March 2008 Archives
That’s the Discovery Channel’s new slogan – who knew the network was aimed at 8-year-olds?
John Ford, president of the network, explained: “No other network delivers on the wonder, optimism and thrill of life on planet earth quite like Discovery. Our viewers are true fans of the world and this campaign is their cheering section.”
“Fans of the world” – does it have detractors? (Outside of those who are down on the Kyoto Protocol, that is.) As opposed to fans of Jupiter or Mercury? Let’s look at the bracketology:
Elite Eight
Mercury (No. 1) vs. Neptune (No. 8) (Sorry, Pluto, you got demoted, so you’re not in the playoffs): An unimpressive match-up; Neptune wins thanks to the methane in its atmosphere and its 1,300-mph winds.
Venus (No. 2) vs. Uranus (No. 7): Another listless face-off, won by Uranus thanks to the titters of schoolchildren everywhere.
Earth (No. 3) vs. Saturn (No. 6): A hard-fought battle between the scrappy smaller planet and a powerhouse giant. Saturn boasts 60 moons and, of course, those photogenic rings, but is 93% hydrogen. Earth meanwhile, has intelligent life – Earth wins!
Mars (No. 4) vs. Jupiter (No. 5): Another tooth-and-nail battle for dominance; Mars’ mythology, Marvin the Martian and land rovers vs. Jupiter’s vastness and legendary Great Red Spot. Jupiter is just too large for Mars to surmount.
Final Four
Neptune (No. 8) vs. Jupiter (No. 5): Jupiter in a rout.
Uranus (No. 7) vs. Earth (No. 3): Earth in a rout; smutty gags just aren’t enough against life itself.
Championship
Earth (No. 3) vs. Jupiter (No. 5): A veritable clash of titans (but not of Titan, Saturn’s moon), this climactic battle pits David vs. Goliath, life vs. hydrogen, the Solar System’s highest surface gravity vs. a density of a mere 1.326g/cm3 – and, again, Earth’s living ecosystems help it vanquish its foe! Life rules! Well, that and Kevin Love’s domineering presence in the paint.
Back to our regularly scheduled blog post:
Anyway, as part of its new awareness campaign, Discovery has cooked up a song celebrating Earth’s awesomeness. It’s set to the tune of an old children’s song I’ve never heard of, which further underscores the network’s 8-year-old mindset. Here’s the song; keep in mind someone got paid for this:
I love the mountains,
I love the clear blue skies.
I love big bridges,
I love when great whites fly,
I love the whole world and all its sights and sounds
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
I love oceans
I love real dirty things
I love to go fast
I love Egyptian kings
I love the whole world and all its craziness
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
I love tornados,
I love arachnids,
I love hot magma,
I love the giant squids,
I love the whole world, it’s such a brilliant place
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
This song just incrementally diminished our world’s awesomeness.
ABC announced the detritus that will be filling its airwaves come the summer, and all I can say is shoot me now.
Actually, "Shoot Me Now" would be a pretty good ABC reality show: Contestants, placed in a hermetically sealed dungeon armed only with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a firearm are subjected to the following programs; surviving family members of the one who lasts the longest gets $1 million.
"The Bachelorette:" You know the drill on this one. DeAnna Pappas, who got dumped by the bachelor who figured living a life in solitude was preferable to hooking up with someone more interested in face-time with reality-show cameras, will troll for telegenic dudes. Debuts Monday, May 19, 9 p.m.; thereafter, 8 p.m. Mondays.
"The Mole:" You probably know the drill on this one, too: Contestants do "Amazing Race"-style challenges, but one of them is trying to undermine their efforts. Anderson Cooper won't be hosting anymore, alas. Monday, May 26, 10 p.m.
"Wipeout:" "American Gladiators" without the added expense of gladiators. Contestants traverse an obstacle course and try not to die. Tuesday, June 24, 8 p.m.
"I Survived a Japanese Game Show:" Japanese game shows are amongst the most surreal, most brutal things TeeVee has to offer us, so why don't they just reinvent one here? No, they have to go and make a TV show about people going on yet another TV show. Added bonuses: Culture clashes and xenophobia! Tuesday, June 24, 9 p.m.
"ABC News' Hopkins:" Eight years ago, ABC News did a documentary series on Johns Hopkins Hospital. Now, they do the same damn thing again. Thursday, June 26, 10 p.m.
"Dance Machine:" Because there simply aren't enough dance-competition reality shows on television. Friday, June 27, 8 p.m.
"High School Musical: Summer Session:" In which they finally go to the well one too many times. Reality competition with people singing and (yes!) dancing to songs from the Disney Channel phenomenon. They haven't figured out what the winner'll get, so they're acting like it'll be some big surprise; here's guessing it's a roll in "High School Musical 3." Sunday, July 20, 8 p.m.
"Wanna Bet:" A combination of "America's Got Talent," "Secret Talents of the Stars," "Oprah's Big Give" and just about every other reality show ever made. Monday, July 21, 9 p.m.
That's NBC's big strategy to lure you back to the network, according to this story in Variety. Marc Graboff, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment alongside Ben Silverman (who will unveil the networks new fall - and year-round - schedule on Wednesday), declares:
"People need to escape. Ben's programming strategy is to find some shows where people can tune in and then mentally tune out. That's his directive, and I think you'll see that reflected in the programs."
Given that we could all use a breather from the impending financial apocalypse (not to mention if Cheney decides to invade Iran as an October surprise), and given that the brain-dead "Deal or No Deal" outperformed the dour "Journeyman" this past season, you can't really argue with Silverman's strategy. The question, of course, is whether the programming will be up to snuff. Some of the series that may make the schedule include the "Knight Rider" retread and shows about a telepathic paramedic, an "adrenaline-charged" "Robinson Crusoe," a sexy former FBI agent and "My Own Worst Enemy," starring Christian Slater as a suburban man leading a double life as a spy (which sounds like the Schwarzenegger vehicle "True Lies"). Draw your own conclusions.
(Aside: Do you think advertisers will be lured by the image of slack-jawed viewers mentally tuned out? Or is that their target audience?)
NBC's other bold initiatives are to cycle out failing shows quickly with similar new series in the same time slot and to try to whittle down the number of repeats to just about none - which, naturally, will mean a lot more reality shows plugging holes in the schedule.
"Repeats don't work anymore, but we have a finite amount of money to spend," Grabhoff told Variety. "We're trying to do some things that are cheaper so that we can have more original programming."
The other networks, meanwhile, will unveil their fall schedules during the traditional May upfront. It's gutsy for NBC to move its announcement up so early, particularly given how pilot season was left in tatters by the writers strike. One just hopes the schedule that results isn't obviously slapdash. We'll find out Wednesday - if I don't mentally tune out during Silverman's phone press conference.
* That buzzwords and jargon are the stuff of high comedy.
* That Fox has higher standards that The CW. (Well, Amy Sherman-Palladino learned that, anyway.)
* That “Prison Break” is just going to keep jumping the shark until it finally gets it right.
* That phone press conferences don’t really invite news per se.
* That I can cobble together a blog entry out of a walk down a street.
* That the man most responsible for Bush Administration policy was “X-Files” creator Chris Carter.
It’s one of the dumbest – and cheapest – plot twists in all of entertainment, particularly ongoing TV series: Killing off an important character, then realizing you’ve run out of stories so you better bring him/her back.
Here’s how executive producer Matt Olmstead tried to explain it to TVGuide.com:
“(O)nce we realized that the emotional hook of Season 3 was going to be the death of Sara, when we didn't get the actress to do it, as soon as we wrote it and shot it, we realized that there was actually a way she could still be alive. Lincoln glanced at the head in the box for a split second. That could've been anyone.”
Not buying it … (if it was someone else, why would the bad guys have sent it to Linc?)
“I don't think it was unfair, because it gave us some real juice storytelling-wise — it put teeth in the antagonists. Obviously they were now capable of killing somebody. It also gave us a couple of episodes where Lincoln withheld the information from Michael, and that gave us conflict with the brothers. But also, what were we really going to do? Were we going to see Sarah Wayne Callies tied to a chair for 13 episodes? And then if she broke free, what is she really doing?”
He’s kind of making my arguments for me. Why would the bad guys want Michael and Lincoln so p!ssed at them? And his “what were we really going to do” sounds a little like “We painted ourselves into a corner where we didn’t have much of a story.”
“(W)hen people who are fans of the show — and of Sarah — are asking, ‘Is she really dead?’, what they're saying, essentially, is, ‘I hope she's not dead.’ And then it became a kind of groundswell.”
How nice of them to be thinking about the fragile psyches of their fans at this point. Of course, they didn’t seem to care about that so much when they stuck her head in a box.
Olmstead also revealed how Michael will discover Sara’s still alive. He’ll get up one morning, head to the shower … and there she’ll be, with Patrick Duffy.
At a Paley Festival event promoting the upcoming “X-Files” movie (which – as spoiler as the “X-Files” guys are going to get – is not going to address the show’s never-resolved mythology), since there wasn’t much to talk about regarding what happens in the new film, talk turned instead to the pilot of the short-lived spinoff series “The Lone Gunmen,” in which someone inside the government, in an effort to boost sagging post-Cold War arms sales, plots to fly a 727 into the World Trade Center.
The show aired in March 2001, six months before the events of September 11.
“It was freaky, and one of the weirdest things is no one really asked us about it," series creator Chris Carter said at the panel. "It had been imagined before, by many others."
"Condoleezza Rice is saying its an unimaginable crime – hello, my pilot!" "Lone Gunmen" actor Dean Haglund added.
"It made me angry," (series executive producer Frank) Spotnitz continued. "It was not unimaginable. My first thought was ... 'Oh my god, I hope they weren't copycatting the Lone Gunmen,’ which they weren't. My next thought was: 'Why weren't we prepared for this?'"
Two reasons I’m guessing why no one ever asked Carter about this: 1) Everyone was too traumatized and had more important things on their mind to remember a little-watched and quickly cancelled TV show; and 2) even if someone had wanted to ask them, Fox would’ve turned down interview requests flat – they had a worse problem on their hands with the impending premiere of “24,” which also featured terrorists blowing up a plane in the pilot.
Nonetheless, with its portrayal of a sinister shadowy government, “The X-Files” today certainly seems to serve as a blueprint for the Bush Administration. But I think they cribbed their playbook from the episode “Humbug,” in which members of the Jim Rose Circus portrays a closely-knit group of circus freaks who conspire to cover up the crimes of one of their own.
Though the New York Times reported that the networks’ promos for scripted shows returning post-strike are all warm and fuzzy (“Far from going negative, many of the post-strike commercials take a triumphant tone, seeking to play off the affection that most viewers feel for their favorite shows”), the folks over at “My Name is Earl” decided “screw that” and even got NBC CEO Jeff Zucker to play along.
When “Earl” returns on April 3, it will be preceded by a “Previously on…” recap provided by Zucker himself, mock-mocking the writers: “Earl gets hit by a car, just like he did in the pilot episode,” Zucker explains. “Writers refer to that as a ‘callback.’ I call it getting paid twice for writing the same thing.”
Last week, we discussed Tina Fey seeming to dis Jon Stewart in an interview in Reader’s Digest magazine. Yesterday, while I was intrepidly uncovering what The Future Of Television was going to be like (and coming up vexingly short), Fey had a phone-press conference touting the return of “30 Rock” in which she was asked about her comments.
TINA FEY: “Well, you know, that thing was edited kind of weird because I was really talking about audiences and how, you know, audiences respond weirdly to things. And when I was talking, I said, like you know, on Weekend Update or anything.
“And then that kind of went away, so it seemed like I was saying something bad about those guys. And I think they know that I think their show is great and would absolutely never be disparaging of their show.”
Fey deserves a pass because the piece, in fact, was edited pretty awfully. But then, another reporter asked her about her “Bitches get stuff done” endorsement of Hillary Clinton on “Saturday Night Live,” and was almost shot down by a network flak:
CAROL JANSON: “We would like to keep the questions more to ‘30 Rock.’ Next question?”
This is Exhibit A in why I don’t do these things: This sort of micro-management of what reporters can and cannot say and the brazen effort to prevent interviewees from saying anything remotely political or controversial. Heaven forbid any news emerge from a news conference.
The reporter then neatly turned it into a ‘30 Rock’ question by asking where Liz Lemon, Fey’s character, would stand on the issue. But Fey got Janson’s point:
TINA FEY: “I think, you know, ‘30 Rock’ especially, we like to sort of just put things out there that hopefully spark discussion. … Liz Lemon also said last year that -when she was confessing her secrets to Floyd, she said, ‘I might tell everyone I’m voting for Obama and secretly vote for McCain.’
“And so I think there’s just a level of - I think there’s a certain small section of - sector of people that do think that and so we just kind of like to put that stuff out there.
“I think the - our role is more to spark discussion and to try to clarify and point out what we’re observing more than to really endorse or campaign for anybody.”
Aw, Tina. You were so much more fun when you actually said what was on your mind. Even if it was dissing Jon Stewart.
Ah, poor, foolish, idealistic, naïve me: I figured that as soon as we exposed the Great Evil that distracting network logos sitting endlessly in the bottom corner of a TV screen and in-show promos truly are, the networks would come to their senses and recognize such graphics as the passive-aggressive, semi-sociopathic phenomena that they are and immediately send them the way of the dodo and rational discourse in America.
