a legitimate news source.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live” has scrapped 17 episodes due to run in May in which the storyline concerned a high-school hostage situation.
"OLTL" executive producer Frank Valentini issued a statement: "Out of respect to those affected by this devastating tragedy, especially the families, I felt that it was important to remove this story line from our show."
Likewise, Fox’s “Bones” postponed an episode involving a murdered college student, NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” erased from an episode all references to America’s educational system (and football) and CBS’s “CSI: Miami” cobbled together an episode taking place in a world where guns don’t exist.
You can reliably bet that were "Law & Order" still in production on this season, those folks would be running in the other direction, rushing to get a school-shooting episode finished in time for May sweeps.
Instead, “One Life to Live’s” May storyline will involve how its sundry characters respond to the tragic news of a colorful co-host of a morning talk show deciding not to re-up her contract.
Tonight’s debate on MSNBC amongst the Democratic Presidential candidates was – excepting former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, who brought some energized craziness to the proceedings – a fairly muted, civilized affair, with (by design) little actual debating between the candidates.
Given the large slate of participants, the format – one-minute answers only, a few 30-second rebuttals, a few utterly bewildering questions requiring one-sentence answers (it was stupid to think that those questions demanding soundbite responses would actually garner such - after all, these are politicians we're talking about; eventually, they were abandoned), even a few questions answered simply by a show of hands (“Sanjaya or Jordin?” – wait, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich had to remind us that this wasn’t “American Idol”) – didn’t invite much nuance in the responses.
The first section basically concerned how much the candidates hated the war in Iraq. Mind you, they all hated it, but Kucinich and Gravel (pronounced Gra-VELL) really hated it to the point where they tried to make it seem like the other candidates liked it. How we mop up and get out didn’t get all that much lip-service, though Delaware Senator Joe Biden has staked what seems like the sanest position – divvying Iraq up in thirds so that the warring factions can live apart from one another somewhat peaceably.
Then there was the nit-picking at the flaws – Biden, asked if he can assure the American people he can stem his verbal gaffes and verbosity, answered, as eloquently and gracefully as he ever has, “Yes.” (Turns out New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson steamrollered the established one-minute mark the most of the candidates.) Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards responded to a question about his infamous $400 haircut with yet another anecdote about growing up poor. A question about the candidates’ biggest political mistake received a cursory, uninteresting once-over.
Questions on the environment quickly morphed into answers on terrorism, because Democrats have the environmental issue sewn up amongst voters for whom the issue is important, but they still have to prove they’re tough on terror. The only really interesting bit was a little testy exchange between Obama and Kucinich near the end over what to do about Iran: Kucinich wants to make them BFFs, while Obama said, somewhat ominously, “I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now.”
It was generally agreed that New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the campaign’s current frontrunners, did little to injure their status, but they didn’t really do much to elevate it, either. The gaffe that people will (probably dumbly) point to with Edwards came when he was asked to name his “moral leader” and, after an egregiously long pause, came up with a wan, “My Lord is important to me,” then named his wife, father, etc. Richardson seemed like a straightforward guy but didn’t seem to possess that ineffable authority folks would seek in a President. Biden’s main problem would be the fact that “experience” also means “baggage” these days in politics. Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd kind of got lost in the mix (as evidenced by his not even getting mentioned until now), except he kind of seemed to out his preteen daughters as lesbians.
But Man of the Night honors go to Gravel, who, depending on your point of view was either refreshing in his candor or utterly batsh!t crazy. (In the post-game analysis, Andrea Mitchell, admiringly, described him as a “bomb-thrower.”) During his spiels on Iraq, you could practically see the spittle flying from his mouth. He was the only guy who vehemently denounced his rivals, calling Biden “arrogant” and others “scary,” though points must be deducted for his swiping Ronald Reagan’s joke during his debate with Walter Mondale about his competition’s youth and inexperience. Afterwards, when Chris Matthews asked him where he had been for the past 35 years, he responded: “Hiding under a rock.” Keith Olbermann later joked, “Zell Miller has just endorsed Mike Gravel.”
The Republican candidates mix it up next Thursday at 4 p.m. from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, also on MSNBC. Hopefully, they’ll ditch those one-sentence and show-of-hands questions for that one, and maybe invite Gravel to participate in that one, too.
Adult Swim today announced three new shows to be added to its late-night animated programming bloc:
“Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil:” Lucy is really Satan’s progeny, and she’s “dating a great new guy, who might just be the Second Coming.” Wouldn’t the “Second Coming,” being all-knowing and all, know who he’s dating? Anyway, Satan uses the relationship to hasten the apocalypse. Basically, “‘Left Behind’ for the Dysfunctional Teen Soul.” Or, "Chicken Soup for the Damned."
“Fat Guy Stuck In Internet:” Based on a cult online show: A computer programmer who gets absorbed into the Internets; weird stuff ensues. Basically, “‘Tron’ for Those Too Young to Know what ‘Tron’ Was.”
“Superjail:” Basically, "HBO’s 'Oz,' Only for Kids Who Already Know They’ll Require Years of Therapy in Their Adulthood."
Also: George Lucas participates in a special “Robot Chicken” episode dedicated to “Star Wars” parodies on June 17. Well, Lucas also participated in “The Star Wars Holiday Special” and made those three prequels, so he has nowhere to go but up.
Note: This information was embargoed until 3 p.m. PST, but I leaked it a full minute early, scooping the competition! What competition, you ask? Hmmm… good question…
MyNetwork – that thing you may be vaguely aware of but clearly have never watched, which sprung up like a weed through a sidewalk crack to fill the void created for affiliates when The WB and UPN merged to create The CW – has announced it won’t have an upfront this year. This, mainly because it has no product to sell, as it has scrapped its barely-watched telenovela programming and instead plugged its scheduling holes with sundry reality junk and sock-puppet theater and test patterns from foreign countries.
Instead, its sales team will approach advertising agencies on an individual basis, either plunking down a coffee tin and busking on violin or simply getting on their hands and knees and tearfully begging outright.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that the three worst jobs in America were: 1) Soldier serving in Iraq, 2) Constitutional Scholar in the White House, 3) MyNetwork Advertising Sales Rep.
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FX has renewed “Dirt” and “The Riches,” and Fox has steered “Drive” off its schedule after a mere four episodes.
The failure of “Drive” is enough to give network executives the cold sweats. It was clever, but not too clever; it was dumb, but not too dumb; it had an attractive cast and got decent reviews and most of all, it had lots of fancy reckless stunt-driving. Americans love their reckless driving, don’t they?
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Sarah Silverman has made an alliance with “Survivor’s” creator Mark Burnett: She’ll host and he’ll produce the MTV Movie Awards on June 3.
And MTV turned around and diminished Silverman by speaking of her in that wit-deadening language known as cliché-riddled-press-release-ese:
“‘Sarah’s irreverent, no holds barred sarcasm and humor have made her one of the hottest up and coming comedians in the industry,’ said Christina Norman, President, MTV. ‘Sarah is just the person to orchestrate the madness and keep everyone guessing about who’ll be her next target.’”
Meanwhile: Attention, talent booker for the White House Correspondents Dinner: “The Late Show with David Letterman” is presenting “Impressionist Week 2” starting April 30, so tune in and perhaps you can find your creaky, old-school entertainer for next year’s event.
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ABC’s Bob Woodruff is back in the saddle, for his second assignment since suffering severe brain trauma last year when an Improvised Explosive Device went off near him: He’ll report from Havana, Cuba on May Day. He’ll be accompanied by cameraman Doug Vogt, who was also injured alongside him.
So Rosie O’Donnell announced on Wednesday that she would not be returning to “The View,” Barbara Walters’ heretofore coffee klatch morning show exploring women’s issues and sundry inanities. The pronouncement opened genially enough:
O’Donnell: "They wanted me three years, I wanted one year, and it just didn't work.”
Walters: "We have had, to say the least, an interesting year … an exciting, fun-filled, provocative year. We have all gotten together and you will be missed. I do not participate in the negotiations for Rosie. It was between your representatives and agents. This is not my doing, just as Star Jones’ ouster had almost nothing to do with me."
Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "I think I'm kind of in denial. You are such a catalyst, you know how to just get in there, and because of that we've just taken off the shackles and had some real honest conversation here."
And then, in a sequence ABC edited, O’Donnell replied:
“Sure, Lizzy Borden. They wanted me back until the Bush Administration decided I was too much of a liability in their War on Truth. I was the only person who revealed how they masterminded 9/11, and therefore, I was toast. I’m the only person who understands how this conspiracy got started, and because of it, my voice had to be silenced.”
Joy Behar: “Uh, Rosie, you were offered a three-year deal, so maybe they didn’t want to silence you all that much. You also got a lot of ink for making fun of Donald Trump. Maybe the Bush Administration wasn’t paying you much heed because it was obvious you’d say anything for a little bit of attention.”
Rosie: “Donald Trump combs over his scalp the same way the Bush Administration combs over its myriad of sins against the American people.”
Barbara Walters: “Did I mention I had nothing to do with this? Because even if I did, I’d still want credit for it, but the fact is, I didn’t.”
Elisabeth: “Rosie, umm, let me just say that I still like you, because you manage the impossible task of making conservatives still seem nominally sane.”
Rosie: “Hey, I’ll still appear from time to time to discuss autism.”
Walters: “I’d like to point out that we have not begun our search for a replacement, because, really, how do your replace Rosie? Particularly given that Theodore Kaczynski is still incarcerated.”
The Leader of the Free World (approval rating: now at 27%, per NBC/Wall Street Journal) has apparently been possessed by demons. (See particularly photos 1, 4, 6, 9, 10 and especially 11.) CNN coverage here (alas, without anchor commentary).
This may explain his allegiance to Alberto Gonzales.
If the exigencies of our contemporary society feel a bit wearying, here’s the best sliver of hope we can extend.
“Heroes:” Plagiarizers?
Monday’s episode of “Heroes” struck me as a bit of a crib from the acclaimed ’80s graphic novel “Watchmen,” but I was too lazy to dig up my old copy and confirm the similarities. Fortunately, these guys did.
On the show, Linderman (Malcolm McDowell), a wealthy casino owner and collector of ephemera who boasts super powers, decides that in order to save the world, Manhattan must be blown up. In “Watchmen,” Ozymandias, a wealthy industrialist and collector of ephemera who boasts superpowers, decides that in order to save the world, Manhattan must be blown up.
In “Heroes,” it’s intimated that Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) – or, perhaps, Sylar (Zachary Quinto) – will, inadvertently or otherwise, detonate himself and cause the devastation. New York magazine (second link above) notes that drafts of the latest screenplay for “Watchmen” (the film has been in development for nearly 20 years) deviate from the graphic novel by having a character likewise blow himself up.
So “Heroes” cribs from “Watchmen,” which in turn kind of plagiarizes “Heroes.” I suspect this to be the work of Hiro (Masi Oka) and his time-space-continuum-bending ways.
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Nobody’s watching
It seems a number of high-rated shows haven’t been as highly rated in recent weeks.
“Lost,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Heroes,” “Ugly Betty,” “Jericho,” “24,” “The Unit,” “CSI: Miami,” all the “Law & Orders,” “ER,” even “American Idol” – and the list goes on and on – have tumbled, some precipitously, from their halcyon days.
Plenty of finger-pointing in the article: The trend blame-games daylight savings time, too many repeats, protracted hiatuses for serialized shows, DVRs, global warming, even the timid, inept manner in which most Washington journalists covered the run-up to the war with Iraq. (OK, those last two: not so much.)
Or maybe the movie studio moguls in the ’50s were right, after all: TV is just a passing fad.
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Baldwin rocks “30”
“Extra” is reporting that “The View” snagged another coup: Alec Baldwin pre-taped a segment for Friday’s show saying he doesn’t want to do “30 Rock” – or television, period, for that matter – anymore. (“Extra’s” website only has junk about the phone-mail kerfuffle, not this breaking story.)
Perhaps this is Baldwin’s weary, emotional response to the unseemly embarrassments of the past week, but if true, NBC will no doubt have to seriously reconsider its renewal of the clever but low-rated sitcom. Baldwin’s easily the funniest guy on it, and his departure would leave a huge hole in the show’s comic structure. And should he stay on but be unhappy – well, we’ve all heard in explicit detail just how much you don’t want to make Baldwin mad.