But, no. They’re still around. As are complaints about them from readers:
*
There's an old Laurel and Hardy comedy wherein Mr. Hardy develops a phobia against bells. He keeps yelling BELLS....BELLS....BELLS! I've developed a similar phobia against television logos and have started yelling LOGOS....LOGOS...LOGOS!!
You missed a key problem with TV logos and that's the threat of "burn in," especially to the very expensive plasma sets. I have a friend who has a $6,000 plasma set. If you look carefully in the lower right corner you can see the remains of several logos. I won't buy a plasma set for that reason.
If you hadn't guessed, the logos and animations drive me totally crazy. I frequently turn off programs I'd like to watch because of the constant barrage of little happy feet dancing across the bottom of the picture. I keep a black piece of cardboard to cover the bottom portion of my TV screen when it gets out of control.
I've recently dropped Starz, Showtime, Encore, etc because they too feel it's okay to place logos in programming that I'm paying for. As far as I'm concerned, logos and animations are advertising but the F.C.C. turns their back and claims they have no control over logos.
A stationary object in a "moving" picture is a constant irritation, draws the eye and ruins the pleasure one gets from watch a movie. If you know of anyone trying to get the F.C.C. to step in and stop this insanity, let me know and count me in. If the logomania isn't stopped, we will soon see logos in movie theatres!!!
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Not sure if this was already mentioned, but when SciFi (and other channels, I must admit, but I am big on watching "X-Files" reruns and noting some of the actors who had small parts back in the day) burns a blurb for themselves across the entire bottom of the screen at the start of a show, they seem clearly not to care about allowing viewers to see guest star names which I find annoying as well as unfair to those actors. Sometimes, you may catch a glimpse of the top parts of some letters that makes the practice even more frustrating - like they are teasing us as well as insulting the actors. They are so busy advertising what will be on "later tonight" they lose sight of the fact that what is on "right now" is important to some of us.
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I along with most other people hate the network logos in the corner of the screen. It detracts from the show/movie you are watching. There is no earthly reason to keep a network logo on the screen for a 2-hour movie or even a 30-minute sitcom.
In addition the “bottom line” with scores on ESPN is also very distracting. It is OK during SportsCenter or other news show but when they are showing a game of some kind please eliminate the “bottom line”.
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I strongly agree with Jan Brown's comments regarding those annoying logos and messages shown on TV screens during various shows. They are very distracting when trying to concentrate on dialogue and interrupted by these promos that flip by so fast that you can't even read them. If so important show them before or after all the commercials. We usually know what channels we're watching anyway.
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No one likes Elizabeth Hasselbeck. With 37%, she is the host that makes you most want to hit the mute button. With 35%, she also beat out Tyra (25%) and Dr. Phil (23%) as worst interviewer.
Larry King is not! King gets the dubious honor of being the most unsexy host with 54% of the vote, beating out Whoopi Goldberg (25%).
*
Oh, wait, that last one came from an unrelated Email. Sorry.
Nonetheless, we shall continue on our bold and quixotic quest to end eyeball strain and banish on-screen clutter during television programming. In the meantime, we can take solace in the fact that those who create the shows really hate them, too, and in the fact that for all its sins, at least The Future of Television conference did not have a panel titled, “Onscreen Logos: How Can We Make Them Even More Conspicuous?”
Amy Sherman-Palladino is no doubt currently scratching her head over Fox’s abrupt yanking of her show “The Return of Jezebel James” after only three episodes: “Over on The CW, three million viewers is considered a megahit!” she’s opining.
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The stuntcasting of Britney Spears on “How I Met Your Mother” (gee, what a nothing-burger role, as this cut-down proves) did the trick, earning the sitcom 10.6 million viewers (meaning it got about 2 million people who otherwise would’ve been doing something, anything else to tune in) and its best 18-49 demographic showing in a long time.
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Fox, surveying the miserable numbers for its midseason shows “New Amsterdam,” “Canterbury’s Law” and the aforementioned “Jezebel James,” has no choice but to renew “Prison Break” for a fourth season. I forget: Is there anyone left in prison that anyone cares about to break out? Or will Michael just get himself thrown into a local pokey just for grins so he can pull off a hat trick?
*
Did Sinbad of all people torpedo Hillary Clinton’s campaign over her comments on sniper fire when she went to Bosnia?
It gets worse: Your Mayor has does some investigative journalism of his own, and has discovered that that phone call in that TV commercial in fact did not come at 3 p.m., but at the far more reasonable hour of 10 p.m.
This Future Of Television technofestival is taking place in the very same ballroom in the Roosevelt Hotel that housed the very first Oscar ceremony and, also where, legend has it, some distraught actor offed himself after losing an Oscar and still haunts the place to this day. (In the form, we’ve been told, of chill air that suddenly and inexplicably appears in the room; coincidentally, there’s an air-conditioning vent just above that spot in the room.)
No one has killed him- or herself during this conference – yet – but there do seem to have been a lot of missed opportunities here. By focusing on emerging technologies and narrowcasting and advertising, the event’s organizers have betrayed an interest in those who will profit from all of this. But there are those in the TV industry who have some rocky years ahead of them, and even if their futures aren’t nearly as rosy, they probably merit discussions on how to survive the coming tumultuous years.
Nonetheless, there was no panel discussion on how the broadcast networks can best weather the storm as their viewership dwindles – or what the effect of their diminished stature means for everyone else. (With fewer mainstream programs succeeding, other sites that cater to fans of those shows will be affected, and the volume of traffic lured to sites based on their appeal would shrink, meaning there will be less people to sample the other wares being offered at such sites, and so on.) Nor was there a panel discussion on how local affiliates will be impacted, how all those local news teams will be bankrolled as the broadcast networks rely less on them and more on other platforms to disseminate their programming. Nor was there, say, a panel on the broader sociological implications of viewers grazing across the Internet in search of the latest viral video and utterly ignoring current events, or what happens when news sites, catering to audience demand, lean more heavily on entertainment coverage (The Associated Press recently announced a new division dedicated to infotainment) and moving away from hard news – there’s stuff we want to see or read about, and then, there’s stuff we need to know, but if our choices are completely in our hands, will we know about corporate or political corruption, or will we base our votes in elections on Obama Girl or those three daffy biddies singing “It’s Raining McCain?”
Nope, none of that, but plenty on just how even more f@%&ing impossible it will be to avoid commercials in the future (yay! Not a moment’s peace for oneself!) and why the kind of throwaway material produced to be watched on cell phones merits an entire panel discussion unto itself).
And then, there was Keynote Speaker Carson Daly.
Introduced as “someone who really does sit at the center of what’s going on in pop culture,” Daly – wearing a baseball cap, a sweatshirt and sneakers – announced, “You’ve had a lot of very smart people talking about the future of television, and I’m not that. So what am I doing here? It’s a good question.”
The answer probably wasn’t as good. “The answer is passion,” Daly declared. “I’m passionate about entertaining, passionate about television … passionate about finding out my future stake in it.”
Daly posited himself as someone studying new media while working in traditional media, and concluded, “If I live in both of these worlds, maybe I can introduce them to one another.”
He then discussed a few of the projects that he has been involved in attempted to combine traditional TV and interactivity. Almost invariably, he concluded, “It was an idea ahead of its time” or “Ultimately, it didn’t pan out.”
Daly’s speech wasn’t ahead of its time, but in the end it didn’t pan out, either. Truth be told, it wasn’t a bad speech if you were a neophyte in this realm, but no one in attendance was a neophyte.
(Psst. Shh! I’m outside the ballroom writing this and Daly is standing about four feet away. Don’t look over here, Carson! It’ll only break your heart! Though I did say it wasn’t a bad speech! Keep looking at the brunette! Or the old guy with the mustache and the plaid jacket!)
(OK, now he’s been shuffled away to do an interview. “Are they gonna talk about the strike?” he asks; “No, we’re not doing that,” a handler answers.)
One last thought from Daly’s speech: “TV is nowhere near dead. That’s just a bunch of crap.”
As are, I’ve decided, the rest of the panels today. There’s your Future Of Television, kids: People dazzled by shiny objects and favoring jargony buzzwords over discussions on how to create the sort of programming people might want to watch.
Joel Hyatt, co-founder (with Al Gore) of Current TV and current.com, committed an act of heresy Tuesday morning before the missing-the-forest-for-the-trees sorts attending this Future Of Television conference that we’ve been writing about so much that it’s become all the rage with the kids: He took a polite but firm dump on the conference’s obsession with technology.
“I think we can get bogged down on the technological changes which enable people to watch TV on more platforms – it’s interesting, but it’s not a big idea,” Hyatt told his interrogator, Fast Company’s Ellen McGirt.
“People say to me, ‘Isn’t it exciting that you can watch ‘Desperate Housewives’ on your laptop? No, that’s not very exciting. I’d rather watch it on a 60-inch screen. … Why is that exciting? It’s convenient if you have no bigger screen, but it’s still a diminished viewing experience.” Snap.
He continued, “I have no idea why anyone would want to watch a movie on a cell phone unless you’re stuck in an elevator. Now, there a lot of things you might watch on cell phone – including, sorry for the ad, a lot of our programming – but not a movie.” You mobile geeks just got pwned.
Now, Hyatt’s anything but a Luddite. Current has integrated TV, the Internet and viewer interactivity far beyond anyone else. (Current viewers contribute about a third of its on-air content and even more at its website. They also create commercials for the network’s advertisers; viewers, Hyatt said, prefer the homegrown spots 9-1 over slicker Madison Avenue ads.) The new technologies are “tools, but they’re just tools,” he told Your Mayor after his session. “What’s important is how you use them.”
And to that point, Hyatt told the crowd, “The exciting thing to us is the exact opposite of where all the attention has been. Interactivity is the magic of the Internet, and if you can bring that to TV, that’s a big idea, and that’s what we’re working on. We’re trying to give Internet users the 60-inch experience, and have great content, and have a great viewing experience. Content still is king.
“People keep asking, ‘Is the era of television over?’ I don’t think so at all,” he concluded. “The new technology enables users to access content, and that’s good. … But it’s still a content-driven business, and it’s still important to ask, ‘Do you have content that people want to watch?’”
Next panel after Hyatt’s appearance? You guessed it: “New Television Technologies You Need to Know.”
Outside the Roosevelt Hotel, where The Future Of Television conference is continuing (and, mercifully, concluding) today, that venerable tourist attraction the Hollywood Walk of Fame includes stars for Jack LaLanne, James Brolin and Cybil Shepherd, and the street is redolent with the aroma of glamour and bums. Those stars implanted in the sidewalk honoring TV personalities feature little TV sets with giant rabbit ears – already plenty outdated.
In the future (imagine an imposing if somewhat dated sci-fi-y echo on those words), if we’ve learned anything here at The Future Of Television conference, when LonelyGirl15 and Fat “Star Wars” Kid and Bulldog on a Skateboard and Melodramatic Prairie Dog all receive their Walk-of-Fame stars, the TV will look completely different. But will it look like a plasma screen or a laptop or an iPhone?
Hmm. Given that the Walk-of-Fame stars boast very little detail in their graphics, it’s safe to say it’ll just look like a generic rectangle.
(The TV stars aren’t as outdated as the recording-industry stars, however, which are represented by a vinyl record with a tone arm laid across them (younger readers – ask your parents about this mythological “vinyl” and these oppressive “tone arms”). How will music-industry stars be represented in the future? By iPods? A record label’s bankruptcy papers?)
Currently, the Walk of Fame honors artists in five categories (fun fact: Gene Autry is honored in each of them): Live Performance, Radio, Recorded Music, TV and Movies. This would seem to be a pretty egregious oversight on the behalf of whoever’s in charge of issuing stars: You’d think they’d want to honor the stars of the new-media and digital age, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and everyone who has made entertainment that much easier to access. But again: What kind of image would grace these stars?
1.
For a conference all about exploiting the emerging technologies, the folks running The Future of Television conference at the Roosevelt Hotel still haven’t figured out how to get microphones to operate smoothly. Lots of “Is this thing on?” (as I type this, the current speaker’s isn’t, in fact) and the occasional howl of feedback or sputter of static.
The networks, broadcast and cable, are pretty much an afterthought here, as the conference is all about digital media, online, broadband, mobile – everything but that large piece of furniture in your living room. Even a panel discussion on reality TV skittered away from its topic to bring up hulu.com and iTunes and mobile content. Conference moderator Ned Sherman said, “Television may not be the right word for this industry anymore: We’re all content creators.”
2.
Steve Canepa, Vice President of Global Media & Entertainment Industry at IBM, made my head explode, first panel out. The man – if “man” is the right word; I suspect “ambulatory artificial-intelligence unit” might be more accurate – appears to be pathologically incapable of speaking in anything but Jargon.
Some things he says are simply impenetrable ways of conveying simple concepts. Canepa recommends “Putting product and customer master records at the center of your business model,” but all he’s saying is, your business is what you sell to your customer. And when he notes that the “Key to innovating in their business model is access to skills,” he’s merely suggesting you hire people who know what their doing.
Here, but a sampling of snatches from his bewilderingly obfuscating but no doubt forward-looking speech:
* “Harvesting out of those transactions an analysis of preferences and behaviors.”