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“Survivor: The Internets”
“Survivor” mastermind Mark Burnett is going political, sort of: He’s cooked up a show employing MySpace to get its young social networkers to cook up virtual political campaigns advocating, well, whatever they want, I guess. The most successful may get face time on TV.
So: Politics contingent upon whoever has the coolest friends, can create the most distracting eye candy and can divert us away from the real issues of the day? Sounds about right.
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Howard gives it away for free
Howard Stern, perhaps a smidgen dispirited over abandoning his position as a cultural force with his move to the rarefied air of satellite radio, is offering free footage of his Sirius radio show through April 29, and even longer if he can persuade you to subscribe to digital cable. So if you haven’t yet managed to satiate your need for Internet porn, have at it.
While others are still wringing their hands over Rosie O’Donnell’s abdication of her role as purveyor of the cultural imperative at “The View” (a story this blog broke – well, at least it broke the fact that TMZ.com broke it), Your Mayor prefers to look forward, to the next pop-culture debacle, which is what Phil Spector’s murder trial promises to be.
Radar is reporting that “Dateline NBC” producer Adam Gorfain will sit on Spector’s jury, despite having (sort of) covered the case for the network. (Just what NBC News needs right now: more controversy.) Actually, Radar is reporting that Eric Longabardi of The Enterprise Report is reporting that, which is not unlike me breaking the news of TMZ.com breaking the news of Rosie’s departure.
Too bad the judge has already declared that cameras will be allowed in the court; the spectacle would’ve carried much creepier undertones had the whole thing been shot through a microcamera hidden in Gorfain’s jacket lapel.
Gorfain has also led up reports on shoddy work at DNA labs in the past, which might account for why Spector’s attorney would’ve allowed someone with so much knowledge about the case on the jury. Because, as we all know, the American justice system works best when know-nothing twits serve on juries.
OK, so we have someone conversant in DNA on the jury; seems to me that experts on hair and insanity might come in handy, as well. Perhaps Spector’s trial would be a good time to reunite Britney Spears and the Tarzana woman who refused to shave her head. That way, we make life a little easier for the poor, oppressed paparazzi, who no doubt in recent days have been fretting over which asinine celebrity to stalk. And if the jury is sequestered, all the better to help keep Britney on the wagon.
Finally, Your Mayor was able to locate a pint of Stephen Colbert’s Ben & Jerry’s new ice-cream flavor, AmeriCone Dream. Herewith, the culinary review:
“(After) particularly delicious morsels of grilled yellowtail collar, stewed radish and sticks of plum-flavored mountain yam, it’s a good thing I ordered extra sardine burgers. … Arrangements of gooey octopus sashimi popping up after ramekins of roughly chopped Spanish mackerel, bowls of room-temperature egg custard topped with sea-urchin gonads preceding chilly bowls of house-made tofu slicked with sweet miso paste, yakiniku skewers of grilled tongue coming simultaneously with a plate of braised tongue in brown sauce that could have been served at any tapas bar in Spain, but always — almost always — a bowl of ochazuke, brothy rice, at the end. … There were slices of marinated squid liver, which came as a surprise to everyone at the table — I have cleaned a lot of squid in my life, but I never knew that squids even had livers, much less livers the color, texture and very particular flavor of raw calves’ liver. This must have been a very large squid. I liked the cream cheese flavored with bonito, even when I found out the flavoring was actually fermented bonito intestines.”
Oh, sorry – that’s from a review by the LA Weekly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic Jonathan Gold. My bad.
Colbert’s ice cream is perfectly serviceable, though (perhaps appropriately) somewhat vanilla. Plenty of waffle cone in the mix, curled just like that ear of his, but when it comes to caramel, Colbert is pretty conservative. Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra offers a more liberal dose of the flavor, and is a lot tastier for those interested in a more apolitical dessert.
But those interested in the Stephen Colbert Experience should consult this site to find where Colbert can be found selling himself out in your nation’s grocers’ freezers.
TCA Awards: Your vote almost counts
Of the scores of meaningless entertainment-industry awards distributed over the course of the year, one of the least influential is one that Your Mayor actually votes on: The Television Critics Association Awards, handed out in July around the time Emmy nominations are announced.
Early in May, the TCA will be requesting from its membership suggestions for nominations. The TCA does this because it realizes that its members (who fork over $75 per annum for the opportunity to participate in this exercise in – what? self-aggrandizement? futility?) watch far too much television and therefore our brains are way too addled to remember all the good stuff we actually saw over the course of 52 weeks, so the group invites us to jog one another’s memories as to what was the best of the past year’s contributions to the television arts.
Not that it really matters, though, since a sizable portion of the membership just votes for the most popular mainstream shows of the past year, and, even when we do reward actual excellence, Emmy voters have their heads too implanted up their sundry orifices to honor such rarefied efforts.
Still, Your Mayor, a Man of His People, is offering You the Actual Viewer of Television (Emmy voters being far too busy creating TV shows to actually watch any of it) an opportunity to contribute to the process.
Herewith, the categories in the TCA Awards. Feel free to offer your thoughts in the comments section on who and what should win. Your Mayor will post your nominations at the TCA’s website for other critics across the country to consider. (In the TCA world, winners are chosen amongst the three top vote getters, so feel free to name your three top favorites.) If your preferred candidates don’t, in fact, win, you’ll at least be able to state, as Bill Clinton told Chris Wallace, “At least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. … I tried. So I tried and failed.”
And, atop that, I’ll reward the best, most clever respondent, as I did with my recent “Gilmore Girls” contest, with a prize package of gorgeously lamentable TV-related promotional items. But you have to be fairly serious or incredibly inspired in your anarchic offerings to merit such booty. So vote early and often!
The categories:
* Program of the Year: Any show, be it an ongoing series or one-off, be it a drama, comedy, documentary or news show. In this, as in all categories, when describing your nominee, be creative, be passionate but above all, be articulate as to why you think your favorite deserves to win.
* Outstanding New Program: Obviously, this category honors programs that joined our ranks in the past year, such as “Heroes” or “Ugly Betty” or anything you believe elevated discourse on Television.
* Outstanding Achievement in Drama: This category goes to a specific series. And a fictitious show, at that. So don’t vote for “Dr. Phil.”
* Outstanding Achievement in Comedy: This one mirrors its predecessor’s parameters. If you vote for “According to Jim,” your credibility ebbs exponentially; if you vote for “The Colbert Report,” you make yourself look pretty smart.
* Outstanding Achievement in News & Information: On its face, this could seem like a trick category, as most TV journalism tends to be pretty facile and, even, idiotic. That’s why it’s all the more important that you seriously consider what deserves accolades here.
* Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming: This is a category in which you could most likely influence the balloting, since a lot of TV critics don’t have kids (being incapable of procreating) and therefore don’t pay attention to such programming and therefore might be amenable to persuasive arguments for deserving winners.
* Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Mini-Series & Specials: Honestly, if you don’t mention BBC America’s “The State Within” or HBO’s “Longford,” you’ll lose all credibility in this category.
* Individual Achievement in Comedy: This category could go to a performer or a writer or producer, though again, should you neglect mentioning Stephen Colbert or Bill O’Reilly, you’ll look pretty silly.
* Individual Achievement in Drama: Again, it goes to an actor or a show-runner, so your quandary is, if, say, you want to honor “The Sopranos:” Do you vote for star James Gandolfini or series creator David Chase? (The vexing mystery is perpetuated for any drama you love – “Heroes”’ Masi Oka or Tim Kring? “The Closer’s” Kyra Sedgwick or James Duff? “Rescue Me’s” Denis Leary or … um, Denis Leary? OK, bad example.)
* Heritage Award: This goes to an old show that’s supposed to be great. I’m too lazy to list everything that’s won in the past, but that’s OK, because so are TCA members, who often overlook deserving shows in favor of stuff they can still remember (OK, so I’m not that lazy: Previous winners include “The Simpsons,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The West Wing,” “60 Minutes” and “Nightline”). So give it your best shot.
* Career Achievement: Same as above, only it goes to a deserving individual human being (except when it doesn’t, such as when “Hill Street Blues” took the trophy; TV critics are a notoriously capricious bunch). Winners include Grant Tinker, Walter Cronkite, Lucille Ball, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Norman Lear, Fred Rogers, Dick Van Dyke, Sid Caesar, Bill Cosby, Carl Reiner, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett. Pursue that line of thinking and figure out who’s been egregiously overlooked.
Also: Consider categories that the TCA should include (they’ve done reality shows in the past, but no more) and those who should win those fictitious categories (many points for originality).
Again: You’re not just championing TV that may be overlooked; you’re touting yourselves and your relative deservingness, such as it is, for cheesy tchotchkes. So your cleverness will not only serve your favorite programs, but yourself, as well: Make us proud. Or, at least, don’t embarrass us.
TMZ.com is reporting that Rosie O’Donnell will announce her departure from “The View” Wednesday. No word what she’ll move on to – or who she plans on hacking off in the future (after dissing a sizable portion of the planet, including the Chinese, fundamentalist Christians, rich white guys with bad combovers, “American Idol” fans, perky morning-show hosts and both fans of the Bush Administration and those who believe it too incompetent to pull off a well-oiled if sinister 9/11 conspiracy) – but possibilities include everything to hosting a game show to starring in a “Nip/Tuck” spinoff.
The former Queen of Nice has few fans amongst those responding to an unofficial AOL poll: 56% declared “I hate her” (as opposed to 14%, who said, “I love her”); 60% declared their opinion on her has soured since she joined the view; and 81% say they disagree with her “View” views. Perhaps most shockingly, a whopping 9% believe her attention-grabbing antics haven’t been covered by the media enough.
At any rate, Barbara Walters must be breathing more easily - after all, the last thing "The View" was intended to be was a lightning-rod for controversy.
Even if there is a Writers Guild strike, you will be spared the agony of missing out on new episodes of “Las Vegas,” as the show’s already heading into production for next season. “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” too.
"I firmly believe that the potential for a strike is much greater and more ominous than many people are saying," “L&O” mogul Dick Wolf declares.
Question: If series do crank out a bunch of episodes ahead of time, where’s the impetus for the networks to negotiate with the writers? Even if the writers do strike, the networks still have episodes to air. Who loses there?
Question: Do you think anyone will notice a downtick in the quality of “Las Vegas” given that the cast and crew didn’t get a breather to recharge their batteries? Me, neither.
*
Surprise: The FCC is still a scourge to free speech.
“A recent survey shows 75 percent of Americans think that parents, not the government, should decide what their kids see on TV,” reports First-Amendment champion TV Watch. “Nevertheless, many observers believe politicians will find it tough to vote against ‘protecting America's children,’ as the proponents of increased censorship falsely frame the issue.”
When it comes to television, “protecting America’s children” too often translates into “Preventing America’s adults from being able to behave like adults.” Which is why “The King of Queens” seems to be in a state of perpetual arrested development and prime-time game-show hosts address viewers as if they’re, in fact, not smarter than a fifth grader.
And now, the FCC is gearing up to take it upon itself to divine what “violent” and “graphic” content crosses the line. You do that, and there’ll be no reason for 14-year-old boys to watch network television at all. The very tired argument behind this is violence in the media inspires violence in the culture, but violence existed – and in far readier, much larger amounts – long before television ever did. And if someone wants to put the kibosh on violence (and good luck with that), it might make sense to go to a more primary source; for example, I didn’t notice that the Virginia Tech murderer was running around killing people by smashing them with a TV (nor did he play video games, as Dr. Phil so rabidly insisted). What won’t help is to deprive intelligent adults of mature content on television because some irresponsible parents can’t control their kids’ TV-watching habits.
*
Tonight, Logo debuts “The Big Gay Sketch Show,” which represents a milestone for the gay community in that it suggests that they are allowed to create an out TV show as middling and vaguely uninspired as those run by heterosexuals and closeted gays.
“The Big Gay Sketch Show,” oddly enough, suffers from the same constraints that bedevil the Fox News Channel’s “The 1/2-Hour News Hour;” namely, the edict that all jokes have to come from a fairly specific sensibility. In Fox’s case, all jokes have to come from a politically conservative attitude; here, every sketch must involve homosexuality in some way. The one sketch in tonight’s episode that drifts the furthest away from the show’s raison d’etre, “Political Project Runway,” is a muddled mash-up parody of Bravo’s reality programs. In it, sundry political figures try their hand at fashion design (why? no clue); one of the participants is Arianna Huffington, who is shown eating a gyro. See? It’s funny because she’s Greek.
More typical is the ehhh “Honeymooners” sketch involving a lesbian couple – Alice wants a black and white TV, so her significant other scores her an African-American transvestite in a white dress, and another in which lifestyle coaches named Chad Michael and Michael Chad attempt to instruct their gay audience on how to make ice.
So the attitude is more important here than the actual wit or execution, which is underscored in an initially promising sketch: Elaine Stritch, taking a job as a greeter at a Wal-Mart store, boozily proclaims, “The audience gets the show they deserve.”
- “The Big Gay Sketch Show:” 10 tonight, Logo.
*
During its NBA Playoff games, TNT has been promoting the hell out of something called “Heartland,” which looks suspiciously like a basic-cable take on “House,” only with Treat Williams instead of Hugh Laurie.
Per TNT’s descriptor: “Dr. Grant’s arrogance and willingness to perform risky procedures causes him to butt heads with the hospital administration.” Yep, if that’s not “House,” then it must be cribbing from the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” movie. Ah, but get ready to cringe at how “Heartland’s” creators have decided to differentiate their show from “House:” “He works closely with his ex-wife, Kate Armstrong (Kari Matchett – ‘Invasion’), an organ-donor coordinator with whom he has a volatile relationship.”
No … really? That was the best you could do?
(Actually, "House" even tried, misguidedly, a similar narrative, with that lame Sela Ward storyline.)
Anyway, the reason these spots are in such heavy rotation during the NBA Playoffs is that TNT has also cooked up a way to connect the two – by exploiting Alonzo Mourning’s own feel-good story of how a kidney transplant saved his life. So, apparently, because you’re a basketball fan and you’re happy that Mourning survived his ordeal to win a ring last year – that, somehow, is going to convince you to watch “Heartland.” Got it?
To further muddy things up, “Heartland” debuts June 18, a day after Showtime premieres a similarly title series, “Meadowlands.” The bad news about “Meadowlands” is that it “focuses on a family trying to escape its past while confronting an even more uncertain future.” But what about their present? What is their present-day like?
*
“Dancing with the Stars” and “The Bachelor” are putting the hurt on “Heroes” and “24.” The latter two shows were hovering around 14, 15 million viewers per episode. Last night, in its first new show since “Dancing” had returned, “Heroes” had a shade under 12 million viewers, while “24” lured 10.5 million fans.
And NBC continues to toss up post-“Heroes” programming that can only make it nostalgic for the days when “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” was underperforming. “The Real Wedding Crashers” drew 7 million viewers, less than “Studio 60” on a bad night.
*
It’s just been up for a short while and only has a few clips, but The Onion News Network, a cross between the Onion newspaper and “The Daily Show,” only the reporters are perhaps even more stupid (and certainly more tasteless), is ready to appease your need for edification.
And don’t forget to read the news crawls during the reports; otherwise, you’ll miss such headlines as “Light Rain Halts Search for Missing Children,” “Soldiers' Remains Deployed to Iraq” and “Gambling Addiction Treatable with Heroin.”
From the outset, a caveat to those who have not been watching NBC’s “Heroes:” Please don’t read this entry. You’ll either think I’m a raving lunatic, or that the show’s writers are raving lunatics, which makes me a raving lunatic for trying to make sense of it. It’d be a debacle akin to an “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” neophyte trying to sit through the recent “ATHF” movie.
That said, a mild scolding to series creator Tim Kring and his brain trust for even making the slightest effort in Monday’s episode to convince us that you’d kill off Peter (Milo Ventimiglia), whose secret power is to absorb the secret powers of others. To paraphrase one of the show’s many season-one catch phrases, Eliminate Milo, Eliminate Your Entire Teenage Girl Viewership.
And that’s particularly relevant, given how the show has evolved into a particularly startling parable of teen angst, of that moment in every kid’s life when he or she discovers that Mom and/or Dad isn’t the hero one wholeheartedly believed them to be.
This has been unusually resonant in the character of indestructible cheerleader Claire (Hayden Panettiere), who came to the realization of just how sinister her father, conspiracy bagman HRG (Jack Coleman), was in terms of his job of rounding up those, like herself, with special super powers (now, he may have flipped to the side of good – or has he?). Tonight, she met, for the first meaningful time, her biological father, politician-who-can-soar-with-the-eagles Nathan (Adrian Pasdar), who also seems to be on the verge of flipping, but in his case, it would be from good to evil.
Nathan met with Linderman (Malcolm McDowell), a seemingly sinister Vegas power broker who seems to have a special ability himself, but fears that mankind may at this point be irredeemable, and that the nuclear explosion flattening Manhattan in Isaac’s (Santiago Cabrera) painting of the future represents “a brighter future.”
“This tragedy will be a catalyst for good,” Linderman suggests to Nathan, in that it could inspire “a united sense of hope couched in a united sense of fear.” (Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to “Heroes”’ baldest 9/11 metaphor.) Nathan, Liinderman promises/warns, could be the charismatic leader who emerges unscathed from the catastrophe.
(Interestingly, “Heroes” has veered into obfuscating territory that longtime fans of “24” have been expecting from their favorite whacked-out serial: What if the world was turned upside-down, and wrong became right and vice-versa? That particularly came into play on fan message boards last year, when the President of the United States was revealed to be in league with the terrorists – wait, a few timorous souls offered; what if the President really is acting in the national interest and in reality we should be rooting against Jack Bauer? Of course, we all know by now that we should never root against Jack Bauer, but “Heroes” has done yeoman-like work in muddying its waters in separating good guys and bad guys, to the extent that we’re not quite positive where our allegiances should lie. In fact, the show’s new catch phrase buys into the possibility of failure and next week’s episode takes place five years in the future, examining what might happen were our heroes not able to save the world.)
Back on point: HRG/Nathan aren’t the only parents flirting with the dark side. Ali Larter’s dueling dual personalities, Jessica and Niki, are battling, badly, over the fate of her/their son Micah (Noah Gray-Cabey). Time/space continuum-breaker Hiro’s (Masi Oka) father (George Takei) was recently introduced as an early player in whatever sort of conspiracy may be unfolding. And Nathan and Peter’s mother (Cristine Rose) was revealed on Monday to know a bit too much about whatever’s going on to make you feel too comfy to be in her presence.
All these parents, all these secrets and lies – were I a kid addictively watching this show, I’d have trouble sleeping on Monday nights, wondering what sinister plots were being launched down the hallway in my parents’ bedroom. It makes you wonder: What did Christina Crawford’s secret power end up being? Besides, of course, being able to cash in on being Joanna Crawford's daughter?
Meanwhile, self-appointed hero wrangler Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy) proceeds apace as TV’s most hapless intellectual, continuously blithering into the worst of the bad guys. Isaac bought the farm, but not before outright telling evil super-powers-vacuum Sylar (Zachary Quinto) he figured out a way to stop him, a tell that Sylar seemed to outright ignore. Mind-reading doofus Parkman (Greg Grunberg) continues to establish himself as Hero Least Deserving of/Capable of Capitalizing Fully on His Abilities.
And how stupid did they think HRG was, anyway? After busting him with Candice’s (Missy Peregrym – doesn’t the actress’s name sound more like a character’s name than her actual character’s? Doesn’t “Missy Peregrym” sound like something out of Dickens?) shape-shifting abilities at the end of the previous episode, did they really think he’d fall for it again so quickly?
And Hiro met his soul-patched doppelganger from the future, which promises a really cool swordfight in a future episode or a lot of turgid plot explication during which the show’s next catch phrase will emerge.
Honestly: Imagine that you’ve never seen an episode of the show and read the above synopsis/commentary again. Wouldn’t you lobby hard to have that person committed?
Although Rich Little’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner absolutely killed (off the very concept of humor forever), all anyone could talk about afterwards was the showdown over global warming between Karl Rove and those West-Coast hippies Laurie David and Sheryl Crow.
David reported that Rove became immediately hostile when the subject was broached and snapped at Crow when she touched his arm. Rove, who took offense to being touched by such a plebe as Crowe, sniffed afterwards of David to the Washington Post, "She came over to insult me and she succeeded." We hope that in the future, a fragile flower such as Rove will never have to experience anything unpleasant ever again.
But Rove is correct: David and Crow are crusading do-gooders who will stop at nothing to force their polemical concerns upon the proper authorities, even if those proper authorities don’t want to hear any of it. At a recent event celebrating 25 years of celebrating 35 years of celebrating Television Pratfalls, the two altruistic harridans button-holed me, Your Mayor, on what they perceived as my reluctance to take a firmer stand on ridding the airwaves of the dehumanizing forces of reality television.
From David and Crow’s blog at the time:
“We asked The Mayor if he would consider taking a fresh look at the dismal social impact of reality television. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there.
“We reminded the Mayor of Television that the US leads the world in crass reality television programming and we are doing the least about it. Anger flaring, The Mayor immediately regurgitated his official position on reality television, asking us if we had ever seen any of those clips from Japanese television on YouTube, all of which are far more demeaning than even something as soul-wrenching as ‘The Hills.’
“We felt compelled to remind him that that doesn’t excuse the Good People of Television from exercising a modicum of restraint and responsibility. The Mayor exploded with even more venom. Like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, The Mayor launched into a series of illogical arguments regarding Japan not doing enough thus neither should we. (Since when do we follow Japan’s lead?)
“In his attempt to dismiss us, The Mayor turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. He swung around and spat, ‘Don't touch me.’ How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, ‘You can't speak to us like that, you work for us.’ The Mayor then quipped, ‘I don't work for you, I work for the People of Television.’ To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, ‘We are the People of Television.’
At that point Mr. Rove apparently decided he had had enough. Like a groundhog fearful of his own shadow, he sneered to her, ‘I should hardly think writhing about in music videos on MTV2 would count as Television,’ and scurried to his table in an attempt to hibernate for another year from his responsibility to address the scourge of reality television.”
So, Karl, I’m feeling your pain. If you need to commiserate, don’t hesitate to call. Perhaps we can cook up a reality show behind the scenes at the nation’s biggest polluter!
Google, the repository of all online truthiness, has declared Stephen Colbert the Greatest Living American. (Don’t believe me? Google Greatest Living American and see what comes up first – and second, for that matter.)
This, the result of Google-bombing, the sort of activity to which Colbert’s rabid fans apparently dedicate great swatches of their otherwise empty lives (the same folks who almost got a bridge in Hungary named after Colbert and who repeatedly vandalized Wikipedia), the kind of thing that Google was supposed to have fixed after searching for the words “miserable failure” resulted in the lead entry being George W. Bush’s White House biography. Apparently, there are still some ghosts in the machine.
The Pranksters responsible for Colbert’s latest honor have declared “Mission Accomplished:” Don’t get too cocky, guys, we all know what happened the last time someone made that proclamation prematurely. Because, you know, I still haven’t seen the Greatest Living American’s ice cream available in any grocery store.
Many fans of “The Larry Sanders Show” are hacked off that creator Garry Shandling, who has been awfully pokey in getting his show to the DVD marketplace (only the first season is available in total), opted to release a four-disk set entitled “Not Just the Best of ‘The Larry Sanders Show’” with 23 episodes from throughout the series’ run. In lieu of more episodes, it includes scads of interviews with cast members and guest-stars, many conducted by Shandling himself, which gives the package an unusually pensive, jittery tone for a comedy boxed set.
Shandling, of course, is legendary for transforming his neuroses into comic gold. But what’s at work in these interviews is more probing, more personal and largely not intended to be funny. Shandling is still trying to make sense of what became of himself while working on the show.
During the run of the series, Shandling experienced spectacular fallings-out with his former fiancée (and co-star) Linda Doucett, who turned around and sued him for sexual harassment, and his longtime manager Brad Grey (now chairman of Paramount Pictures), whom Shandling sued for duping him out of scads of cash.