* “Finite marketing spend (to gain) influence over those clusters.”
* “Very proprietary structures that are bolted together in a hard way.”
* (from a graphic during his presentation) “Media hub enterprise service bus – transformation, mediation, persistence, dynamic routing.”
* “The infrastructure was componentized. … we integrated those together with an open architecture.”
* “Having a mini to mini relationship in each piece of that value chain.”
* “Segmentation, interactive-oriented experience.”
* (Speaking of Hulu.com) “Traditional programming in open platforms; there’s a movement toward the center.”
* “Core competencies must evolve.”
* “The value proposition you can offer us is probably a lot less.”
3.
There seem to be precious few panel discussions on the actual content of programming; content, apparently, is not part of The Future Of Television. But there was one panel on Reality TV, and for a brief few minutes, there was a little injection of personality amidst the earnest techno-chatter.
Panelists included Andrew Cohen of Bravo, who basically just talked up Bravo shows; David Lyle, Fox Reality Channel president, the one forthright and funny guy to appear all day (noting that reality is usually dismissed as a guilty pleasure, he said, “We don’t feel guilty and we pleasure ourselves daily”); John Saade of ABC and Ryan O’Hara of TV Guide Network, who didn’t really seem to belong on the panel but what’re you gonna do?
Moderator Ken Rutkowski asked members of the audience who said they didn’t watch reality TV why. One woman opined, “It’s contrived.”
David Lyle: “Yeah, so?” (Cohen, by contrast, fumbled around, trying to say that his shows weren’t manipulated but in a way that wouldn’t sound like a complete lie but gave up and just talked about how great they were.)
Another person complained that early reality TV was so bad, citing the first season of “The Bachelor.”
Rutkowski: “I worked with him at CNet – he wasn’t looking for a woman.”
One audience member delivered a brief screed on the fact that reality isn’t real, that it’s manipulated by editing and even the mere presence of the cameras.
Lyle replied, “The only way we can have this discussion is in a bar.”
There was absolutely no discussion of the creative component required in putting together a television show. Rutkowski apparently got bored with the topic of the genre itself, instead asking questions about hulu.com and iTunes and maybe creating reality shows for cell phones.
ABC’s John Saade, speaking about “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “Oprah’s Big Give,” theorized, “Watching those shows on a Sunday night is a collective penance for the country.” If that’s the case, then clearly it’s not enough.
4.
People can text message during the panels; their thoughts show up on a large screen to the left of the stage in real-time. Some of the texts become part of the panel discussions. An interactive conference about interactivity: Have I blown your mind yet?
One unimpressed attendee texted: “Only 2 women on all the panels – proportionate to their power in this space?”
No, just proportionate to their ability to digest jargon and self-aggrandizing b.s.
5.
Marshall Herskovitz bailed as keynote speaker due to a death in his family, but his partner Ed Zwick showed instead. I believe he just compared the computer screen to a movie screen. He also threatened to do another "quarterlife."
Your Mayor will be inordinately busy today and Tuesday, taking in a conference on The Future Of Television. Given that right now, no one has any idea of what Television’s landscape will look like even a year from now, if these people actually reveal any spoilers, it will represent quite the scoop.
The event is billed as “a 2-day executive conference, unlike any other, that brings together key decision-makers from cable and broadcast networks, cable and satellite operators, high-tech and advertising to focus on the future of television.”
Then again, it’s also hawking: “2 Days – 70+ Speakers – 300+ Attendees (and) Innovative Exhibitors = !!Unrivaled Networking!! Breakfast, Lunch, **Poolside Networking Reception**”
Obsession with fierce and unbridled networking, of course, got Television into the sorry shape it is today (Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman are great networkers, but look at NBC); nonetheless, it’s also apparently the key to The Future Of Television.
Looking at the agenda, it seems the event is more about TV aimed at your laptops and cell phones than your actual TV, so if that really is The Future of Television, you might want to rethink buying that $3K plasma screen and just stick with your iPhone. Also, the event has panel discussions on reality TV and advertising and user-generated content, but little if anything on actual scripted programming, so if that really is The Future of Television, you might just want to invest in a nice clean and true straight razor.
Keynote speakers include Marshall Herskovitz, whose latest project, “quarterlife,” tanked majestically not only on NBC but also proved underwhelming in its online iteration, so clearly he knows what he’s talking about; the Alex Toffler-like Carson Daly; and Joel Hyatt, who, as co-creator of the forward-looking Current TV, actually probably knows what he’s talking about, but he’s speaking at 9 a.m. Tuesday, long before I will have been able to fully caffeinate myself, so I won’t likely understand a word he’s saying.
Just a guess, but The Future Of Television is no doubt going to be filled with a lot of jargon. “Interlaced multi-platform threnody stratagems” and “interface modality conceptualism paradigms” and “interactive real-time target-demographic cyber-viral-marketing integration loops” will make damn sure the rest of us haven’t a clue as to what’s going on.
If the Roosevelt Hotel has free WiFi access (big if) and if the blog server isn’t going into one of its paroxysms of petulant-teen pouting (bigger if), I’ll be issuing interactive real-time target-demographic dispatches as events warrant. If not, you’ll find out what The Future Of Television is when it actually happens.
We've invited a bitch-session over those pesky network logos you can't seem to escape when watching TV. Another reader, Bob Johnson, points out that not only are mid-show logos distracting, annoying and no doubt created by a spawn of Satan, they can also be hazardous to your TV’s health:
“Here, here. Those $#@& logos sure kill the moment. Shows and movies try to capture an audience within a scene and then BAM up comes some yahoo jumping through a hoop at the bottom of the screen. Aside from that is the technical problems of today's televisions. Plasma TV's are everywhere. What's their main concern? Screen burn-in.
“Anything displayed for too long of a time or always in the same spot can eventually burn in the screen permanently. Even if it doesn't right away, you can see ghosting images left behind temporarily. I fail to see the purpose of the distraction. If we want to watch something, we'll look it up. Also, I've read the color blue has the shortest life span in a plasma. So, why are ch7's news side bars (which side bars can burn in also) are blue? I wish you luck on your venture and hope to see more crusades on the subject.”
I don’t have a plasma screen, but I have heard worries about screen burn-in. It never occurred to me (probably since, as I just said, I don’t have a plasma screen) that these network logos could burn into one’s screen, but if that’s the case, perhaps we can work up a class-action suit or something. Any takers?
Shockingly enough, peanuts are not a predictor of a TV show’s well-being. This afternoon, CBS’s Entertainment president Nina Tassler issued this sad decree:
“The March 25th episode of Jericho will be the series finale. Without question, there are passionate viewers watching this program; we simply wish there were more. We thank an engaged and spirited fan base for keeping the show alive this long, and an outstanding team of producers, cast and crew that went through creative hoops to deliver a compelling, high quality second season. We have no regrets bringing the show back for a second try. We listened to our viewers, gave the series an opportunity to grow, and the producers put a great story on the screen. We're proud of everyone's efforts.”
Translation: “Last time we listen to our viewers.”
But, hey: Every new or midseason scripted show that has premiered in 2008, mid- or post-writers strike, has tanked. (Except for “Lost,” but fewer than 12 million viewers watched it last night, so even it’s further on the decline.)
Fox’s “New Amsterdam” is doing kind of OK, but only in comparison to everything else that tanked, including Fox’s “Canterbury’s Law” (newly consigned to Fridays, where it can die a quiet death) and “The Return of Jezebel James” (always scheduled on Fridays, as its death was preordained). Fox’s “Unhitched” and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” performed underwhelmingly, as well.
ABC’s “Cashmere Mafia” and “Miss Guided:” Toast, or soon to be. CBS’s “Welcome to the Captain:” Already gone. NBC’s “Lipstick Jungle:” The final nail isn’t in its coffin only because NBC is doing so poorly otherwise.
Instead, the midseason’s middling successes are reality shows: Fox’s “Moment of Truth,” NBC’s “American Gladiators” and ABC’s “Oprah’s Big Give” (though it’s on a steep ratings slide, as well).
Some downer news to end your week, but then, Good Friday has always been about bad news. Unfortunately, I don’t see the networks resurrecting themselves any time soon.
“Futurama,” Matt Groening’s second series after “The Simpsons,” always had a great concept and an impressive visual style but always seemed lacking in the laughs department, which made it all the more disappointing. It may have been due to the characters, which just weren’t as inspired as those on “The Simpsons” – Bender, the crass robot, always felt like he was sort of being crammed down viewers’ throats as a cult character, a tin-plated Bart Simpson of sorts.
So the show got cancelled, but, as the title sequence notes in “Futurama: Bender’s Big Score,” It Just Won’t Stay Dead! “Bender’s Big Score,” a four-episode movie, was released earlier this year on DVD, and Comedy Central will present the whole thing with the added bonus of lots of commercials on Sunday.
The thing parodies time-travel movies that invariably get mired down in their paradoxical illogic. But first, Groening takes a shot at Fox for canceling his show – it’s announced that those responsible were fired, beaten up and killed, then ground into a fine pink powder which doesn’t actually seem to do anything.
Anyway, a group of nudists called the Scammers, through a series of spam Emails, take control of Earth. Then, using a tattoo on Fry’s butt that has a code that enacts time travel –
Leela: What’s the secrets of time travel doing on Fry’s ass?
Fry: It was bound to be somewhere.
– they dispatch a newly compliant Bender to go back in time and rob the planet of all its historical riches (he returns with the Mona Lisa before da Vinci finished her face).
Meanwhile, Leela falls for a guy named Lars, much to Fry’s chagrin. And, employing the time machine, a number of different Benders and a couple of Fry’s are created. “Jeez, this is confusing – and I’m sure it’s going to get a lot more confusing,” says a Bender back in the year 2000, just before he destroys a cache of Florida election ballots for Al Gore. (Gore turns up in the climactic battle sequence, exulting, “Finally! I get to save the Earth with deadly lasers instead of deadly slide shows!”)
“Bender’s Big Score” is funny enough to keep you watching but not quite funny enough to convince you that Fox made an egregious error when they cancelled the show. There are gags involving the word “handjob and the phrase “I’ve wiped Fry’s butt clean” that don’t mean what you think they would but still veer perilously close to being single entendres. And then, there’s this exchange on a Nude Beach Planet:
Bender: You know, it’s funny.
Fry: What?
Bender: Your wiener.
Ah, not that funny. But at least Fry is able to put things in perspective when, the planet impoverished but the Scammers stripped of their time machine, he declares, “The present may stink, but at least we can look forward to a better yesterday!”
– “Futurama: Bender’s Big Score:” 8 p.m. and midnight Sunday, Comedy Central.
(Oh, and the headline is a line from the film that I found amusing.)
Last fall, we discussed the insights of the media-buying firm Rubin Postaer and Associates regarding their take on the then-impending 2007-08 TV season. I pitted my thoughts on upcoming shows against theirs, and if you take a look at that post, you’ll see I did pretty well in my prognostications, suggesting that “Journeyman” and “Cane” wouldn’t do as well as they expected (both: since cancelled) and that “The Big Bang Theory” and “Samantha Who?” would do better (both: since renewed).
My one mistake was in believing “Bionic Woman” might be critic-proof. (In my defense, it was critic-proof initially; it just wasn’t shlocky-execution-beyond-the-pilot-proof.) If this whole newspaper racket crashes and burns (like that’s ever gonna happen), perhaps I have a career in advising media-buying firms.
Yes, there is a point to this.
RPA has just released its Midseason Update, and while it notes the gloomy ratings numbers of the past season, it has some particularly tough words aimed at the networks regarding their behavior during the strike. Now, we’re not the sort to kick the networks when they’re down – oh, who are we fooling? Of course we are – and so here’s the summary from the report, written by Chuck Bachrach and David Scardino:
“Regarding the strike, anyone paying even some attention to entertainment industry labor relations knew a strike was very likely, the writers operating from heated emotions and embittered by the bad deal they made in 1988. As people who work primarily from their emotions, this was understandable. What wasn’t was the equally emotional reaction of the networks and studios – the supposed ‘business people’ at the table – when, having virtually resolved two of the three major sticking points, they left the table in a huff when picket lines appeared, on schedule, on the East Coast. That overly emotional reaction, when they could and should have just let it pass, caused the strike to continue for two more months.
“In the strike’s aftermath, the networks seem to have given no thought to at least an attempt to make an event or series of events out of the return of their scripted shows, in the process, throwing away their medium’s one remaining strength: the potential to gather large audiences for special events. Maybe such a strategy would have failed, but at least it would have show the networks’ audiences and advertising partners a recognition of having put both through a trying time as well as an intention to try and make up for it. instead, shows will dribble back at irregular intervals and all will be competing for promotional time. We think a huge opportunity has been missed.
“Likewise, all the brave words about radically overhauling the way the network business model works largely evaporated the minute the writers’ new contract was done. The fact of the strike provided the networks with a great opportunity to reform a business model all agree is broken. That they didn’t grasp that opportunity but instead rushed furiously to reconstruct the old (broken) model indicates a huge failure of vision and to a conclusion that the networks are run by people with little imagination. It should come as no surprise then that so much television programming feels generic.
“That having been said, the audience reaction to the reappearance of original programming should be telling. For those of us immersed in the business of television it is sometimes easy to forget that the average viewer basically just wants a couple of entertaining hours at the end of the day. Since the middle of December, many of those average viewers have had to find that entertainment on platforms other than broadcast network. So, as original episodes slowly reappear on the schedule, how will they be welcomed back? The answer to that question will probably tell quite a bit about the coming 2008-09 season and, possibly, beyond.”
And this comes from a segment of the industry usually tries to be bullish about the networks.
I recently interviewed Richard Zoglin about his new book, “Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America” (Bloomsbury, $24.95), and apparently granted him my own equivalent of the “Colbert Bump:” Documentarian R.J. Cutler, who won an Emmy for “American High” and was nominated for an Oscar for “The War Room,” announced today that he’ll adapt it into a feature film. (Oh, great, all those comics Zoglin interviewed for hours at a time are thinking; now we have to go back and tell those stories all over again, and this time, we have to look good for the cameras.)
Boilerplate press-release-ese courtesy Cutler: “‘Comedy at the Edge’ has captivated readers across the country with the most candid account yet of this seminal moment in comedy history. No one has covered this topic more extensively and in-depth than Richard Zoglin, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to work with him and bring the story to life on screen.”
In case you’re wondering, “Changed America” is an awfully portentous but relative term. But the comics Zoglin profiles – George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Robert Klein, Richard Lewis, etc. – did change the face of comedy, and comedy’s part of America, so I suppose you can make the case that the title isn’t utter hyperbole.
Reader Jan Brown appears to have touched a nerve among TV viewers. Yesterday’s screed on the craven network practice of filling their screens with logos and advertising while people are trying to watch a program ran in today’s Daily News, and already, the Emails are pouring in:
“I read your piece this morning and cannot tell you how glad I am that you gave me a chance to vent my total frustration at some of the practices that these TV stations bestow on the viewing public.
“I know there is nothing you can do personally about it, but it's nice to at least tell someone closely connected to the business about my pet peeve.
“I don't mind so much the pale station logos at the bottom of the screen as I do the "crawl" advertising banner across the bottom of the screen advertising their own programming, and my very, very utmost infuriating practice of a lot of stations, (Sci-Fi in particular), of shrinking the credits or covering them up with their own advertisements at the very end of the program when I have been waiting for the whole darn program to find out a performer's name that I could not remember, or wanted to know who they were.
“You would think that the geniuses in broadcasting could find an additional 10 to 20 seconds out of an hour program to edit enough to allow us to see all of the information without shrinking it down to microscopic print size that no one can read. (Not to mention the speed in which some credits are run at).
“Oh well, you just may have saved my big screen LCD TV from a painful "death by shoe" because without anyone to gripe to about this stuff, I have upon occasion felt like throwing one at the set out of frustration!!” -- Gary Saar
*
“The logos on NBC are the worst. In fact we will no longer watch any programs aired on NBC. It is a real nuisance to try and view a program with not only a logo popping up but over the logo other advertising is also being implemented. If other stations follow this format they will also lose out.”
*
“I hate them, they are distracting and I do hope you can do something to stop them.” -- Anna Wilson
*
“We have gone to reading books as the logos and other "chatter" at the bottom of the screen is so intrusive. At the very least they could put the junk in the upper right hand corner and not block whatever words are appearing at the bottom of the screen. More and more, TV is a crashing bore. It is good of you to do this and allow us to vent!”
*
"I would like to add my 2 cents regarding those pesky Station Logo's that block our view of the TV screen. I find it especially annoying when I am viewing a show that has subtitles, and half of the subtitles are blocked by that darn Logo. Most people have TV's that have a remote control that will allow one to view what channel they are watching with just the push of a button. If I want to know what channel I'm watching, I'll just press that button."
*
So, that’s the first volley in the war, though, like the war on drugs, it may never be won.
Feel free to vent further, however. Also, if you’re with a network, feel free to share your feelings as to why logos are necessary or harmless or if you think they’re a Faustian bargain that prevents you from sleeping the sleep of the just at night.
Oh, and Jan is, in fact, a she.
A shocking development in the otherwise harmonious world of TV comedy: Tina Fey suggests in an interview that "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart panders to his audience:
"My friend, 'SNL' writer Seth Meyers," Fey is quoted as saying, though one doubts she would employ such a stilted, journalism-friendly turn of phrase, "coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, 'Woo-hoo.' It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] 'The Daily Show.'"
Someone with the brass to take a poke at Jon Stewart? Stop the presses! Incredibly, the interviewer doesn't follow up or ask her to elaborate.
But then, the questions are awfully canned and insipid: "Your humor has been described as biting. Are you a mean girl?", "What's the difference between male and female comics?", "Your mom was one of your comedy inspirations. Did you play to her at the dinner table?", "What TV shows influenced you?" "You costar (in the upcoming movie 'Baby Mama') with former 'SNL' castmate and good friend Amy Poehler. Did you make each other laugh on set?" "Where did you get your drive?" and, of course, "Which of the Three Stooges do you like best?" So clearly, our intrepid journalist conducting the interview was charged by her magazine (Readers Digest, BTW) with being as drab and colorless as possible.
Still: Tina Fey is calling out Jon Stewart for kowtowing to his audience? Is this the same Tina Fey who sat behind the "Weekend Update" desk at "Saturday Night Live?" The same "Saturday Night Live" where laughs at the "Weekend Update" material often comes more from the anchors (currently Meyers and Poehler, BTW) than the studio audience?
Remember during the writers strike when Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Conan O'Brien had a mock brawl that wasn't really all that funny, but at least killed a lot of airtime for each of them? I'm thinking a serious catfight between Stewart and Fey would be even better. Who's with me?
You know that Britney Spears we’ve all been hearing about ad nauseum for the past year or so, the one in a downward spiral who refuses to listen to reason and is so crazy that not only did she lose custody of her children, she briefly lost permission to even see them?
Apparently, she has been replaced by the sweetest, kindest, humblest, most professional person on the face of the planet.
TV Guide has a story (on newsstands today) about Britney’s stunt-casting appearance on an episode of “How I Met Your Mother,” a show that could use a ratings bump if it’s going to survive into another season, and everyone in the cast lovedlovedloved her, and only because she was such a consummate pro, not because she’ll provide them with that much-needed added viewership.
The piece immediately vaunts to the top of the very large pile of entertainment puff pieces. It seems to have come from a distant planet where no one has ever heard of strife or challenges or unhappiness. Consider these quotes, and vote for the one you consider most obsequious!
* Josh Radnor (Ted): “She’s friendly, shows up on time, knows all her lines, nails all of her jokes. The only thing scandalous about all of this is how nonscandalous it is.”
* Craig Thomas (executive producer): “She wanted to work on her acting chops and play a specific comedic role. (Editor’s note: Yeah, I’m certain that at this point in her life, what Britney wanted most was to “work on her acting chops and play a specific comedic role” on a nominally rated sitcom.) She seemed nervous at first. [But] when she started getting laughs she started having a good time. We don’t have a high-pressure environment. We don’t shoot in front of a live studio audience so we can do as many takes as we want. I think that atmosphere really appealed to her and she felt comfortable.”
* Alyson Hannigan (Lily): “She was so funny and she already had her character down pat. I had no idea she had such great comic timing.”
* Jason Segal (Marshall): “Her improvs were really good. Sometimes at table reads you play around with lines and try different things. She came up with stuff that had everyone laughing. She’s definitely a comedian.” (Editor’s note: This one gets my vote for most obsequious.)
For her part, Spears merely issued a bland statement: “I’m having a blast. Working at ‘How I Met Your Mother’ has been so terrific. Everyone has been wonderful.”
*
In other stunt-casting news, Robin Williams will the villain du jour – and no, we don’t mean “Patch Adams” – on the 200th episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” which will air April 29.
Those distraught over the impending conclusion of “Battlestar Galactica” can take solace in the fact that the Sci Fi Channel has OK’d a two-hour prequel, “Caprica,” with the idea of taking it to series.
“Caprica,” about sentient paprika plants on a distant planet where they’re call caprica, set 50 years before the current series, follows two rival families – the Greystones and the Adamas – who are thriving because the Cylons haven’t been created yet. But they’re clearly on their way, as the technology is ramping up for that fateful disaster.
Sounds sorta like a sci-fi “Cane.” But can it really be “Battlestar” material if people aren’t suffering the entire time?
“Battlestar” executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick will be running this show as well; production begins in the spring.
Sci Fi announced some other TV movies that could become ongoing series, as well:
“True Believer:” Actress Rosario Dawson cooked this one up, an oddball dramedy about a comic-book nerd who hires a washed-up superhero to teach him the crime-fighting ropes.
“The Stranded:” Based on a comic book Sci Fi sponsored, it concerns five otherwise ordinary people who have been brainwashed and therefore don’t know they’re from another planet and have secret powers until aliens show up to kill them.
“Deputized:” Sort of sounds like a combination of the above two shows: A dramedy about an ordinary guy who suddenly gets stuck in an alien exoskeleton he can’t wriggle free from and so he has to become a superhero saving the universe in sundry ways.
“Alice:” A six-hour miniseries from the king of cheese, Robert Halmi, Sr., who last did “Tin Man” for Sci Fi. This one, obviously, is a ramped-up reworking of “Alice in Wonderland.”
“I’Raqiran:” An Elder seeking to rule the planet promises a 100-year-war against mystical, ululating tribes. How can he promise such an enduring battle? Is he … immortal?
Oh, wait; sorry, my bad. That last one is being developed for CNN and the Fox News Channel.
Jan Brown, a reader, sent Your Mayor the following Email:
“At a Television Academy event the other night for ‘Mad Men,’ a number of us were enjoying the after-show munchies when I brought up the subject of how irritating it has become to have to watch all TV shows with some giant network logo always in the picture. Everyone within earshot immediately chimed in – everyone is sick and tired of having to try to focus on a program with some obtrusive logo superimposed over up to 1/4 of the screen, made even more obnoxious by the recent addition of animated figures and little people and titles and messages jumping in and out of the picture.
“What can be done about this? Can you run a poll or something or see if others are as bothered by this as we all are??”
Clearly, Jan struck a nerve amongst her (or, maybe, his; I neglected to ask) fellow Television aficionados. I explained that the logos “are for the benefit of those who are channel-surfing but to the detriment of those actually watching the show. And don't get me started on those promos that take up the bottom third of the screen. The only good thing about those is that ‘The Simpsons’ has done some funny parodies of them.”
Contemplating this further, it occurs to me that it would behoove some networks to not run their logo at the bottom of the screen, as it would serve as an automatic warning to viewers to flee immediately: The CW, for example, or A&E or, for straight males at least, Bravo. Ditch the logo and you might sucker a viewer or two in until the next commercial break.
Conversely, there are shows that one would think that networks really wouldn’t want to splash their logos across, as they really shouldn’t want to take credit (or blame) for them: NBC’s “My Dad is Better than Your Dad,” CBS’s “Big Brother,” Fox’s “The Return of Jezebel James” and, of course, ABC’s “According to Jim.”
So: What do you think? Do networks owe viewers respect and logo-free programming? Or do they not bother you because you’ve learned to ignore them?
And: What other TV irritants really bother you? As that logo (oops, sorry) above declares, we’re here to solve every problem in Television, but we can’t until we know what they are. Leave a comment and if the blog server gives you grief, don’t be offended – it does it to me all the time. Just let me know at david.kronke@dailynews.com.
America has lost almost 4,000 soldiers in the Iraq war, which is now five years old. The cost of the war has surpassed $503 billion. That’s $16 billion for those living in Los Angeles County alone, money that could’ve provided health care for 6.8 million people or 49,000 affordable-housing units or 237,000 school teachers. Our grandchildren, wondering why their taxes are so high, will still be paying for it. John McCain has said that American soldiers might be there for another 100 years.
Kind of a downer, huh?
Well, don’t worry: The Associated Press reports that if you’re watching TV news, you’re no longer being reminded of the debacle:
“Statistics clearly illustrate the diminished attention. For the first 10 weeks of the year, the war accounted for 3 percent of television, newspaper and Internet stories in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's survey of news coverage. During the same period in 2007, Iraq filled 23 percent of the news hole.
“The difference is even more stark on cable news networks: 24 percent of the time spent on Iraq last year, just 1 percent this year.”
Veterans of the war are noticing the war fatigue, says the San Deigo Union-Tribune:
“The military's all-volunteer force means only a small segment of the U.S. population is directly affected by the war, said former Marine Capt. Nathaniel Fick, 30, who commanded a Camp Pendleton-based infantry unit in Afghanistan and Iraq and later wrote a best-selling memoir, ‘One Bullet Away.’
“The Pentagon continues to forbid the photographing of service members' flag-draped caskets. That makes it easy for the public to forget the war's toll, especially as casualty counts have fallen in the past year, Fick said.
“‘There's been a concerted effort, in some ways, to keep the war out of the headlines,’ said Fick, now a graduate student at Harvard University.”
Barack Obama’s tough, personal, galvanizing speech on race in America in the wake of his former pastor’s controversial statements gives his supporters just another reason to love him and conversely probably won’t change the mind of anyone who’s already written him off. But it should be considered something beyond that – a sane, thoughtful walk through one of the country’s most dangerous minefields, an issue that is perpetually kept on the back burner out of fear of missteps or resignation that things can never change, one that is forever dealt with in simplistic terms. Until today.