I interviewed Shandling during the fourth season of the show, after Doucett had departed amidst turmoil. As always, he was a funny and perceptive guy, but was wary. “Are you going to make fun of me?” he asked. “I can go with that and I’d respect you if you did.” Later, even though the review was proceeding perfectly well, he suggested putting the kibosh on it and trying again at a later time. “I’m just feeling,” he said, searching for the right word: “unsure.”
Some of the bonus material is indeed fascinating in its depiction of Shandling’s efforts to make amends or explain himself to his collaborators. (''I wanted to objectively see the realities of that time,” he told the New York Times in January. “What was I like? What were my relationships like, with the actors and writers? What did they feel?'') There’s a particularly uncomfortable reunion with Doucett, who observes, “People want more. But even if they don’t get what they want, they still get what you gave them,” followed by a title card, scrawled in Shandling’s own hand, reading, “We all do the best we can.”
But much of it feels fairly indulgent and protracted (Shandling, seeking a warts-and-all vibe, didn’t do enough editing on the interviews). He chats while shooting hoops with David Duchovny and sparring in a boxing ring with Alec Baldwin (bad timing that this DVD collection comes out the same week as Baldwin’s phone-mail diatribe). He discusses, in a surprisingly disappointingly desultory fashion, the process of creating the show with co-stars Jeffrey Tambor and Rip Torn. In a section entitled “The journey continues,” Garry chats with a Buddhist monk for a couple of minutes.
There’s an unnecessarily extended chat with Jerry Seinfeld, in which much time is devoted to Seinfeld angsting over a missing jacket (no, seriously). While Seinfeld emerges as fairly dismissive of show business, he does seem to provide Shandling’s thesis for him: “TV wins in the end. You can kill your TV show or it can kill you.”
In a phone conversation with Jon Stewart (who, at the end of the series, wrested the show from Larry’s hands), Stewart tries to absolve Shandling of his guilt. “What should I do next?” Shandling asks; Stewart replies, “Two words: Lighten up.”
No kidding. I’d recommend Shandling re-watch Preston Sturges’ movie “Sullivan’s Travels.” In it, a comedy filmmaker aspires to create a film of penetrating social importance – or, at least, didactic pretensions (it would be called “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, a title poached much later by the Coen brothers for their George Clooney musical comedy). Instead, watching a comedy with an appreciative audience, he comes to realize what a service getting people to laugh really is. Perhaps someday Shandling can feel good about the laughs he gave his fans.
NBC News must be feeling a little snakebit of late. First was the Don Imus mess, and now, the division finds itself having to defend itself against charges of exploiting and over-hyping the “multi-media manifesto” sent the network by Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui.
This seems patently silly. We’re all agreed that this was a major news story, and the chilling look into the mind of a madman, while clearly disturbing, does advance the story, even if it fails to wrap it up with a tidy bow. And, as Slate’s Jack Shafer notes, NBC has been fairly circumspect, limiting the amount of material it has released from Cho’s mountain of hatred. Some of the carping seems to be sour grapes from the other networks’ news directors, who are no doubt miffed that it wasn’t their address on that package. (You can imagine how much more of the material would’ve been on display had Fox News gotten its mitts on it.)
Still, the network has agreed to scale back the amount of imagery it will air during its reporting – its use as “video wallpaper” – from here on out. Which seems more than appropriate, because those images are fairly seared into our eyeballs; we can call them up at will at this point.
An informal AOL poll found that more than half those who responded thought NBC had behaved inappropriately. Other critics pointed to how “upsetting” Cho’s videos and photos were. Yeah, well, life is upsetting; we’re adults here, and better come to grips with the fact that bad news can’t be sanitized for our protection (unless it’s coffins returning from Iraq). Others accused NBC of potentially inspiring copycat crimes – again, sorry, but that train left the station the moment Cho first pulled the trigger.
The San Antonio Current’s Elaine Wolff suggests that if our own appetite for what we consider news were more refined, the news networks would respond in kind: “Imagine a world in which Alberto Gonzales’s … Congressional testimony … was accorded the same drama and intense, layered coverage as the Virginia Tech murders, while the Virginia Tech victims’ friends and families were left to mourn in private. You can use your media consumption to make that world a reality.”
What do you think? Did NBC cross the line, or was the story just too ugly to soft-peddle?
When “Children of Men” was released last Christmas, critics immediately hailed it as one of the year’s best films, and perhaps one of its most prescient.
They had no idea.
Riffling through the extra features on my “Children of Men” DVD, I viewed the “Alternate Takes” section, only to find these scenes that might’ve made the film all the more chillingly relevant:
There’s a different version of the film’s opening scene, in which Clive Owen buys a coffee amidst a stricken group sadly eyeing the shop’s TV monitors, which is issuing this report:
“Our lead story: The world was stunned today by the death of Sanjaya Malakar, the Least Talented Human on the Planet. Sanjaya was stabbed outside of Buenos Aires after refusing to sign an autograph. Witnesses say Sanjaya spat in the face of a fan who asked for an autograph. He was killed in the ensuing brawl. The fan was later beaten to death by the angry crowd. Sanjaya struggled all of his life with the celebrity status thrust upon him as the Least Talented Human on the Planet.”
A later scene shows saddened fans in thrall to their computer screens as they watch former teen fans of Sanjaya pouring bouquet upon bouquet of flowers at makeshift shrines throughout the world, as a newsreader intones:
“Throughout his life, Sanjaya Malakar was a tragic reminder of the 18 years of utter talentlessness that humanity has endured, and its effect upon the world we now live in. It seems that the mantle of the World’s Least Talented Human has been passed to Jim Belushi, a one-time situation-comedy star living in Encino, California.”
An even later outtake shows Clive Owen meeting a woman who had appeared on the reality series “Flavor of Love,” and is pregnant with a child by Flavor Flav, a child who could just become the new Least Talented Human on the Planet.
The DVD also offers an unreleased version of the Jarvis Cocker song that ended the film, “Running the World:”
“Well did you hear there’s a bullsh!t show, ‘Idol’
Where the cutest end up with the most votes
Paula claims cream always rises up to the top
Well I say – sh!t floats
“That’s the way, don’t you know
From the guys that’s still running the show
Let’s be perfectly clear boys and girls
Seacrest’s still running the world
Seacrest’s still running the world
“Ah, it stinks
Yeah, it sucks
It’s musicologically unjust
The voters by talent aren’t fussed
So Seacrest’s still running the world
Seacrest’s still running the world.
"If you text-vote it’s perfectly natural
You’ll get to elevate some kind of dummy.
It’s the ideal way to order the world
F@&# the talent – does it make any money?
And if you don’t like it, then leave,
Or use your right to protest in the streets,
Yeah, use your right, but don’t imagine that it’s heard
Not while Seacrest’s still running the world
Seacrest’s still running the world
Seacrest’s still running the world
Seacrest’s still running the world.”
(end with big piano chord)
Get your copy of “Children of Men” today!
When last we checked in with “Ugly Betty,” Alexis Meade (Rebecca Romijn) had wrested control of Mode magazine from her brother Daniel (Eric Mabius), who despondently abandoned his duties and returned to hard partying and easy womanizing. Tonight, he justifies his bad behavior to Betty (America Ferrera): “I’m being exactly the way my family expects me to be.”
Still, Betty tries to protect him from a Truman Capote-esque biographer (Leslie Jordan) looking to do a smear job on the Meade family empire; he scratches one source’s back in order to put the knife in another’s. Betty’s pal Christina (Ashley Jensen), whose star is on the rise, will have none of her workaholism; she takes her to a party at a trendy club in an effort to abandon her addiction to helping Daniel. Naturally, this doesn’t go as planned.
Meanwhile, Wilhelmina (Vanessa Williams) attempts to seduce Bradford (Alan Dale) in order to sink her claws into Mode, even resorting to unorthodox means to appeal to his foot fetish, and Betty’s father Ignacio (Tony Plano) continues his pursuit of his green card, while Constance (Octavia Spencer), the woman handling his case, continues her pursuit of him. All that need be said about that last scenario is that it’s accompanied by music from “Psycho.”
As its first season nears its conclusion (the final episode airs in a mere month), “Betty” has begun focusing more on conspiracies a la Mode and less on Betty’s high-spirited whimsy – the humor seems to have been shunted to the show’s margins. It’s still stylishly entertaining, though its brain trust might want to remember that it was sold to audiences as a comedy.
- “Ugly Betty:” 8 tonight; ABC (Channel 7 locally).
I’ve only been able to stomach about an hour of coverage per day of Monday’s horrific events at Virginia Tech this week, but when it was revealed yesterday that Cho Seung-Hui had sent to NBC what Keith Olbermann contemptuously if accurately described as “a press release” of his actions (NBC News generally referred to it as “a multi-media manifesto”), I tuned into MSNBC, hoping for greater insight into the tragedy.
Big mistake. As soon as I’m there, Tucker Carlson is railing against the “far-out” stuff kids dabble in once they get to college. How f@&#ing old is Carlson, anyway? – he’s sounding like an enfeebled grandparent disapproving of kids skateboarding on his driveway. College students attempting to expand their life experience away from their parents is old hat and infinite light years away from Cho’s apparent insanity.
Later, Olbermann – whose guests usually hew to his perspective on stories – valiantly tried to contextualize the tragedy, struggling mightily to perceive clues that might help us prevent future massacres. And some of his interviewees weren’t having any of it: Olbermann wanted to approach this rationally, they explained, and truth be told, you just can’t explicate crazy.
That should’ve been readily apparent from reading Cho’s contributions to the world of creative writing, “Richard McBeef” and “Mr. Brownstone.” I took plenty of creative-writing courses in college and, while I had to plow my way through plenty of crap written by my fellow students (and they, mine) (most college fiction invariably tends to be earnest nonsense about kids in dysfunctional relationships with their parents), I never read a) stuff so structurally incoherent (this guy was a 23-year-old English major?) and b) so irrefutably insane.
It was revealed Wednesday that Cho had a darker and even more sinister background than what was previously revealed, but Tuesday’s revelation that his creative-writing profs attempted to do something about him but were rebuffed by the police because they didn’t think it sent up enough warning flags – that, one should’ve called bullsh!t upon from the outset.
First off, both one-acts are hellbent upon having young protagonists claim (rightly or wrongly, it’s unclear in both) to be victims of child-molestation. That alone should’ve been enough to prod investigators to look into, if not Cho’s background, then at least that of those around him. The casual references to violence that surrounded those accusations demanded even further investigation.
In particular, “Richard McBeef’s” lunatic lack of anything resembling coherent narrative or characterizations (it’s an utterly unmotivated précis about a guy who doesn’t like his stepfather, for reasons that keep amorphously shifting and involve chainsaws and a mother with blitheringly varying allegiances; it’s “Hamlet for Dummies”) make it nothing more than an unhinged shout-out to unfocused hatred of any kind: How does one not read it as something begging for an intervention?
As Tucker Carlson so clumsily intimated, college is a time for kids brought up in tight parental strictures to test the refreshing waters of youthful rebellion and even transgression. But Cho so obviously went beyond those parameters that one must wonder: With the hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent Americans wrongly and aggressively placed upon no-fly lists and lists of not-really felons not allowed to vote in general elections, how do we miss the true enemy within?
Kurt Vonnegut must’ve kicked James Rosen’s dog. That’s the only excuse for this Fox News hit-piece-gussied-up-as-an-obituary in which Rosen, uh, “celebrates” Vonnegut’s “despondent leftism,” notes (not altogether inaccurately, but still) "by the late seventies, Vonnegut was rich and irrelevant,” and concludes his piece, "Vonnegut, who failed at suicide 23 years ago, said 34 years ago that he hoped his children wouldn't say of him, when he was gone, that he made wonderful jokes but he was such an unhappy man. So I'll say it for them."
Jeez. When the Clintons go, Fox reporters will no doubt deliver the news with party hats and noisemakers.
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More online TV to further reduce your workday productivity:
* The Wall Street Journal reports today on online videos aimed at – gasp – smart people, a YouTube without women crapping in hot tubs, including fora.tv, a website for policy wonks that aims to span the political spectrum.