On this issue at least, there’s Obama, and there’s everyone else over at the kids’ table. Predictably, the news networks, particularly Fox, have focused on whether the speech will rescue Obama (naturally, the white-man oligarchy over at Fox thinks not so much). But it’s obvious that Obama’s intentions with this speech weren’t so one-dimensional.
Obama continues the dialogue tonight with ABC’s Terry Moran on Nightline at 11:35 p.m. If Moran would keep questions about the horserace to a minimum and explore the larger concerns of Obama’s speech, I’d consider it a personal favor.
*
Ah, so that’s why they’re always so cranky on the Fox News Channel: Its New York newsroom was suffering from a bedbug infestation. Per the New York Times:
“But the source of the bugs was not determined until the exterminator inspected the homes of about 20 employees. … (T)he exterminator later described one employee’s home as having ‘the worst infestation he had seen in 25 years in the business.’”
My money's on Alan Colmes.
On April 8, CBS is uncorking the awkwardly titled reality-competition show "Secret Talents of the Stars." This is what they plan on subjecting you to (all of this is real, per CBS's press release):
* Clint Black will perform stand-up comedy.
* George Takei - Mr. Sulu! - will croon country tunes.
* Malcolm-Jamal Warner, accompanied by "a Hip Hop Orchestra," will play bass guitar and perform an original song.
* Marla Maples - the former Mrs. Donald Trump - will perform a gymnastic routine with The Anti-Gravity Troupe including aerial flips and bungee stunts.
* Sasha Cohen (the Olympic medalist figure skater, not Borat) will perform contortionist moves with the New Shanghai Circus. Which seems to me a bit of a cheat - she was a gymnast before turning to figure skating.
* Wrestler Ric Flair, apparently spurned by "Dancing with the Stars," will dance the salsa.
* Former boxer Joe Frazier will sing rhythm & blues.
* Model Bridget Marquardt will perform trapeze stunts with ex-Cirque du Soleil acrobats.
* Sheila E. will juggle with The Flying Karamazov Brothers.
* Boxer Roy Jones, Jr. will rap.
* "Spokesmodel" Cindy Margolis will perform magic. Can she make my TV disappear while this show is on?
* Mya will tap-dance. Yes, a broadcast television network will devote some of its primetime air to an actress/singer you've heard of but can't quite place tap-dancing.
* Actor/radio DJ/reality-show addict Danny Bonaduce will ride a unicycle with members of The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Oh, geez - bring Mya back.
* "Pop culture personality" Ben Stein will dance The Jitterbug. Bring back Bonaduce.
This shouldn't be allowed to happen in a nation where firearms are readily available.
As Jon Stewart pointed out Monday night (called "Broken Arrow," it's currently the first video offered at the "Daily Show" site), CNBC's Jim Cramer last week offered some of the most disastrous financial advice since "Don't waste your money investing in Google - the Internets is just a passing fad:"
Asked by a viewer if he should take his money out of investment giant Bear Stearns, Cramer, in that emphatic fashion he employs as if speaking to incredibly dim children - scratch that; most children's show hosts have a more placid demeanor than Cramer - blustered:
"No! No! No! ... Don't move your money from Bear - that's just being silly! Don't be silly!"
Overnight, Bear Sterns went from financial giant to financial gnat: After selling for $60 a share late last week (down from $171 last year), on Monday, it was going for two bucks a pop.
Stewart announced Cramer's new show, "No Matter How Good I Am At This Over The Next 10 Years I Will Never Make Up The Amount Of Money I Blew For People Last Tuesday."
I mention this only because proceeds go to the United Way, which will help out all of us when we're homeless, and because way down the line in the future these will be valuable memorabilia recalling the final seconds of a gilded age.
ABC’s “Miss Guided” would likely benefit from being paired with its fall hit “Samantha Who?”, yet that’s not how it’s getting scheduled. Both feature winning performances from their female leads; both have over-the-top moments. Like “Samantha Who?” (and every other show on ABC’s schedule), it will likely benefit greatly from its “Dancing with the Stars” lead-in tonight. Alas, hereafter, it won’t have “DWTS” to protect it.
“Miss Guided” is more cartoonish than “Samantha,” rarely bothering to venture a toe into the icy pool of the real world. Judy Greer emerges as the Amy Adams (“Enchanted”) of the small screen as the perpetually perky if constantly clueless Becky Freeley, who survived the traumas of her gawky high-school years to return to said school as its guidance counselor. Like Alexandra Wentworth’s misnamed Dr. Goode on Starz’s “Head Case,” she tends to myopically offer students advice based on wherever her head might be at any given moment.
The school where she toils has decidedly clocked out from the laborious efforts of improving its pupils’ lives: The principal (Earl Billings) is burned out and lazy; the assistant principal (Chris Parnell) is officiously ineffectual and passive-aggressive; the English teacher (Brooke Burns), a former and far more popular classmate of Becky’s, is vainly self-entitled, expecting every man who crosses her path to be smitten with her (she tends to get her way on that one); and the Spanish teacher (Kristoffer Polaha), on whom Becky’s hopelessly sweet, is earnest and kind but not terribly bright – he doesn’t actually know much Spanish. Documentary-style interview sequences are inserted, a la “The Office,” though these feel awkward given that the rest of the show doesn’t exude a similar non-fiction feel.
There’s a nifty little comedy about our crumbling educational system in here, somewhere, if the producers weren’t so busy trying to meet-cute with viewers. Imagine a sitcom about our impending financial crisis reaching fruition with a bunch of zany characters doing wacky things yet scarcely suffering in cardboard boxes under a freeway overpass, and that’s the sane sensibility you have here.
Though tonight’s episode is broadly cartoonish, the first episode this Thursday (when it lands in its regular timeslot, offering two episodes back-to-back) is more assured and amusing. Ashton Kutcher (one of the show’s executive producers) guest-stars as an itinerant Spanish substitute teacher whose faux-real-world experience wows everyone except Becky. Though he tries, pretentiously, to woo her with his multilingual pretensions: He tells her her name – we’re talking “Becky” here – is not just “beautiful,” but “tres Jolie.”
But, still – a show this modest resorting to stunt-casting in its second episode aired (it was actually shot later in the season, suggesting that the others before it aren’t this good, which ain’t all that promising) doesn’t portend good things. But producers should keep Greer on their radar if “Miss Guided” doesn’t succeed; she more than proves she can be funny, winning, goofy, endearing – any word that’s on networks’ current buzzwords for cool, that’s what Greer can do.
- “Miss Guided:” 10:30 tonight; hereafter, 8 and 8:30 p.m. Thursdays, ABC Channel 7.
A couple of years ago, I ponied up two large for an HDTV. So how do I watch at least half of the stuff that I review?
On my laptop, naturally. And not by choice.
Many of the DVD-R’s of new shows sent out by the networks are of dubious quality and don’t play well – if at all – on my professional-grade DVD player. Or, perhaps it’s just a piece of junk, but I’ve never had a problem with a commercial DVD on it, so I’m voting no. (One network’s DVD-R almost short-circuited my computer; that’s how dodgy these things can be.)
(Aside, for some boring if relevant minutiae: It’s often easy to guess which of the DVD-R’s won’t play on my computer – those whose non-label side are purplish or greenish (as opposed to silver or mirrored, like commercial DVDs) are probably problematic, as are those that come in fancy bells-and-whistles packaging that doesn’t offer the disk appropriate protection from scratches and dust (those in a simple jewel box or a DVD slipcase tend to fare better). (So, pay heed, networks: Tricked-out packaging isn’t necessary a good thing.) The network issuing the disk is a good predictor, as well: All of AMC’s “Mad Men” and most of its “Breaking Bad” DVDs played on my DVD player, while literally nothing from The CW has (though their disks come in slipcases). The exception that kind of proves the rule: The normally reliable FX’s two disks for season two of “The Riches,” silver-backed DVDs in packaging approximating a pop-up book – one worked; one had to be played on my computer.)
Now, ABC is trying something in an attempt to cut down on the expense and environmental waste of creating and mailing all these screeners. TV critics reviewing ABC’s new sitcom “Miss Guided” watched two episodes at a super-secret website (of course, if those critics only have dial-up, it took them 17 hours).
Given the current economy and how much junk (such as prior ABC screeners) is glutting up our landfills, one must applaud ABC for trying to conserve. On the other hand, I’m not sure how thrilled the cast and creators of “Miss Guided” and anyone else whose show is offered online-only is going to be about the fact that the viewing experience takes you back to the early days of television, of watching blurry kinescope images on tiny screens.
I watched one episode of “Miss Guided” on “full-screen” (which wasn’t even that “full-screen,” probably about 6, 7 inches diagonally on my MacBook) and one in small-screen (let’s say 4 inches). The “full-screen” “experience” was like watching a fifth-generation videotape on YouTube, only the screen was a little bigger – images were fuzzy (although I could still tell those were humans there on the screen), sound was a smidgen off-sync, there was an occasional freeze-frame-y sort of glitch. Small-screen was better, but the picture was still blurred and was much smaller than even watching a DVD on my laptop, which I heretofore had considered the least optimal viewing experience for review purposes.
I’ve seen much crisper, larger programs presented online at other sites (FX’s online offerings come to mind), so maybe ABC was just having a bad day. Or maybe they just don’t care about what critics think.
This through-a-glass-darkly viewing experience did not manage to hide the fact that “Miss Guided” star Judy Greer’s performance is very funny and endearing, nor did it conceal the sharpness (or lack of same) of the scripting; I’ve seen enough TV to understand how this’ll play on an actual TV. Still, when movie studios want to wow film critics, they screen their wares on 70mm screens with surround-sound Dolby Stereo; they don’t force them, per Jon Stewart’s joke at the Oscar ceremony, to watch “Lawrence of Arabia” on an iPhone.
That ABC is trying this isn’t apocalyptic or portend doom for the industry, but it does sort of underscore the network’s own trivializing of their own product. These days, there’s an awful lot of genuinely quality programming coming out of TV; offering their fare this way, ABC is conceding that it’s not coming from them.
-- “Miss Guided:” 10:30 p.m. Tuesday; 8 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday, ABC Channel 7. (We’ll offer a full review of the show Tuesday.)
HBO has not quite kicked its original series programming development executive Carolyn Strauss to the curb, but they’ve certainly stripped her of any powers.
Variety reports: “Strauss was said to be mulling over the weekend whether to take a production deal or cut ties entirely, but by Sunday it was apparent that she would stick with the net but in a different role.
“Holding up an official announcement is the fact that with no obvious internal front-runner to succeed Strauss, HBO also hasn't yet been able to identify a big-name replacement.”
This comes after recent HBO series that Strauss had greenlit – “John From Cincinnati,” Lucky Louie,” “Tell Me You Love Me” and “In Treatment” – were all too oblique or humorless or just downright depressing to score the kind of audiences the network had become accustomed to after its success with “The Sopranos,” “Six Feet Under,” “Sex and the City” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which she helped along to their success (she became the network's entertainment president in 2004). I imagine the fact that HBO had Matthew Weiner’s pilot script for “Mad Men” sitting around its offices for six or so years before letting AMC get a hold of it figured somewhere in the decision, as well.
(BTW, “John Adams,” HBO’s current miniseries, falls under the auspices of HBO Films, which is run by Colin Callender.)
I don’t know Strauss except from her appearances at TV Press Tour (though I have a friend who goes to the same temple as she does, so by today’s standards, that virtually makes me an expert), but she always seemed a little counterculture for HBO, particularly given how buttoned up the place has become. No doubt she fit right in when it was more a boutique operation (she has been with HBO for more than 20 years) programming funky stuff like “The Larry Sanders Show,” “Mr. Show” and “Da Ali G Show.” (Last year’s cult sensation, “Flight of the Conchords,” might’ve fit more cozily in HBO’s lineup a decade or more ago.)
But lately she sort of seemed like a bomb-thrower amid HBO’s corporate culture, somehow getting huge money for a provocation-for-provocation’s-sake like “Rome” or forcing a titillating downer like “Tell Me You Love Me” down a lonely nation’s throat (one could almost hear her saying, “A show with this much explicit sex that depresses you? In your face, America!”). That’s hardly a criticism – trying to shake things up is actually a pretty good thing, unless, of course, you’re being paid quite handsomely and in the end you don’t shake things up so much as induce shrugs.
Anyway, with the passing last week of “The Wire” and Strauss’ downgrade following Chris Albrecht’s ouster for playing rough with the ladies, HBO’s halcyon days have officially come to a close. Which is not to say that a new Golden Age looms over the horizon, just that at this point there’s not much evidence pointing to one.
You know the drill: People get offended by their naughty, bad, nasty TeeVees; they fire off letters of outrage to the FCC; employees there pass them along among one another and have a laugh; eventually, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, they get posted online, like this batch denouncing "The Simpsons." You'd think people might realize that after nearly 20 years on the air, you have a better chance at securing economic justice in the United States rather than trying to bring down "The Simpsons," but here you go:
(Note: I'm not even trying to bother to clean up the grammar and misspellings anymore.)
*"The Simpsons cartoon features two women in swimsuits. While there were no nudity, this scene certainly was inapropriate because women should be dressed conservatively and obey the wishes of their husbands."
* "I watched the last few minites of the Simpsons on Feb. 20, 2005. It showed Homer marring two Lesbians on prime time. This has gone far enough! The show desensitises the consept of homosexuality that the Bible says is an abomination. Children are watching this, and if one is on the verge of being gay, it is saying it is OK. You better monitter what is being broadcast better than this. They could not have gotten away with this 10 years ago."
* "This is only one instance of many. Bart Simpson uses sexual innuendos and similarly degrading talk throughout his 'skits' to further destroy what's left of our American culture! I'm sure you realize that our culture is what we use to pass on our values and traditions and heritage, all of which literally keep us going -surviving! You I contend are letting us down by allowing this precious culture to be degraded and destroyed. Please do your job or we all will suffer."
* "I don't watch TV programs very much because there is hardly anything decent anymore. The only programs I watch are news and religious programs, and Bill Cosby's Show.
"I just want to bring to your attention one program that needs to be monitored closely -Simpson! I don't watch this program but sometimes I stumble on it. A few months ago, I happened to hear a very disturbing comments by Homer in the program. He said that "he wants to have sex with his wife infront of their son (Bart). That statement is very troubling, aWful, bulgar, unacceptable, deplorable, you name it, and those descriptions are an understatements. It has troubled my spirit so much hearing it, up to this time whenever I think of it. Such statement should never be said in TV especially by a father. I cannot wait for the day when Simpson will finally not be shown in TV!"
* "FOX has gotten to where they show those animated shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons. They think that parents are not listening to these programs just because they are animated. They are not the old time cartoons and I don't like the language...it is really disgusting. These programs show disrespect to parents from their children, so in turn, my child tries to disrespect me. There are others that I just don't know the names of right now. I try to put on parental restrictions, but it doesn't always work. I would like to see these shows either changed up to show respect to parents and cut the filthy language or just taken oft the air totally. My child hears enough foul language at school and outside of hom, he doesn't need to hear it from TV, radio, etc. too!!!!!!!"
(The following one is nice not only due to the loving detail in which the incident is described, but also because it complains about a joke that no doubt went over the heads of most of the kids watching. If kids did get it, the problem doesn't rest with "The Simpsons:")
* "In this episode, the students of Springfield Elementary School have revolted against the teachers and administrators, taking 'control' of the school. The students eventually catch Principal Skinner in the gym. As they begin to overtake and subdue Principal Skinner, one of the students empties out a large brown-colored drawstring bag that is filled with various sports balls (soccerballs/basketballs/voleyballs etc). Mr Skinner is then placed inside the empty sack and the drawstring was pulled snug around his neck, leaving only his neck and head outside of the bag. My concern, and the basis for this complaint, is in the manner of how the image of Principal Skinner was depicted after he had been placed into this bag and the drawstring pulled. The image of the large drawstring bag very clearly, and undeniably, resembled a non-circumcised penis (flaccid state). Mr Skinner's height was the reason for the length of the brown sack, depicted the 'shaft' and where the sack tapered from Mr Skinner's shoulders up to his neck where the drawstring had been pulled into a 'pucker' depicted the foreskin.; Principal Skinner appears in this depiction several more times during the episode.; Toward the end of the episode, Principal Skinner has managed to hop around while still inside this sack and escape from the gym. Alone in the schoolyard, he encounters a squirrel who just happened to be holding a knife or scissors (some type of cutting device). Principal Skinner, still inside of a sack drawn to resemble an intact penis, then said to the squirrel:; "Mr. Nibbles, would you please come here and cut my ball sack:'; The secondary intention of Principal Skinner's statement should be obvious, but since description is key to an effective complaint, I will briefly elaborate.... -Principal Skinner's use of the word 'cut' was an inferred reference to the procedure of circumcision, whereas a circumcised penis is commonly referred to as being 'cut' and a non-circumcised penis is commonly referred to as being 'uncut'.; -Principal Skinner's use of the term "ball sack" would have been a 'double entendre' intended to refer to the male anatomical part of 'scrotum', which is commonly referred to as "ball sac"."
(Also, I just like the idea of this last one being a government document.)
Quite the bargain: You can bid on the chance to win $100,000, lunch with Minnie Driver, sundry memorabilia from FX’s returning drama “The Riches” – and at this point it’s only going to set you back $32,000 or so. Of course, there’s still six days left in the auction, so that number will likely go up quite a bit.
There are a couple of other auctions for more “Riches” stuff; all proceeds go to Oxfam America, a charity for which Driver stumps. Which seems curiously altruistic for a show about a family of scam artists. “The Riches” returns for a second season Tuesday at 10 p.m.
On Friday, MTV, with an unseemly swagger in its step, announced its latest contribution to the End of Western Civilization as We Know It© - a new reality-competition series, "Paris Hilton's My New BFF." (Apparently, neither "Paris Hilton's Old BS" nor a reality show about her hyped-then-aborted trip to Rwanda didn't test as well.)
In the show, per the press release, "Paris will invite 20 potential best friends to Los Angeles to ... compete in tests of loyalty, endurance, and girl politics to find her perfect wing-BFF. The contestants will have to prove that they have what it takes to make it in the glamorous but brutal world of Hollywood circa 2008 - constant media attention, relentless bloggers, temptations of party life and bad taste in men. The winner gets the greatest prize of all in today's America (italics mine), an all-access pass to the VIP section of the VIP section, and life lessons from the master of contemporary Hollywood celebrity."
Well, it certainly doesn't sound heinous.
Practicing the sort of ferociously intrepid investigative journalism that would make "The Wire's" Scott Templeton proud, Your Mayor was able to unearth the outline of the 10-episode series, drawn up, though Hilton is credited as one of the show's executive producers, apparently without her input (well, duh, as it required putting pen to paper). Warning: Spoilers!
EPISODE ONE (PILOT)
Amidst the whoops and holla's required of all openings to reality-competition shows, the 20 contestants meet Paris for the first time. Three are sent packing when they decline to participate in the show's first challenge: Submitting to a lobotomy in order to more easily acclimate to Paris's world. Additionally, six other contestants who had neglected getting the recommended inoculations are subjected to iodine scrubdowns with wire brushes when they experience virulent rashes after their first encounter with Hilton in close proximity.
EPISODE TWO
The 17 remaining contestants are schooled in the art of making it obvious they're not wearing underwear while stepping out of limos and black militarized SUVs with bulletproof windows. Two of the male participants are excused from the competition when zucchinis slip out of their not-tight-enough pleather pants.
EPISODE THREE
At a trendy nightclub, one contestant makes a grievous error when she pauses to talk to an ordinary guy. Paris is not apprised of this misstep because she couldn't possibly understand what would cause such behavior. Additionally, two more participants voluntarily drop out of the competition, complaining of Ms. Hilton, "A holographic image has more substance."
EPISODE FOUR (IF WE'RE NOT CANCELED AT THIS POINT)
A binge-drinking competition eliminates one contestant, who poignantly dies of alcohol poisoning.
EPISODE FIVE
With the field already whittled down to 13, nerves are frayed as Paris issues her biggest challenge to date: Locating a member of the media who, if put on "The Moment of Truth," could honestly confess that covering Ms. Hilton's antics does not fill him/her with deeply mortifying shame. While no one manages to pass this challenge, one resourceful contestant almost succeeds when she contacts Larry King. Unfortunately, King, in his perpetually addled state, confuses Paris with Carol Channing, assertively stating, "She was dynamite in "Hello, Dolly!"
EPISODE SIX
In her inimitable fashion, Paris coaches the 13 remaining aspirants in how to perform in an Internet sex tape. Four contestants contract full-blown AIDS and must withdraw from the competition. Two others are additionally excised when they blanch at the prospect of pleasuring the sort of skank Ms. Hilton revels in.
EPISODE SEVEN (A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE)
The remaining seven participants are assigned to remove sundry lice, crabs and militarized fleas from Ms. Hilton's person with tweezers. The "pinchiest" is shown the door.
EPISODE EIGHT
On a closed track, six finalists are put through a series of vehicular challenges testing their motor skills while driving impaired. Alas, one dies when she plows her Cadillac Escalade directly into a concrete wall at 90 mph. It's unclear as to whether she did so because of her alcohol consumption or because she had despaired after having to spend so much time around Paris.
EPISODE NINE
The five surviving contestants are forced to spend a week in a Los Angeles jail in order to better appreciate the sort of hardships Paris has had to deal with her entire life. While in the slammer, one participant finds Jesus, another claims to find Jesus but just might be using that as a pretext to get out of the show, and yet another bails after meeting "Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin," a righteous prison bitch who actually exudes a modicum of personality and schools her in the art of sweet, sweet love.
EPISODE TEN (SEASON FINALE)
Down to our last two contestants, Paris subjects them to the most difficult challenge yet: They're forced to sit down and listen to her CD from beginning to end, without getting up to go to the bathroom or projectile vomiting or dialing 911. The identity of the winner is a shocker! But as soon as the triumphant participant is named, she bolts past Paris and has her newly installed publicist 1) set up interviews with major media outlets, 2) announce her mall tour to promote her new clothing line, and 3) plug her upcoming CD of duets with Ashley Alexandra Dupre, to be produced by Sean Combs.
On Friday, MTV, with an unseemly swagger in its step, announced its latest contribution to the End of Western Civilization as We Know It© – a new reality-competition series, “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.” (Apparently, neither “Paris Hilton’s Old BS” nor a reality show about her hyped-then-aborted trip to Rwanda didn’t test as well.)
In the show, per the press release, “Paris will invite 20 potential best friends to Los Angeles to … compete in tests of loyalty, endurance, and girl politics to find her perfect wing-BFF. The contestants will have to prove that they have what it takes to make it in the glamorous but brutal world of Hollywood circa 2008 – constant media attention, relentless bloggers, temptations of party life and bad taste in men. The winner gets the greatest prize of all in today’s America (italics mine), an all-access pass to the VIP section of the VIP section, and life lessons from the master of contemporary Hollywood celebrity.”
Well, it certainly doesn’t sound heinous.
Practicing the sort of ferociously intrepid investigative journalism that would make “The Wire’s” Scott Templeton proud, Your Mayor was able to unearth the outline of the 10-episode series, drawn up, though Hilton is credited as one of the show’s executive producers, apparently without her input (well, duh, as it required putting pen to paper). Warning: Spoilers!
EPISODE ONE (PILOT)
Amidst the whoops and holla’s required of all openings to reality-competition shows, the 20 contestants meet Paris for the first time. Three are sent packing when they decline to participate in the show’s first challenge: Submitting to a lobotomy in order to more easily acclimate to Paris’s world. Additionally, six other contestants who had neglected getting the recommended inoculations are subjected to iodine scrubdowns with wire brushes when they experience virulent rashes after their first encounter with Hilton in close proximity.
EPISODE TWO
The 17 remaining contestants are schooled in the art of making it obvious they’re not wearing underwear while stepping out of limos and black militarized SUVs with bulletproof windows. Two of the male participants are excused from the competition when zucchinis slip out of their not-tight-enough pleather pants.
EPISODE THREE
At a trendy nightclub, one contestant makes a grievous error when she pauses to talk to an ordinary guy. Paris is not apprised of this misstep because she couldn’t possibly understand what would cause such behavior. Additionally, two more participants voluntarily drop out of the competition, complaining of Ms. Hilton, “A holographic image has more substance.”
EPISODE FOUR (IF WE’RE NOT CANCELED AT THIS POINT)
A binge-drinking competition eliminates one contestant, who poignantly dies of alcohol poisoning.
EPISODE FIVE
With the field already whittled down to 13, nerves are frayed as Paris issues her biggest challenge to date: Locating a member of the media who, if put on “The Moment of Truth,” could honestly confess that covering Ms. Hilton’s antics does not fill him/her with deeply mortifying shame. While no one manages to pass this challenge, one resourceful contestant almost succeeds when she contacts Larry King. Unfortunately, King, in his perpetually addled state, confuses Paris with Carol Channing, assertively stating, “She was dynamite in “Hello, Dolly!”
EPISODE SIX
In her inimitable fashion, Paris coaches the 13 remaining aspirants in how to perform in an Internet sex tape. Four contestants contract full-blown AIDS and must withdraw from the competition. Two others are additionally excised when they blanch at the prospect of pleasuring the sort of skank Ms. Hilton revels in.
EPISODE SEVEN (A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE)
The remaining seven participants are assigned to remove sundry lice, crabs and militarized fleas from Ms. Hilton’s person with tweezers. The “pinchiest” is shown the door.
EPISODE EIGHT
On a closed track, six finalists are put through a series of vehicular challenges testing their motor skills while driving impaired. Alas, one dies when she plows her Cadillac Escalade directly into a concrete wall at 90 mph. It’s unclear as to whether she did so because of her alcohol consumption or because she had despaired after having to spend so much time around Paris.
EPISODE NINE
The five surviving contestants are forced to spend a week in a Los Angeles jail in order to better appreciate the sort of hardships Paris has had to deal with her entire life. While in the slammer, one participant finds Jesus, another claims to find Jesus but just might be using that as a pretext to get out of the show, and yet another bails after meeting “Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin,” a righteous prison bitch who actually exudes a modicum of personality and schools her in the art of sweet, sweet love.