Imagine your dilemma in the near-future: “Hmm, do I want to watch a 90-minute lecture on post-Castro Cuba or watch home movies made by fans of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show?”
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We previously noted that NBC suffered through its lowest-rated Thursday night in 20 years – and, quite likely, ever. Seems that was just the beginning: All of last week saw NBC’s lowest-rated performance since the Nielsen folks upgraded their measurement service. As in, cable networks occasionally do better than this. As in, NBC will soon be looking nervously over its shoulder and eyeing www.fora.tv: The network averaged a scant 6.8 million viewers on the week, and had but one show that surpassed 10 million viewers.
And it’s very upsetting to report this, but that show was “Deal or No Deal.” Hard to say if this is a sign of the impending Apocalypse for all of us or just NBC.
Looks like the Laugh Factory finally figured out how to prevent people from driving home inebriated: Keeping patrons around for hours after last-call with a performer who simply forgets to get off stage.
Dave Chappelle took the stage at 10:36 p.m. Sunday. Dave Chappell left the stage at 4:43 a.m. Monday. Only a handful of fans headed home before Chappelle was done with his marathon six-hour, seven-minute set. The rest – well, they no doubt weren’t very productive at work that Monday.
Presumably, Chappelle was funny enough to hold fans in thrall for the entirety of his act, which took shots at Carlos Mencia, Michael Richards (whose last performance at the Laugh Factory was memorable for completely different reasons) and George W. Bush.
Herewith, a complete breakdown of his performance:
10:36-10:55 p.m.: The usual “Hi, how ya doin’, tip your waitresses” stuff surrounded by blinding applause.
10:56-11:38 p.m.: Observations on how he’s so famous Comedy Central would air footage of him cleaning his toenails.
11:39 p.m.-12:03 a.m.: Ruminations on how some white people are crackers.
12:04-12:11 a.m.: Trenchant political satire, which stops when he realizes the crowd isn’t getting any of the jokes.
12:12-12:41 a.m.: Sloppy political satire, calling politicians “crazy m@th*rf@c#*r$,” which the crowd does laugh at.
12:42-12:48 a.m.: He remembers one other white person who’s a cracker.
12:49-1:11 a.m.: Women! They’re so different from men.
1:12-1:38 a.m.: White people! They’re so different from black people.
1:39-2:03 a.m.: Schipperkes! They’re so different from dachshunds.
2:04-3:08 a.m.: Those little bags of airline peanuts receive their most epic treatment ever.
3:09-4:40 a.m.: His one-man tribute to Cole Porter, along with dramatic readings of poetry from Rosie O’Donnell’s blog.
4:40-4:43 a.m.: “Hey, are any of y’all still awake? Huh? … Anyone? … No, really – anyone still with me? … Uh, OK; goodnight.”
Did I miss anything? Comment below.
The anarchic hippies over at Adbusters have launched an assault on Your Mayor and the Good People of Television, scheduling their annual TV Turnoff Week for the week of April 23. The week “Heroes” returns for its final episodes of the season, for crying out loud. The NBA playoffs are beginning, for heaven’s sake. (And I hear there’ll be a very special episode of “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” as well!)
To encourage everyone to play along, the Adbusters folks have created some, yes, TV commercials (on the link above) imploring viewers to snap off their sets. So they’re using the medium of television to excoriate the medium of television (usually, that’s “According to Jim’s” job). Which makes sense – in order to reach your target audience, you have to speak their language (no point advertising elsewhere than television, because the people receiving those messages already aren’t watching TV). ABC, unsurprisingly, has already turned down the ads.
One of the ads features the faces of a bunch of slack-jawed kids gazing vacantly, presumably at a television, while Philip Glass arpeggios mourn the deaths of still more once-fertile minds. Another doesn’t quite make as much sense: A guy wearing a TV on his head (at least I think it’s supposed to be a TV) is buffeted about by troubling news reports. This spot actually seems contradictory, or at least not quite on-message: Are the Adbusters telling us to ignore what’s going on in the world during that week, as well? If they wanted to convey their scheme more effectively, they should’ve had the guy’s head being knocked about by lame sitcom one-liners and laugh tracks and reality-show lines like “You’ve been voted off the island” and melodramatic dialogue like “I’m pregnant – and it’s both of your babies!”
And here I am, telling my avowed enemies how they should do their job. Well, you know what they say: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and since as a dedicated politico Your Mayor can’t afford the luxury of many friends, I have plenty of room to huddle with enemies.
It couldn’t’ve been proven more this season: People do not like primetime serialized dramas on the broadcast networks. Latest case in point: Fox’s “Drive,” whose three-hour premiere Sunday and Monday must’ve come as something of a shock to the network, as the heavily promoted show averaged a mere 6 million viewers on Sunday, losing nearly a million from its first half-hour to its last (and this was opposite a repeat of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and one of the lowest ratings for an original episode of “Desperate Housewives” in the show’s history), then skidded further on Monday.
And “Drive” - boasting just enough stunts to keep your head in the game - is hardly a show that demands close attention. But it cued its vaguely complex intentions early – many characters with semi-complicated backstories and motivations for getting in the race; sinister, secret race organizers who clearly were not going to be revealed anytime soon – and people exited at the first available off-ramp.
So many serialized dramas got killed off this season you’d think they were all extras on “24,” one of the few serialized shows that does well (but its numbers have declined this season as well, starting with about 15 million viewers and most recently luring 11 million last night). The ones that have succeeded – “Heroes,” “Ugly Betty,” “Brothers & Sisters & Governators” (see below) – weren’t quite as grim as their jettisoned brethren. The season began with a number of dark and brooding shows, no doubt reflecting the mood of our times, only it turns out we as a society are all suffering from outrage fatigue and prefer being distracted rather than reminded of our troubling realities.
Or, in the case of DistractionWorld classics “Dancing with the Stars,” “Deal or No Deal” and “American Idol,” we don’t want to be reminded of anything remotely resembling reality, period. Sanjaya! Suitcases! Dancing one-legged girl! Shiny objects, shiny!
One’s heart races (and not just courtesy of one's sixth caffeinated beverage of the morning) upon receiving an email containing a press release with the headline “CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER VISITS THE HIT ABC DRAMA SERIES ‘BROTHERS & SISTERS,’” dizzy with the possibilities of what lame storyline the writers cooked up to work Ah-nold into the show: He hires Rachel Griffiths to run his upcoming campaign? Calista Flockhart argues with him over his more progressive stands? He falls in love with Sally Field (with whom he starred in a movie early in his career)? He’s called upon to explain his use of the phrase “girly-men?”
Alas, none of the above. He won’t even be appearing on the show, in fact. Here are the quite prosaic details:
“California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the set of the hit ABC primetime drama series ‘Brothers & Sisters’ on Monday, April 16. The Governor acknowledged The ABC Television Studio, executive producers Ken Olin, Jon Robin Baitz and Greg Berlanti, plus the cast and crew of the program for their commitment to keeping production in California for the freshman season, recognizing that production companies have choices about where to film, and shooting here translates to the generation of more jobs and revenue for the state.”
Glad the Governator could politic and ABC could arrange a photo-op while the rest of the country was busy being appalled by our latest tragedy. But I’m curious: Is ‘Brothers & Sisters’ the only production still shooting in California? Or does Schwarzenegger have a whole slew of courtesy visits left on his schedule?
If “Friday Night Lights” – NBC’s acclaimed but low-rated melodrama about a small-town obsessed with high-school football – returns next season, the show itself won’t be nearly as obsessed with high-school football as its characters.
“We're doing everything we can to distance ourselves from football,” Variety reports executive producer Jason Katims saying this past Friday said at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills. “We find football is the least interesting aspect of the show. … I think we've earned the right to tell stories that have nothing to do with football. In fact, I think it's a necessity.”
Well, that should prove an interesting extreme makeover (starting, one presumes, with the title, which of course refers to the traditional evening for high-school football – why name the show after something it won’t depict?). The show is based on the non-fiction bestseller by H.G. Bissinger, roundly considered to be one of the best sports books in, well, ever. In his book (which was turned into a well-reviewed movie by Peter Berg, another of the show’s executive producers), Bissinger placed the game in its social context in Odessa, Texas.
Bissinger captured the whiff of small-town racism, vividly portrayed adults who lived vicariously (if somewhat sadly) through the student-athletes and empathized with those athletes and the coach, who had an almost ungodly amount of pressure placed upon them to win, something the author was implicitly critical of. The book, to put it mildly, did not find many fans in Odessa.
Very little of that nuance made its way into the series (though the coach, played by Kyle Chandler, received occasional pressure from boosters and talk-radio fans, as did the occasional player). The games, when depicted, generally followed a familiar yet invariably entertaining template, with Chandler’s team falling behind, then rallying to win it all. Instead, the show has been largely concerned with who’s dating whom.
NBC has requested to see six scripts for a potential second season. So, if “Friday Night Lights” does return, perhaps a more appropriate title would be, “Friday Night Car Backseats.”
It’s been a long time since anyone has even bothered to refer to NBC’s Thursday-night lineup as “NBC’s once-indomitable Thursday-night lineup,” but last week, the network managed a new low on the night: It earned the lowest ratings since Nielsen upgraded its ratings service to include People Meters 20 years ago; it also, quite likely, garnered the lowest ratings in the network’s history on the evening.
NBC averaged a paltry 7.14 million viewers on the night, hurt, of course, by the usual low ratings for its sitcoms “Scrubs” and “30 Rock,” but even stalwart “ER” got its hat handed to it by CBS’s “Shark.”
The CW also achieved record lows on that evening, averaging a mere 1.69 million viewers on the evening (to put it in perspective, that’s the equivalent of the entire estimated population of San Diego in the year 2020 watching, but no one else in the country), but, being The CW, that’s to be expected.
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Who would’ve guessed that “House” has a heart after all? The cast will be touting a T-shirt for sale online at www.housecharitytees.com (don’t bother going to the site now; it won’t go live until Monday, April 23, but I’m posting now because I’ll likely have forgotten all about it by then) benefiting the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
The T’s will read, “Everybody lies,” an early “House”-ism dating back to the show’s pilot. Personally, I think they probably should’ve gone with “Humanity is overrated,” which was actually made into a T-shirt for the cast and crew.
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A fair argument to get rid of your cell phone: New mobisodes of the nominally animated “Lil’ Hollywood” (not suitable for work, home or, really, anyplace in between), featuring Lil’ Lindsay Lohan hacking a paparazzo to shreds, Lil’ Ashton Kutcher dating Barbara Walters and Lil’ Britney Spears – well, it’s probably best not to describe what happens in the Britney episode.
“Lil’ Hollywood” comes to us courtesy the same guys who made “Lil’ Bush” the first program designed for cell phones to climb the ladder to basic-cable (Comedy Central is producing a half-dozen episodes). While episodes of “Lil’ Bush” were kind of cute, “Lil’ Hollywood” is little more than a series of cheap shots at over-exposed celebrities, jokes you’ve no doubt heard many times before only not likely quite so crudely.
In fact, the only thing that’s funny about it is envisioning the day that Carson Daly’s imdb.com profile is updated to include his stirring performance in an episode here as “Britney’s Hoo-Hoo.” (Starting to get an idea of this thing’s level of sophistication?)
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OK, now I’m really mad. I’ve already railed about the assorted tedium and indignities rained down upon me at Saturday night’s TV Land Awards. But now I learn that had I managed to get a mere glimpse of this dashing power couple, my night would’ve been exponentially more entertaining. As one commenter notes, “Cheer up, Jimmy. I'm sure that fame was sweet while it lasted, but you had to know all along that Satan would one day collect on that contract.”
Maybe Jon Stewart should replace Katie Couric
We’ve discussed in the past how viewers of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report" not only tend to be getting a fair amount of actual information alongside the jokes and how they just sort of tend to be smart and flaunt it by, you know, reading books.
“(R)espondents who seemed to know the most about what’s going on — who were able to identify major public figures, for example — were likely to be viewers of fake news programs like Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”; those who knew the least watched network morning news programs, Fox News or local television news.”
Color me shocked. No, wait: What’s the word? Oh, that’s right: Unsurprised.
More depressingly, the study found that only 69% of those polled knew Dick Cheney was Vice President, less than knew who Dan Quayle was back in the day, and he wasn't even secretly running the country. How many guys must Cheney shoot in the face to earn a little recognition? The study added, "despite the fact that education levels have risen dramatically over the past 20 years, public knowledge has not increased accordingly.” Come on, people: Jon Stewart can't do all your heavy lifting for you.
And, since you can never make too much fun of Nancy Grace, here’s Stewart on last Thursday’s show.
If Don Imus is itching to get back to work, KCAA in San Bernadino will gladly have him.
Some sports columnist who’s tied his career to this will extend his 15 minutes today on Oprah.
And even though he was pulling down a cool $10 million per annum, some are still wringing their hands about how Imus is going to continue to pay for that $30 million beachfront home in Connecticut. Best bet: XFM’s upcoming Bigot Network.
And (no joke), there’s actually a Don Imus salad dressing that is sold for charity. It's sure to go quick, so get yours today! Though I hear it leaves a bit of a sour taste in your mouth.
Oh, and the Russian newspaper Pravda is reporting that Imus was silenced by “US War Leaders” to prevent him from revealing the truth about 9/11. I didn’t think the salad-dressing story could be topped in terms of goofiness, but bless ’em, Pravda stepped up.
Finally, the First Amendment take: “The First Amendment also protects against the mob mentality. In fact, the backlash against Don Imus represents our politically correct society’s constant attempts to control the minds of those who persist in thinking that we are a free people. Censoring unpopular speech sends the message that if we don’t toe the line, our lives can, and will, be ruined. As a consequence, it not only destroys human beings, it tells us that we can’t think for ourselves, we can’t hold certain views and we can’t speak freely.”
“Listening to Les Moonves of CBS speak with such apparent sincerity of how his network was helping to change the culture by firing Imus, I couldn’t help but remember that one of CBS’s own cultural gifts to America has been ‘Big Brother,’ the reality game show that cloisters a dozen or so strangers in a house for weeks to see how they get along. Maybe Mr. Moonves could put his prime-time schedule where his mouth is and stop milking that format merely for the fun of humiliation, voyeurism and sexual high jinks. If locking Imus and his team in a house with Coach Stringer and her team 24/7 isn’t must-see TV that moves this conversation forward, then I don’t know what is.”
Yeah, but Imus’d get voted off the first week.
Any evening that begins with someone asking you, “Are you a former child star?” is probably not one that is going to end happily for you, and so it went with my excursion to the Fifth Annual TV Land Awards, which was taped Saturday evening in a hangar at the Santa Monica Airport. (It’ll air at 9 p.m. Sunday, April 22, with multiple repeats.)
In the past, the TV Land Awards have vaguely followed the template of other MTV Networks “awards” shows: jokey, self-referential goofs boasting all manner of silly categories that essentially offer gewgaws and trinkets to anyone who agrees to show up. This year – and I’m not certain this was a great idea – TV Land strove to take itself seriously, placing the emphasis on TV’s heritage and consigning the dopey awards to a mere two, fairly uninspired, categories. (Lindsay Wagner won the “Admirable Apparatus” trophy for playing “The Bionic Woman;” Amy Linker of “Square Pegs” was cited for “Most Beautiful Braces.” Having never watched “Square Pegs,” I had no idea, before the event began, that I was exchanging meaningful glances with a soon-to-be-award-winning actress; had I been more knowledgeable, or less wimpy, I might have been more assertive beyond mere superficial eye contact.)
Instead, the evening was a surprisingly earnest affair, with a few scant moments of levity thrown in for good measure. Kelly Ripa served as host, and so the show began with a series of vignettes placing her (and some fearsome wigs) in the opening-title sequences of old sitcoms – “That Girl,” “The Brady Bunch,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (renamed “The Kelly Tyler Ripa Show”), “Laverne and Shirley,” “The Flying Nun” – you get the idea. In her nun’s habit, Ripa soared over the crowd to the stage. Mainly, the sequence was cute without ever reaching clever.
Ripa declared the evening one to which “celebrate all our guilty pleasures.” But it soon became apparent that TV Land had loftier goals than that.
But forget all that; let’s hear more about me. Upon entering the hangar, I first exchanged pleasantries with an impossibly dapperly dressed young man and his fiancée who go by the moniker of Keyi and Silky, the “new Beyonce and Jay-Z,” Keyi explained. After initially asking whether I was a washed-up has-been (“former child star” was his diplomatic way of putting it) (I had no idea I was looking that desperate for attention), he then reflected upon how cool it was to be in the presence of so many people that he grew up with watching on TV. He added, unintentionally twisting the knife, “And you – you have so much more history with these people.” I replied, “Well, not so much more.” He laughed at my joke – or my vanity.
OK, back to the evening: In a departure from past TV Land Awards shows, lots and lots of recipients were allowed to make acceptance speeches. Not a good idea. Particularly given that some of them were reading their acceptances off the teleprompter.
When Sharon Stone (wearing a flowing green dress with calculated cuts threatening to reveal her cinematically celebrated lady-parts) presented the Medallion Award to “Taxi,” sundry cast members and creators took to the mike to further explicate the societal impact the show had, until Jeff Conaway tried to speak; then, the band, perhaps thinking him too disheveled to be an actual cast member and therefore perhaps an interloper, tried to play him off. Eventually, they dragged the whole group back out onto the stage so that Conaway could deliver his acceptance speech, which was pretty much utterly forgettable and should’ve emboldened the band to cut short future long-winded speeches from award-winning conglomerates, but in fact didn’t.
As tediously self-serving as the “Taxi” acceptance speeches were, those for the mini-series “Roots” seemed to go on even longer. Oscar winners Forest Whitaker and Morgan Freeman introduced the “Anniversary Award” winners, and their eloquence should have provided more than enough explication as to the show’s impact. But, no: Even though LeVar Burton made the salient point that Don Imus’ @ssholery of the past week made the “conversation about race” as urgent as ever, multiple cast members sort of said the same thing, less eloquently, repeatedly. Again, a cast member was thrown to the ditch, then allowed to give his speech: John Amos, who got kind of odd when he described the first African-American to attempt to sail around the world solo as “a true hero,” and forced the crowd to applaud the creator of his current series, “Men in Trees.” After all that, someone at my table observed, “He’s going to be very disappointed when he doesn’t see any of that on TV.”
More observations: Lucille Ball’s son, Desi Arnaz, Jr., should want to bribe TV Land into judiciously trimming his and his sister Lucie’s speech accepting her “Legacy of Laughter” award (did I mention there were numerous bottles of wine at each table? No? Well, there were). A lot of people in the front started reading the teleprompters, rather than watching the presenters, just to see how far afield from their scripts they would go (even some acceptance speeches were loaded on teleprompters). (Heather Mills, who barely rated an appearance here, clearly won the award for violating the Teleprompter obedience measure, which only hints at how much she made Macca’s life a living hell.)
Though it’s pretty certain that “Hee Haw’s” award (the “Entertainer Award”) was the most dubious, TV Land ensured it’d get some respect by reuniting The Judds and bringing in Willie Nelson (who sang his two songs – “The City of New Orleans” and “On the Road Again” – off the teleprompter) as part of its presentation/justification. (Willie’s perennially ragged guitar has gotten so beaten up since the last time I saw him perform that there are holes in it.)
Even more observations: The “Ugly Betty White” parody was downright embarrassing. Thankfully, “Heroes” creator Tim Kring managed to be mildly amusing, in accepting the evening’s “Future Classic” award, by cheekily envisioning that his show would run for 42 seasons, beating out “The Simpsons” for the record for longest-running show by a mere seven episodes. And Christopher Knight, accepting “The Brady Bunch’s” “Pop Culture Award,” noted that the show maintained its innocence even while it cast members were losing theirs.
Yet even more trenchant observations: “Family Affair’s” former child stars Johnny Whitaker and Kathy Garver were on hand to dispense the trophies to the evening’s winners. Why would Keyi think I looked that desperate?
Your Mayor remained silent yesterday because the high winds that plagued L.A. managed to kill the electricity at his compound at the Naval Observatory (sorry, but don’t bother trying to find it on Google Earth. Can’t be done). Power was out for a full nine hours, by jiminy.
Interestingly, coping without electricity is the exact opposite process of coping with one’s imminent death. In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross listed the stages of accepting news of one’s own mortality as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and, finally, Acceptance.
Losing one’s electricity while working goes precisely the other way:
1:35 p.m.: Power goes out; Acceptance: “Awww, too bad; I can’t get anything accomplished. OK, Wally, let’s go to the dog park.”
3 p.m.: Power still out; Depression: “Damn, I have a bunch of calls I need to make. Whose stupid idea was it to make phones today reliant upon electricity?”
5 p.m.: Power still out; Bargaining: “If it comes back in time so I can watch ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann,’ I promise I’ll do a little work during the commercials.”
7:30 p.m.: Power still out; Anger: “I’m missing the #$$%#+*&= Lakers/Clippers game!”
10:30 p.m.: Power returns; Denial: “I missed the Clippers coming back from 17 to beat the Lakers?”
Clearly, the funniest thing about “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters,” the cheeky, no-budget theatrical spin-off of Adult Swim’s cheeky, no-budget cartoon about crime-fighting fast foods, is envisioning the uninitiated having to sit through the thing.
Heretofore, I had expected that the funniest thing the movie had to offer was the fact that it shut down the city of Boston back in late January with a series of viral-marketing Lite-Brite boards featuring a Mooninite (a supporting character from the show that looks like an ’80s Atari video game avatar) flipping the bird.
But now, having seen the film and having gauged critical reaction at rottentomatoes.com, which measures an almost spastic reaction to the film between fans (“Narrative's beside the point in a movie created by two guys who gorge on pop culture's high-fat diet and regurgitate it into something approaching . . . art? Close enough.” – Village Voice) and deep-seated haters (“If George W Bush could prove that Saddam Hussein had funded this movie I would reverse my stance on the Iraq War and say that every single civilian casualty was justified.” – Chud.com), I can safely say that were someone to make a documentary about people who knew nothing about Adult Swim who somehow got suckered into seeing this movie, the character arcs from bewilderment to irritation to outright outrage would be absolutely hilarious. I suspect the film’s creators, Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis, understand this as well, and probably would even invite such a film. Which makes them – what? – anarchic artists or utter @ssholes?
(For the record, the Daily News’ Bob Strauss hated the thing. Also for the record, rottentomatoes.com would be a much better gauge of critical reception to films were it to figure out how to cope with critics’ shrugs to movies: A lot of 2-and-a-half-star reviews are deemed positive assessments, but then, a lot of them are also considered negative. Why not create a middle ground reflecting the reviewers’ true, neither-here-nor-there feelings?)
“Adult Teen Hunger Force Colon Etc. Etc.” opens with a vaguely amusing parody of those old-fashioned, “Let’s-all-go-to-the-lobby” movie-theater ads featuring cheerful singing movie-lobby snacks, then turns into an ominous speed-metal rant, virulently scolding all manner of stupid behavior patrons in movie theaters participate in these days. “If you don’t understand, you should not be here,” rancid snacks bellow. Which means, in this case, most people should not be there, but too late – we’ve already got your money, the punkified snacks taunt.
From there, the film launches into an overblown episode of the TV series, which is dispensed on Adult Swim in agreeable 15-minute bites. 85 minutes of such random tripe will probably feel like too much, even to fans of the show; the film, for those who care, concerns an evil home-exercise machine hellbent on destroying society or, at least, New Jersey. Our heroes – Frylock, a supersized box of French fries who, were he as smart as he seems, would’ve abandoned his compatriots long ago; Master Shake, a vein-ossifying beverage whose idiocy is outweighed only by his arrogance; and Meatwad, a lovably dim-witted parcel of no-doubt-tainted protein – give battle.
The show’s favorite villains all make appearances, and there’s a ludicrously convoluted “origin” sequence that calls into question the sanity of every single comic-book movie that’s ever been made. Truth be told, a lot of critics sited at rottentomatoes.com got it right: This is something that is pretty funny in 15-minute chunks; not so much at 85 minutes.