EPISODE TEN (SEASON FINALE)
Down to our last two contestants, Paris subjects them to the most difficult challenge yet: They’re forced to sit down and listen to her CD from beginning to end, without getting up to go to the bathroom or projectile vomiting or dialing 911. The identity of the winner is a shocker! But as soon as the triumphant participant is named, she bolts past Paris and has her newly installed publicist 1) set up interviews with major media outlets, 2) announce her mall tour to promote her new clothing line, and 3) plug her upcoming CD of duets with Ashley Alexandra Dupre, to be produced by Sean Combs.
In the past few days, I have begun to atone for my private failings with the Good People of Television. The remorse I feel will always be with me, and not just because I write a lot about ‘According to Jim.’
From those to whom much is given, much is expected, so, really, not a whole lot is expected of me, but even then, I have delved below those expectations. I have been given the trust of the people of Television to lead this noble land, and I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me. To every viewer and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for, such as ridding the world of any ‘Pussycat Dolls’ reality series, I sincerely apologize.
I look at my time as Mayor of Television with a sense of what might have been, but I also know that as a public servant I have accomplished a great deal, or, as some might put it, nothing.
There is much more to be done, and I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt Television’s work. Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, though in retrospect disastrously embarrassingly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself.
For this reason, I am resigning from the office of Mayor of Television, for the next day or so, at least.
I want it to be clear that I will not be posting blog entries for the next day or so not because the blog server is undergoing servicing to prevent it from being in a state of perpetual meltdown and not because I have a lot of impending deadline stories that require my full attention in these troubled times.
Even though both of those reasons are genuinely true, unalterable facts, I want everyone to understand that I am enveloped in a deeply humiliating scandal that invites the Schadenfreude of a nation that cannot resist the urge to be bemused by the notion that I can only rate a three-diamond hooker on a seven-diamond scale, but, Jeez, you know, it’s not like it’s Kristin’s a dog or anything.
I mean, I can’t even get the Daily News to expense my satellite-TV bills, so how can you expect me to get them to underwrite my reveling amidst the pulchritudinous flesh I so richly deserve?
Nonetheless, I go forward positing the belief that as human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall, rising with a greater tumescence so that Kristin will quit giggling at you already.
As I leave public life for the next 48 hours or so, I will first do what I need to do to help and heal myself and anyone who wants to claim me as an acquaintance. Then I will try once again to serve the common good so long as it involves shutting down every sh!tty NBC reality show that they’ve announced in the past few weeks.
Thank you for your support, and please check back at this website in a day or so. Also, please tip your waitresses. Thank you and good day.
On Tuesday, we began our stroll through the sort of incensed, righteous and poignantly misguided paperwork the average FCC employee must wade through, and today, we thoughtfully provide even more vitriol: Here's a very small sample of the avalanche of complaints the Commission has received on behalf of "Desperate Housewives." Again, note: I tried to clean up the sundry misspellings and punctuation mistakes until I was overwhelmed.
This one's nice because of the writer's dogged determination and dedication to accuracy:
"During an episode of "Desperate Housewives" they showed a scene where the red headed star is getting into bed with her husband to be intimate (I believe the husband ended up having a stroke or heart attack if that helps you trace down the episode). The scene shows him moving down her body to kiss her stomach ... when the camera moves down it VERY plainly shows the woman's pubic hair. I recorded the show on VHS tape and thought I saw something ... when I went back and looked at it, I was correct in what I saw."
The writer would've sent the VHS tape to the FCC as proof, but for some reason it had been worn out. Here's a very succinct complaint:
"Desperate housewives. The whole show is awful."
Hey, if that was a fining offense, ABC would've been bankrupted thanks to "According to Jim" years ago.
"Desperate Housewives within the last month has shown deliberate arson of a home, a mother's abandonment of her son, sexual infidelity within a marriage, just to name a few, and last night, during season final show, a young person deliberately pulling life support, committing murder of his sick grandparent for the benefit of inherited money, an attempted murder when a dentist, runs down a man with his car, and drives away. The writers of this show must be sick, with filthy minds. I believe this type of entertainment, this show is setting a very bad example... for primetime viewing...for the young people of America. It is time the show either clean up its act, or to be removed from primetime tv status. I will not watch it an longer."
Maybe, but you'll always have fond memories of that last month you two spent together.
"I am writting to complain about the ABC show called "Desperate Housewives". It is a very indecent program which the content is obscenaties and profanities. This kind of programming should not be on the air!! I ask that you take this repulsive program, and other programs like it off the air!!! It certainly should not be aired at a time that any child or young adult could watch it! What is this world coming too!!!! For the health of the moral and decent American"s who live in this country, please remove this programming and put a stop to the filth that is infiltrating our airwaves!! Do you allow your children to watch this crap? I would hope not! Angrily, (name redacted)."
The "Angrily" part is probably redundant.
"I am writing to see what if anything can be done about the amount of gay and lesbian situations are starting to appear all over television. I was watching desperate housewives last night, and was shocked to see two young boys making out. I know everyone has a choice to make in this regard, but it seems like liberal television is just shoving the gay/lesbian issue down heterosexual's throats."
So to speak.
"PEOPLE HAVE SEX AND I THINK ITS TOTALLY GROSS!! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF AND THE FACT THAT 2 PEOPLE CAN HAVE CRAZY NASTY SEX RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU ON NATIONAL TELEVISION!!! AHHH!!!! kEEP YOUR PANTS ON ABC!"
Says someone who is apparently unaware of how s/he got here in the first place.
Ah, but there's more:
Continue reading Letters to the FCC: "Desperate Housewives" .
A few press-release Emails I’ve had to wade through today:
“WORLD NEWS WITH CHARLES GIBSON” TO REPORT SPECIAL SERIES WITH TIME MAGAZINE ON THE FUTURE -- “WHAT’S NEXT?”
Apparently, there isn’t enough real news happening these days, so ABC has to make stuff up about what will happen and report on Jet-Packs and replicants.
Also:
“The spelling of executive producer Allan McKeown’s name in the Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union press kit was incorrect. The correct spelling is ALLAN MCKEOWN. Thank you.”
So, this guy is the anti-k.d. lang and spells his names in a megomaniacally affected way with all caps?
And word on an upcoming pilot in development at Comedy Central:
"America's Biggest Idiot:" “Each week, three guys compete against one another in a series of off-the-wall physical challenges to see who is willing to take the most punishment.”
And every week, the winner is whoever actually sits through an entire episode of “Mind of Mencia.”
We also received a link to this AP story:
“CNN said it shouldn't have used a former U.S. attorney who quit his job after allegedly biting a stripper as an analyst about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal.
“No mention of Kendall Coffey's past was made when anchor Tony Harris interviewed him Tuesday on the legal questions surrounding Spitzer's case. Coffey quit his job in May 1996 after being accused of biting a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club after losing a big drug case.”
Stay classy, CNN.
This protesting-too-hard statement, courtesy E!:
“‘Pop Fiction’ is a program independently created and developed by Ashton Kutcher's company, Katalyst. ‘Pop Fiction’ is not based on any idea or concept that may have been pitched to E! by any other party.”
They forgot to add: So don’t sue us, OK?
And you can practically read the sigh of exasperation in this one, from MediaWeek ratings guru Marc Berman:
“It looks like veteran medical drama ER will be back on NBC in 2008-09 for its 15th season. Expected to join the cast in recurring roles is former Sopranos star Aida Turturro as a car accident victim, and David Lyons as a new doctor.”
Because, you know, there’s still a disease or two they still haven’t covered, and there’s a couple of doctor/nurse trysts they haven’t yet explored.
More bargain-basement entertainment courtesy NBC: Celebrity Genealogy!
Well, that’s not the real title – the real title is, “Who Do You Think You Are?” and comes courtesy Lisa Kudrow’s production company Is or Isn’t Entertainment (hence the above headline) and the producers of the British version of the show, which NBC insists is a huge hit.
Said series “will highlight one of America's most beloved celebrities each week and trace their family tree to reveal surprising, extraordinary and moving stories of their ancestors.”
“This engaging new series gives viewers a glimpse into the personal lives of our favorite celebrities allowing us to learn not only more about that individual, but also about our country's history on a grand scale,” said someone at NBC paid to talk up ideas such as this. “I think at the heart of every American is the burning desire to understand who you are and where you came from.”
Personally, I think at the heart of every American is the burning desire to get laid, appear on a reality show, upgrade from Jim Beam to Courvoisier and diminish our country’s carbon footprint by curtailing the proliferation of Blue Man Group spinoff groups (not necessarily in that order). I can see why a show like this would be popular in England, where pretty much the only thing Brits have left is their history. In America, however, where the rigors of home-schooling have produced a populace in which a sizable number of citizens believe the Earth is only 6,083 years old, I’m guessing even the chance to look at celebrities won’t be draw enough to sit through what’s essentially a history lesson.
And, hey – what happens if on an “inspiring, emotional and personal journey following one of America's best-known celebrities into his or her past” it turns out that Lisa Rinna’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a slave trader or that an ancestor of Corey Hart was a bishop during the Spanish Inquisition or Sara Evans’ fifth cousin twice removed was Patient Zero or that one of Andy Dick’s relatives was actually sane or that Andy Rooney’s uncle was Judas Iscariot? Wouldn’t it be a little too mortifying for a celebrity, even a C-lister, to share such information with their meager fan base even with the opportunity for some valuable face time with a TV camera?
Did the people stranded in New Orleans bother to write letters to FEMA asking them for some help? No, because they knew the government doesn't actually do anything for its constituency. Nonetheless, there exists still a small handful of people who believe their government is there to help them - and help them with the more lascivious gremlins who cavort about in their TeeVees.
A website has amassed some government documents under the Freedom of Information Act, including this batch of complaints about Fox's "Family Guy." (Warning: This site is really slow and balky to navigate.) What's remarkable about some of the letters is the amount of obsessive detail to all that naughtiness the complainant, such as this one, which the guy watched while dining with his family (his family's backs were turned from the TV, as he notes, so here's guessing he's one heck of a conversationalist and truly engaged with his loved ones):
(Note: I tried to clean up the sundry misspellings and punctuation mistakes until I got bored and gave up.)
"On, Sunday, March 12, 2006, my family went to a new family restaurant, Quaker Steak & Lube. We were seated in an area that had at least 8 televisions on, plus a blaring stereo system. The television that was facing me was turned on to Fox and had the close-captioning turned on. While I was eating, I was "treated" to the show "Family Guy", an animated cartoon show. For a 30 minute show, it was chock full of raunch and offensive tv. The story line revolved around a mother's attempt to wean the infant from breastfeeding. It went into great detail, including the infant crawling into her bedroom at night to attach a double breast pump to her, the older sons attempting to breastfeed from the father, the mother's issues with engorgement, the father's attempt, while at a wedding reception to "cool her down" by throwing champagne over her breasts and then trying to dry her off by "jiggling" her. During this wedding reception scene, the newly married groom is seen having a hard time controlling himself because of this woman's engorgement problem. Throughout the 30-minute show, the mother is seen removing her shirt, the baby finally latching on and the mother seeking solace and advise from the family dog who insists that he needs to see the mother topless and also asks to check out her underpants. Needless to say, I was outraged that this filth is allowed to be shown on our airwaves and I was thankful that with the configuration of our table, that I was the only one who had to look at it and not my elementary aged sons. The show that followed, "Free Ride", was not much better, with graphic references to the parents' sex life, including questions to the college aged son if he could have sex with a celebrity who would he choose, with the followup from the mother about which celebrity she thinks of when she has sex with the father. The college aged son leaves the room in disgust at the thought of his parents having sex, all the while the parents are yelling at him, "Yes, we have sex!" I do not normally watch Fox television and now I can see that I have made a wise decision, since they apparently not showing decent programming, at least on Sunday evenings."
Again, a dedicated viewer with a watch pays attention to every indiscretion down to the minute in which it transpires:
"The father tells the story of Star Wars. The character of Ben is shown to be a toothless, bald old man who makes sexual advances to the adolescent boy (Chris) who is a regular character. ... Especially disturbing are the following 4 references (including approx. time into the episode); 1.(16 minutes into the episode) Princess Leia refers to Bens past "trouble" and says "we paid to keep the families of those children quiet, so you owe us"; 2.(22minutes into the episode) the adult Ben calls the child Chris "my sexy friend"; 3.(40 minutes into the episode) Ben's light saber is flaccid and when the child shows up it immediately becomes erect (like a penis) and Ben says "boy, you got here just in time"; 4.(52 minutes into the episode) Ben makes another sexual innuendo to the boy by saying "force that thing in there. Just like I showed you with those puppets, but don't tell nobody 'cause you'll get into trouble". I don't need to interpret these since they are obscene and imply that sexual advances made by an adult man on a child is humorous. Please tell FOX they went too far this time."