Laughs are sprinkled here and there; it’s a smidgen gorier than Adult Swim might consider managing, and there’s a lot of swearing that wouldn’t cut the mustard (another fast-food staple!) on basic cable; hence, its R rating. But dirty words only induce a certain element of the show’s audience (read: 14-year-old boys) to laugh. In the end, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force with Lots of Extraneous Wording to Follow” isn’t nearly as transgressive as it needs to be to justify forking over the Hamiltons required to sit in an auditorium filled with stoned philistines.
His sardonic nihilism influenced a generation or two and persists, though many don’t realize it, to this day; even though most of us soon grew past him, preferring the more nuanced novels of those he quite obviously inspired, I know teenagers still read him today. The last time I saw him on television, Jon Stewart shed his veneer of irony and sincerely thanked him for helping the “Daily Show” host survive his high-school years. He memorably and vividly described Richard Nixon’s smile, in “Jailbird,” as “a rosebud that had just been smashed by a hammer.” He, even more memorably, survived the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and from that experience created his masterpiece, “Slaughterhouse 5,” in which Billy Pilgrim, beleaguered by the realities of the present day, becomes “unstuck in time” in a futile attempt to escape life’s brutalities.
Anyone who laughed their way through “Breakfast of Champions” knew, in their heart of hearts, that anyone who could write such a wonderfully silly thing could never, ever, be an *. (Not the precise symbol, admittedly, but the best I could manage.)
Though his fiction had been turned into films by talents as appropriately diverse as Alan Rudolph, Keith Gordon, George Roy Hill and Jerry Lewis (who starred in the abysmal “Slapstick of Another Kind”), they tended to prove resistant to translation – it was his words that made his work so resilient and memorable; adding imagery was redundant.
One exception may have been “Between Time and Timbuktu,” a film that first aired on public television when I was 11. It was an unwieldy amalgam culled from a number of Vonnegut stories, but so dense with a glorious glut of ideas that, as a kid at least, you forgave it its messiness. (Remember, we were just trying to emerge from the even messier ’60s.) One sequence in particular etched itself into my brain: A dance troupe, weighted down with “handicaps” lest someone feel less special, less talented, than the ballerinas on display, attempting to celebrate their art despite their burdens. At that time, when the clash between conformity and artistic expression was at its most pointed, it was the perfect metaphor for state-mandated mediocrity, which, somewhere in my unformed mind, I still sort of understood (growing up in Indiana may have made that a smidgen easier).
In the companion book to the telefilm, Vonnegut wrote, “Film is too clankingly real, too industrial for me. … I have become an enthusiast for the printed word again. I have to be that, I now understand, because I want to be a character in all of my works. I can do that in print. In a movie, somehow, the author always vanishes. Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and the character is me.”
You’ll read a lot more studious, articulate and insightful appreciations of Vonnegut today. This one’s lame. This one’s knocked off by someone with too many other concerns on his mind. But this one is indicative of everyone who grew up in Vonnegut’s thrall – it’s impossible not to want to pay tribute to him, if, obviously, belatedly.
So it goes.
MSNBC has shown Don Imus the door and asked the grizzle-headed ho never to darken it again.
"This decision comes as a result of an ongoing review process,” read a statement attributed to “NBC News.” “It also takes into account many conversations with our own employees. What matters to us most is that the men and women of NBC Universal have confidence in the values we have set for this company. This is the only decision that makes that possible."
So much for that apology tour. Which didn’t go so well, anyway, as Imus proved that he could dish it out but couldn’t take it – he got all snippy on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio program when another guest made fun of him for doing radio commercials for used-car lots earlier in his career. Soon, Imus may be pining for a job talking up used-car lots.
NBC has apparently learned something from the Bush Administration’s bungling of the Alberto Gonzalez debacle: Every day he remains Attorney General is just another day of escalating scandal and bad press and pundit and pol grandstanding. So Gonzo turned out to be good for something.
Ironically, all this came down just as MSNBC was touting giving Imus more air time: “More of what you want,” I believe the promos boasted. Now, it’s, none of what you can no longer admit to wanting.
The Onion.com’s opinion poll asked its regular band of fictitious men-in-the-street about the controversy; they responded, "Cut Imus some slack. The man is under immense pressure to be an @sshole every single morning." And , "How will Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Lars Larson, Michael Medved, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, Mike Gallagher, and Neal Boortz possibly fill the blowhard-talk-show void?"
But Imus has his defenders, as well, and from corners that might surprise you. Michael Meyers, the guy who hacked up all those teenagers in the “Halloween” movies – oh, wait, that’s another Michael Meyers – a former assistant national director of the NAACP, wrote in The Washington Post under the headline “Let the Idiocy Be Heard:”
“There ought to be no sympathy in any quarter for any shock jock's racial prejudice, but there has to be room for apologies that are offered in earnest. Moreover, there ought to be space on radio for dialogue and for racial impoliteness, too. When a radio shock jock makes a quip that offends, that's no surprise. There is no captive, fragile audience or hostile environment such as the workplace or schoolhouse to worry about -- just the robust radio world, full of gabbers, some of whom want to be taken seriously, some of whom try frantically to use words simply to entertain -- and who screw up -- and others who use satire and devil's-advocacy to push us to think. Besides, what's to distinguish Don Imus from the haters on black talk radio who regularly praise and play Louis Farrakhan tapes?”
Meanwhile, CBS Radio issued another terse statement: "During [Imus' two-week suspension], CBS RADIO will continue to speak with all concerned parties and monitor the situation closely."
The good thing is I can now open my email account without having to wade through the morass of band-wagoning groups using Imus to call attention to themselves. The better thing is, after a round of “Did MSNBC go too far?” hand-wringing, we’ll be done with it and can return to worry about more pressing issues, like, how will Larry Birkhead cash in on Dannielynn?
So Rutgers at least wins something.
Though critically acclaimed virtually beyond rational thought – the show recently scored a prestigious Peabody Award – NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” hasn’t managed, as far as I’ve noticed, to scare up even seven million viewers for any one episode. Which is enough to get most shows cancelled, and well before any sort of season finale.
Network executive Kevin Reilly’s commitment to succeeding through quality programming (except, you know, for “Deal or No Deal” or “1 Vs. 100” or “Identity”) has managed to sustain the show through this season, at least. (NBC’s already renewed another low-rated, critically admired series, “30 Rock.”) So it’s hard to say whether even slightly better ratings for tonight’s season finale will mean anything to Reilly, but if you’re a fan of the show, you should try to cajole acquaintances into watching and, should that not work, consider forcing them to watch at gunpoint. Because after watching, they’d probably drop all charges. (Truth be told, you needn’t have watched an episode to keep up with what transpires tonight.)
Tonight, it’s the Texas State High School Championship game, with Coach Taylor’s (Kyle Chandler) Dillon Panthers vs. a Rather Ominous Looking Bunch in Starched White Jerseys. There’s more than enough – probably too much – attendant drama, as well, as Taylor’s decision to coach college ball next season is revealed, his wife Tami (Connie Britton) unveils a secret and the assorted students’ lives persist to be fairly melodramatic, albeit in occasionally surprising ways.
And doggone if the show continues to be the “Rocky” (as opposed to the “Rocky II,” “Rocky III,” “Rocky IV,” “Rocky V” or “Rocky Balboa”) of high-school-football sagas, with the drama unabashedly manipulative – Dillon gets “off to a horrendous start” in the big game – and yet, somehow, affecting and satisfying nonetheless. Bonus points for the inspired use of the Daniel Johnston song “Devil Town” at the end of the episode, which sort of rebukes a bit of what the show seemed to be about.
Still, regardless of the fate of “Friday Night Lights,” NBC should consider cooking up great shows that don’t take place in rarefied worlds (sports in this case, entertainment in “30 Rock” and “Studio 60’s” cases, chartered accountancy in “Andy Barker, P.I.’s” case) that audiences have historically and reliably proven resistant to. It’s a big world, and there are many other jobs beyond cop and doctor and idiot game-show contestant that TV has yet to explore.
Two questions: Didn’t “24” "end" its season tonight by starting a new storyline for the rest of the season? Because the bad guys seem to have been caught, but now they’re going to burn off their remaining clock rescuing Audrey (Kim Raver), heretofore thought dead, but now just revealed to be in thrall of the evil Chinese who ostensibly tortured Jack Bauer for 18 months so horrifically that once he returned to these shores, he immediately leapt into being the same killing machine that he’s always been, and even managed to alleviate the disaster with hours to spend, leaving the writers a few extra hours to bleed out with his rescue of Audrey. They must've gotten bored, like everyone else, with the third or fourth suitcase nuke scenario.
Second question, and, yes, I’ve asked this before: Has anyone actually seen Stephen Colbert’s Ameri-Cone Dream ice cream on sale anywhere? Because I actually happen to like both caramel and waffle cones, and so I might actually consider snacking on this alleged offering from Ben and Jerry’s. But the truth is, I’ve been to a number of grocery stores and haven’t seen this flavor offered anywhere. Which can only lead me to believe that the whole thing’s a fraud, created solely to feed into Mr. Colbert’s already inflated ego.
Please disabuse me of this notion and let us know where Colbert’s ice cream is available. If only so I can get bloated enough to look once again like the photo accompanying this blog.
Technically, still on vacation; consider this a bonus entry from Your Mayor, who has arisen from an Easter weekend getaway:
Don Imus wants you to know that he’s very sorry he referred to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s.” “I am not a racist,” Imus insists, but the question is, if someone makes racist “jokes” on a semi-regular basis, what does that make them, exactly?
Of course, the problem with Imus and these sorts of pundits is, if they say something thoughtful and considered and rational, they don’t make national headlines (which is not to say that these jokers ever do say something thoughtful and considered and rational), whereas a stunt like this has the blogosphere in an uproar and their names everywhere. And since these guys don’t exactly feed on obscurity, of course they’re gonna aim for incendiary. So unless we begin to celebrate civil discourse, this is our future and we’re just going to have to put up with it.
* UPDATE: Imus has been suspended two weeks beginning next Monday, in order to be allowed to conduct a previously scheduled on-air charity fundraiser later this week. MSNBC issued a statement: “This comes after careful consideration in the days since his racist, abhorrent comments were made. Don Imus has expressed profound regret and embarrassment and has made a commitment to listen to all of those who have raised legitimate expressions of outrage. In addition, his dedication - in his words - to change the discourse on his program moving forward, has confirmed for us that this action is appropriate. Our future relationship with Imus is contingent on his ability to live up to his word.”
*
Katie Couric declares that anchoring a network nightly newscast takes “patience.” And a compatible skill set would come in handy, too.
But maybe that tips us to Couric's new sign-off: Whereas Dan Rather once ended broadcasts intoning, "Courage," Katie could bid viewers adieu with a semi-hopeful, "Patience."
*
Time to, um, rejoice?: The 200th episode of “The King of Queens” airs tonight at 9:30 on CBS, and if you’ve seen any of the previous 199 episodes, you’ve no doubt seen some variation of this one, as well. You know the drill: More fat jokes (because Kevin James is, well, fat!), more petty behavior worthy more of a playground rather than interaction between cogent adults and – who knows where this came from – some cringe-inducing homoerotic moments between Jerry Stiller and Patton Oswalt.
And then, for its big finale, an incredibly lazy gag in which Stiller’s character Arthur lands then loses a job because the Social Security number he supplied his employer turns out to be the number for a “Gamblers Anonymous hotline.” OK – Social Security numbers are nine digits; phone numbers are 10, so while the joke ostensibly comments on what a indefatigable reprobate Arthur is, in truth, it makes no sense whatsoever, sort of like, what did Leah Rimini’s character ever seen in Kevin James, anyway?
“King of Queens” will call it quits this season after nine years on the air; how Ray Romano’s buddy’s show lasted as long as his own will go down as a mystery as big as Who Killed Kennedy or What Was in the Suitcase in "Pulp Fiction?"
*
Fox has another “Drive”-related promotion set up this week, but since reports on the last one were so dismal, we’re gonna pass on touting this one. But Nathan Fillion's being dangled as a carrot-on-a-stick for this one, as well, albeit sans squeegee.
*
New York Magazine likes Keith Olbermann, about four months after all the other pop-culture magazines sent him their mash notes. Most of the best quotes are lifted from other pieces, but bonus points for the revelation: Turns out Sean Hannity likes Olbermann, as well. Just imagine the uproar if Hannity uncorked such a sentiment on his radio or TV show: It’d make the response to the Imus outburst seem like a demure shrug.
The Good People of Television have spoken. And they have a lot of questions. Such as:
Isn’t this season of “24” a piecemeal amalgam of previous seasons? Isn’t Stephen Colbert sort of over-selling his ice cream, given that no grocery store I’ve been to even stocks the stuff? Has “Brothers & Sisters” really found its stride, or has everyone’s expectations for it dropped precipitously? Couldn’t FX coax a better kiss out of Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston? How could the Peabody Awards honor “The Office,” “Scrubs,” “Friday Night Lights,” “The Boondocks,” “Ugly Betty,” Spike Lee’s Hurricane Katrina documentary and ABC News’ outing of Mark Foley, yet still overlook the Home Shopping Network? Why do all prime-time game shows feel like they’re 70% padding? Did that woman in that Quiznos commercial cackling insanely about “real women” wanting “a lotta meat” have any idea how she would come across? Is Billy Packer for real? Is Katie Couric for real? How can Alberto Gonzalez still be Attorney General? Will Tony Soprano get whacked? Will the King of Queens get whacked? Should Maury Povich get whacked? Who’d win in a cage match: Rosie O’Donnell or Bill O’Reilly? And how much would they be able to charge for that on Pay-Per-View? Do people realize when they’ve experienced that ineffable last time they’ve slept with someone they genuinely find desirable, and, if so, how do they cope thereafter? Do people ponder the vast number of exigencies – stop lights, gridlock traffic, a simple wrong turn – may have prevented them from arriving at a destination where they would have met their soul mate, and, if so, how do they cope thereafter? Was “Prison Break’s” season finale icky, or what? Are mouth swabs reliable? Was Emile Durkheim correct when he wrote, “Socialism has had as its principle aim the amelioration of the condition of the working classes, by introducing greater equality into economic relations – this is why it is called the economic philosophy of the suffering classes?” Was Kenny Kingston correct when he wrote, “The spirit world gives us physical and mental signs … to guide us in our daily lives. These signs are known as omens and apports and each of us can, with an open mind, learn to recognize these wonderful spirit ‘clues.’ If we are totally willing to accept these signs as messages from the spirit world, we can make them perform wonders for us”? Can straight people enjoy Bravo reality shows? What is the point of this screed?
Your Mayor is off to take a brief vacation to recuperate from the long, arduous and dedicated hours he has put into serving You, the Good People of Television. In the interim, I’ll mull these questions. If I come up with anything, I’ll get back to you.
Given “30 Rock’s” disappointing ratings, its writers seem to believe the writing may be on the wall, so they’re throwing any old thing up against said wall. Thing is, a lot of it, while random, is pretty funny.
On Thursday’s episode (a super-sized affair starting at an odd time, 8:40 p.m.), Jack (Alex Baldwin) fears the new oily West-Coast network executive (Will Arnett) is after his job. And why not – the guy is responsible for the “10-second online sitcom” (the sample we’re shown is hilarious, a perfect Old Media castigation of New Media, as is the line about “celebrity-snuff reality content for your mobile phone”), so of course he’s the sort of forward-thinking guy necessary to bring down a network. Additionally, he’s gay, and in Jack’s feverish mind the TV industry treats Gay like the New White Male, so of course they’re gonna bounce Jack, who nonetheless boldly tells Arnett, “I’m straighter than you are gay and I pass particles of guys like you in my wind.” (Cribbing from an old “SNL” Sinatra sketch, but still.)
But Jack’s not going down without a fight, and dispatches Kenneth the Page (Jack McBrayer) to scope out his competition. This, of course, does not go well. Kenneth asks Jack, tremulously, “You used me?”
“For Television,” Jack responds, as if he believes he has performed the most noble act in the history of humanity. “I humiliated you for television.”
Also, Liz (Tina Fey) fakes being an alcoholic to get closer to a guy she’s sweet on, and Tracy (Tracy Morgan) discovers he’s a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, leading to an inspired dream sequence in which Baldwin – as if he hasn’t done enough for this series – plays Jefferson as a pompous twit whose speech contains the sentence fragment: “America, which I invented…”
If “30 Rock” doesn’t return, all involved can at least know that they gave it their best shot. Perhaps Fey should start thinking about a sitcom set anywhere but in the world of show business.
* UPDATE: Good news: NBC announced that "30 Rock" will indeed be back for a second season.
- “30 Rock:” 8:40 p.m. Thursday, NBC (Channel 4 in L.A.).
Every network but CBS axed one of its underperforming shows yesterday.
NBC whacked “The Black Donnellys,” whose performance at 10 p.m. Mondays was even worse than “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” It will be replaced by a reality show from Ashton Kutcher about trouble-making wedding crashers. An ambitious, upscale drama gunned down to make room for a goofy reality show? You know Aaron Sorkin would do an episode on that.
ABC’s “Six Degrees” came and went, again, and Fox divorced itself from “The Wedding Bells.” (With the sort of ratings these shows got on Friday night, Friday is poised to go the way of Saturday when it comes to network programming.)
And “Seventh Heaven” found itself cancelled yet again – last season was supposed to be its final one until The CW, noting how bare its cupboards were, renewed it even after a series finale was aired. So The CW managed to do what The WB could not – kill off a long-running series. Yet another feather in The CW’s cap.
Oh, and another candidate for this space at a future date, ABC's "Notes from the Underbelly," has had its timeslot shifted yet again (that's four times before it has even aired). Initially, it was to air in the fall at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, then 9:30 p.m. Wednesday debuting April 11, then 10 p.m. Thursday premiering April 12. Well, it will still do that, but then it's off to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays, where it'll be safely out of the way of "American Idol." Desperation or legitimately trying to give the show a shot? You be the judge.
It was only a matter of time before “Law & Order” got its lurid mitts on the Anna Nicole Smith story (and if you didn’t pick that story as part of your Fantasy League “Law & Order” lineup, then you need to rethink your strategy). TV Guide offers a breathless “exclusive” behind-the-scenes take on the episode featuring Kristy Swanson as Ms. Smith’s doppelganger, but there isn’t much to it.
Indeed, they leave out the salient plot twist: The Howard K. Stern character turns out to be the half-brother of a crazy female astronaut who was arrested with soiled diapers and all manner of weapons in her car the week before Savannah Nicole Jones died; out of love for his half-sister, he alters the content of Savannah’s pharmaceutical cocktail in order to get his half-sister out of the headlines. It ends with Sam Waterston saying something wryly cynical but not really clever.
Not long ago, I offered a prize to the commenter who cooked up the best argument for luring Lauren Graham back for an eighth season of “Gilmore Girls.” While I may have been secretly hoping that everyone would forget the whole thing and not call me on reneging on the offer, I ultimately decided to forego the route traditionally opted for by most political creatures. I decided to live up to my word.
First, a couple of comments that didn’t win, but will certainly posit those responsible for deciding whether the show returns or not as Grinches should this season serve as its swan song:
“As a member of www.gilmoregirls.org I support their Great8Mandate. Gilmore Girls has been such an inspiration to me as a single mom of a 16 year old daughter who has had severe mental illness since she was 3 years old. Gilmore Girls has given me hope as a parent as well as laughter when I wanted to cry. I am modeling my relationship with my daughter after Lorelai's loving relationship with Rory and it's working. I am finally having a wonderful bond with my only child as a result of what I learned from Gilmore Girls. This fine show needs just one more season to fully tie up plots and come to an conclusion that fans can prepare for. Shis show has saved my relationship with my child and I'd like to see it be given the chance to end well. Please, just ONE more season is all I ask. Thank you, Lori”
And:
“Hi, I have a pretty selfish reason for watching the Gilmore Girls. I started watching the show after my husband died from lung cancer. I was working from home and when the workday would end...GG was on (the reruns). I started watching and even have purchased seasons 1-6 on DVD. I haven't enjoyed a show this much in 20 years. I just pray we get another season in Stars Hollow. Noreen”
But now, the winning comment, courtesy “Chloie:”
“Before I go on rambling, I would like to thank David Kronk for writing 2 articles on this subject and being so supportive of GG and the Great8Mandate!
“Now onto the topic at hand!
“I could name a million reasons the show should stay but that would take a while and would probably take up the page so I'll name a few!
“Everyone could benefit from doing another season in my opinion.
“The network is slowly but surely failing terribl(y), and falling apart! Half of their shows are on the verge of cancellation due to sucky ratings, they can't afford to lose (if I'm not mistaken) one of their top shows. The network will go down the toilet if they start getting rid of their top shows.
“The actresses, I hear, want to move on to bigger and newer things. If they stay another year, they could have a whole years notice to set stuff up in there careers before the show ends. I'm sure they don't want to get stuck, when the show ends, with no jobs and no leads on a new job. In the position they are in right now, they could also convince the writers to do something more with there characters and storylines so that they get some attention drawn to them by movie/tv writers.
“Now the viewers of course will benefit. The show is far from finished with storyline. If they end the show now, there will be so many loose ends, the show won't get a satisfying ending and after 7 years, they deserve a satisfying ending. Everyone does including the cast!
“We still need to see
“~ Luke and Lorelai together, happy and on there way to a family!
“~ Rory with some sort of storyline such as a career or a lead on a career.
“~ Lorelai and Emily’s relationship at some sort of truce or on actual good terms.
“and much, much more!
“The show NEEEDS another season! Please give us Season 8!!”
Some may note that I chose a winner who brazenly sucked up to me. This is true. But, she misspelled my name, so the way I see it, I’m actually being wildly open-minded in not taking offense to that. (Even more evidence of my open-mindedness: I’m offering to spring to mail stuff over the border, to Canada, which is where the winner’s email address suggests she lives.)
Congrats, Chloie. I’d misspell your name in retaliation, but most folks might think that it kind of looks as if you may have done that already.
* UPDATE: A fan of the show submits this update:
"Just last week the show was filming at USC (for Yale graduation scenes) and a local fan did her best to try and get any season 8 scoop. She apparently chatted up as many crew members as possible and each gave her the same story. No one knew if the show would be back next season, but they all hoped it would be. Most seemed to expect the decision to be handed down in May. Some crew members predicted only a slight chance for season 8, while others were fairly optimistic. It seems safe to say that no decision regarding season 8 has yet been made. If it has, no one's told the crew members because the fan noted that everyone 'hoped to come back a paycheck next year.' One crew member mentioned that it's a good sign that none of the Gilmore sets had yet been struck."
To promote its upcoming road-race/road-rage drama “Drive,” Fox will be offering free gasoline this Thursday from 9-11 a.m. at the station at 10389 Santa Monica Blvd. (corner of Beverly Glen) in Century City. And to demonstrate just how desperate actors can be to keep their jobs, cast members Nathan Fillion, Kristin Lehman, Taryn Manning, Kevin Alejandro, Dylan Baker and Emma Stone will be on hand to squeegee your windshields. So show up in your Hummer and see if you can bankrupt Rupert Murdoch.
After a jaunt to Miami that apparently failed to generate enough box office to keep them in business, “Reno 911!” returns tonight, announcing the first sheriff’s department to affix itself to a corporate sponsor: Hotty’s Restaurant. The squad’s cars boast the restaurants’ pink logo and phone number and the new uniforms have eye-searingly fashionable pink trim; the Miranda warning is even rewritten to plug the restaurant. Of course, with Hotty’s phone number on the squad cars, the restaurant gets calls for the cops; the waitresses deliver the messages to the cops on a leisurely basis: “Help, help, someone’s stabbing me.” Ah, well, one of Reno’s finest sighs, “If it’s important, they’ll call back, probably.”
On the plus side, they get all the hot wings they can cram down their gullets. Oh, wait, that doesn’t work out so well for them, either: After a gustatory feast on the wings, one intrepid and suddenly quite flatulent officer declares, “I feel like I have been gastro-intestinally raped.”
Next week: Christian karaoke. Since both “Reno 911!” and “The Shield” return with new episodes this week, it might’ve been cool to combine Rampart’s sadists and Reno’s oafs in some frenzied, murderous orgy of chaos that would’ve been both funny and frightening. Or maybe not.
- “Reno 911!”: 10:30 tonight; 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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