Others aren't quite as dogged about keeping a stopwatch on the action, or they just can't tell time:
"I am complaining about the show aired on Fox 42 KPTM Omaha, NE aired on; February 6, 2005. The show was aired after the Super bowl. I am not sure; exactly what time, but I would say it was 9:00 or 9:30. It was a half hour; show and it was terrible. After the super bowl reaches a lot of people, Fox is going to air Family Guy again (and that show is full of sexual; innuendos and displays of indecency) back to back with American Dad, I would; like to see both shows not happen; I do not believe that I saw a message before the show stating that the; content is explicit or a TV rating, I have a three year old daughter that; was watching. She was by me for the super bowl.; There are a few examples I can call to mind that made this show really hard; for me to watch, First of all, the show is about an American Dad that works; for a government agency. He makes it his job to try to get his son laid all; through out the show. There is a cheer leader that the boy thinks he should; get some action from. When this boy and his sister are sitting in the; kitchen together they are arguing and the sister says, why don't you go; through puberty. The boy replies, "Why-if I do, are you going to DO IT with; me?" The way he said it implied to me (and the other people watching); incest or sex, The really bad part of the show is the fish KLAUS is a German; fish. He is vile and has an unhealthy crush on Francine (the mom), Klaus; tells Francine that she should put her finger into his bowl so he can feel; her warmth, The way the fish said it was creepy and gross, It seemed to me; kind of dirty, The next complaint about the fish is that Francine was; wearing a skirt and the fish was on the floor under her skirt, The fish; looks up and say "Francine! I can see your clittenshousen" (or some German; word that sounded a lot like Clitoris or some other female body part,; Other than the obscene stuff, this show just really shouldn't be aired, You; have a hippie daughter, Hayley Smith, an untrusting father that likes to; have sex and get his son some, You have a party girl mother that lets the; family fish sexually harass her all the time. ... You also have an alien; that spews out some slime when he gets slightly excited. ... I was appalled by this show. It was disgusting and hard to; watch. ... This show is portraying Americans as; being shallow, scatterbrained, stupid and horny. No wonder so many countries; hate Americans and America. No wonder our children are promiscuous and in; trouble. See this show. I am sure that you will find it isn't suitable for the crowd; that saw it."
There are other shows that draw just as vociferous complaints, which I'll share soon. Provided, of course, the blog server isn't sucked into another cyber-black-hole.
Just got off the phone with Paul Giamatti, who stars in the title role of HBO’s upcoming “John Adams” miniseries. This bit probably won’t make it into the final story, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
The film hints that both Adams and his wife Abigail (Laura Linney) may have met separate temptations while he was in Paris and she was running their farm back in the States.
“There isn’t actual evidence. We wanted to put a hint of something in there. While reading about him, I came across something in a book – he wrote this very funny, erotic poetry while he was there. It was uncharacteristic and odd for him.
“I remember a long passage in one of his diaries, it was just an endless description of this young woman he saw walking around Versailles. He wrote a lot about her hair and her bare shoulders. For him, this Yankee, puritanical guy, it was racy stuff. Interesting, it was the only thing I came across that he had written that was like that.
“But Franklin and Jefferson were all active over there, so who knows?
Perhaps he was puritanical in that Eliot Spitzer kind of way.
Giamatti laughs. “Yeah, a lot of times that means the opposite.”
Giamatti’s visage graces the reprint of David McCollough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Adams, which is the source material for the miniseries.
“It is kind of surreal seeing my face on that book. I didn’t know they were doing that. But I hear it’s selling well again. I would’ve thought sales would plummet.”
“John Adams” premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. on HBO.
Unsurprisingly, the cable news networks are all over Client 9, formerly known as New York Governor and Democratic Super-Delegate Eliot Spitzer, and his liaison(s) with a “high-priced prostitute” (get a taste of what he was paying for here): Will it ruin his career? Should he resign (on CNN, Jack Cafferty bluntly answers, “Yes”)? Is there a Democratic mouthpiece out there somewhere who may have tap-danced on Larry Craig and David Vitter and Mark Foley who can do a little back-pedaling now (on CNN, James Carville pointed out, “A lot of people have done things that are wrong”)?
Standing by his side while he gave his rote “I’m-sorry-I-got-caught” speech, Spitzer’s wife Silda had one of the sorriest expressions you’re likely to see on TV not on a dog anthropomorphically reacting in dismay to its owner’s buffoonery. If a politician really cares about his family (but not enough to actually forego some high-end friskiness in the first place), he should at least not trot them out against their will during these “My-family-supports-me-in-this-most-abjectly-humiliating-moment-in-my-life” photo ops.
Though no new information has emerged since the story broke, (it’s interesting that they’re emphasizing Spitzer’s “ties” to a “prostitution ring,” which sounds vaguely more sinister than simply ponying up money for some bumpity, whereas when Louisiana Senator David Vitter got caught, he threw in with the “D.C. Madam,” which sounds downright quaint), each of the networks is hammering on this pretty breathlessly, although they each stray from the topic occasionally to report on other things, usually the latest p!ssing match between Clinton and Obama. But they generally regain their senses pretty quickly and lunge back into their penetrating Spitzer coverage.
Political scandals are more fun than Hollywood scandals, because you get the whole blatant hypocrisy angle that elevates them from simply ugly and prurient to dismantling someone's entire character.
Since the fine folks at LA.com have not seen fit to post today’s reviews of “Canterbury’s Law” and “High School Confidential,” we’ll offer them here.
*
“Canterbury’s Law’s” title would seem to reference Geoffrey Chaucer’s lawyer’s yarn from “The Canterbury Tales,” except that doesn’t really scan – its heroine survived travails due to her devout belief in prayer. But ascending Rhode Island defense attorney Elizabeth Canterbury (Julianna Margulies), “Canterbury’s Law’s” protagonist, boasts no such virtue.
As tonight’s episode opens, it’s revealed she’s sleeping with Frank (James McCaffrey of “Rescue Me;” that show’s star, Denis Leary, is one of this show’s executive producers), whom she’s defending against a murder charge. Liz’s married, albeit tenuously, to Matt (Aidan Quinn), who turns up just enough to offer exposition about how troubled their marriage is.
Their relationship’s torment stems from the fact that their young son disappeared a few years ago – and yet, Canterbury seems to represent a lot of clients suspected of having a hand in killing the children of grieving parents (in fact, she does so in both episodes offered up for review). That she’s willing to do so doesn’t smack so much of brazen provocation – though her character is presented as someone who’ll do anything to win a case, no matter how it might affect her – as it does of abject psychological self-abnegation.
There’s a lot about “Canterbury’s Law” that’s not bad, really, so much as it feels just slightly off. A lot of the performances feel manufactured, even Margulies’: She just doesn’t quite exude the charismatic brass that such a character would need (she’s clearly intended to be a female version of James Woods’ “Shark;” instead, she just comes off as cranky).
And while no one could credibly handle a line like “You feckless puppet! Where do you get the stones to accuse me?”, Terry Kinney, playing her nemesis, prosecutor Zach Williams (a straight-laced character inexplicably shown in one scene in a jaunty pork pie hat), appears to have been cast more for his shifty looks than his acting chops.
It doesn’t help that the soundtrack is filled with yowling guitars in an effort to make the show seem “edgy,” or that frenetic editing and woozy camerawork seem borrowed from dozens of previous cop- and lawyer-shows. And it certainly doesn’t help that just after Fox announced it was picking up the show, Margulies announced she had just discovered she was pregnant.
So, while tonight’s premiere expends much energy obsessing on Canterbury’s comely legs in black high heels, the other episode made available for review hardly bothers to conceal her fairly advanced pregnancy, without, of course, working it into the storyline yet insisting upon her enduring allure. And yes, it’s sexist to point this out, but it’s not like Margulies didn’t exploit her pulchritude to land the role.
Even without the aforementioned misgivings, “Canterbury’s Law” doesn’t offer enough to be more than a run-of-the-mill legal drama. With them, the show’ll no doubt get thrown out of TV’s ratings court.
*
“High School Confidential’s” title is probably more lurid than in needs to be, reeking of promises of titillation and bad behavior. Though there’s plenty of bad behavior, there’s an awful lot of good intentions and genuine, heartfelt struggle on display, as well.
Series creator Sharon Liese spent four years with 12 female students at a suburban Kansas high school, following them from their freshman year through to their graduation. Obviously, that’s a tumultuous time rife with temptation, heartbreak, confusion and maturation, and so she found drama aplenty.
Compressing 48 collective years into eight hours of television is an impossible task, and so, Liese is forced to compress some of her subject’s stories into mere soundbites, in some cases draining the young women’s lives of their drama beyond the rote. Tonight’s installment focuses on two girls – Lauren, whose cushy life is upended when a tumor is discovered in her brain, and Cappie, who quickly strays from her vow to live cleanly then struggles to recalibrate her life. It’s interesting, but one senses the richer stories that are missing.
The next two episodes are better, because they focus only on one student apiece. Well, in Courtney’s case, I suppose it’s two, because her younger sister goes all Jamie Lynn Spears on her and usurps Courtney’s spotlight by getting pregnant. Jessi, in the following week, battles depression, ADD and failing grades and a miscarriage, and almost manages to emerge unscathed.
Subsequent episodes are hit and miss – some girls have vivid stories, such as Cate, who triumphs over her mother’s death, her father’s subsequent hasty second marriage and messy divorce, self-mutilation and anorexia with a daunting resolve, while others fade into the woodwork. In the series’ resonant finale, the girls prepare for prom and graduation and reflect on how they’ve survived four of the toughest years they may ever endure.
“High School Confidential” is clearly hamstrung by budget limitations – Liese obviously didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the girls; mainly, it looks like she flew into Kansas at intermittent intervals, interviewed them individually, then returned home.
She was around to capture Lauren’s brain surgery and Courtney’s helping her sister through her pregnancy. Mainly, however, the series consists of talking-head interviews, generic B-roll footage of students milling around the high school or students strolling through their neighborhoods, home movies shot by the kids themselves (amazing how many didn’t mind filming compromising footage of their getting wasted). There’s not a lot of the fly-on-the-wall footage documenting the sort of emotionally devastating moments that most projects of this sort truck in.
But though more handsome production values would’ve resulted in a more polished series, Liese still manages to capture important truths about the challenges confronting young women as they come of age. And, opposed to most reality-based series these days, it’s clear Liese liked and appreciated these girls and didn’t cast them with any cynical exploitation in mind: Even when they’re at their worst, they remain empathetic and a number of them are downright admirable.
“High School Confidential” is an invaluable series for parents and their daughters to watch together: Kids, so they understand that they’re not alone in their struggles, and parents, to better appreciate the everyday pressures confronting contemporary teens.
- “Canterbury’s Law:” 8 tonight, Fox Channel 11.
- “High School Confidential:” 10 tonight, WE tv.
As David Simon, creator of HBO’s acclaimed-blah-blah-blah-everyone-absolutely-loves-it-except-anyone-with-a-Nielsen-box-or-an-Emmy-ballot drama “The Wire,” would tell you, the media aren’t doing their job. They’re keeping – through benign neglect or ineptitude, you’re your pick – important information from you, the people, which is why you are not appropriately outraged, say, that the government is pouring billions into a Halliburton offshoot that, in return, declines to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in American taxes because they set up a bank account in the Cayman Islands.
We spoke with Simon as “The Wire” shuffles off this mortal coil. And, naturally, not all of his comments made it into the story, so here’s The Compleat “Wire” exit interview.
On suggestions he got from HBO executives, given that it was such a complex show capable of confusing casual viewers:
“We got less and less notes as we went along. We always got a modest amount of notes. The first season was where they were trying to figure us out and we were trying to reassure them. The only argument I ever lost was in the pilot – there’s a big flashback to the witness’s face when you’re at the crime scene at the end. That was a moment of HBO saying, ‘People aren’t going to remember who this guy is; you have to help people.’ I was a little beholden to the network for allowing to let the whole season go forward, so I gave in on that one and it bugs the hell out of me to this day.”
(He laughed at this point, but in an online chat a year or so ago, he characterized the note far differently: HBO was suggesting viewers couldn’t tell black characters apart.)
“After that, we often would be questioned as to whether or not we were making sense and whether we had a plan, and if we didn’t have a good answer, sometimes they gave us a note that was good. Sometimes they’d say we lost track of something, or we’re hitting [a theme] too hard.
“We would get notes saying, ‘Why is this in there? Are you going to pay this off somewhere? Are we supposed to not know what this conversation is about yet?’ We would often have to explain where we were headed with plot, which is certainly a fair thing to ask us to do. But once they got a feel for what we were trying to build, they became more confident in what we were doing. And the notes became far more sporadic, and by season three we were pretty much left alone. Except Carolyn (Strauss, head of HBO Programming) was watching the show as a fan, as someone viewing the story and if she said, ‘I don’t think anyone’s going to get this,’ we took that note seriously. It was good outside biofeedback.”
On why he doesn’t care about awards:
“As far as awards go, think about the critique of journalism that we offered up this year. I happen to be someone who holds the prize culture in journalism in somewhat low regard – I saw it affect my paper in Baltimore adversely. If I had a problem with people tailoring journalism to win awards then, can you see me tailoring ‘The Wire’ to make it more palatable for Emmy voters? I’ve never been more sincere about anything.
“For the actors and the crew, you like to see them honored a lot, because for them careers hinge on that kind of stuff. … There probably should be an ensemble category for shows like ‘The Wire’ or ‘Deadwood.’”
Did the actors accept how their characters’ prominence ebbed and flowed from season to season?
“Not at first. A lot of them were used to looking at a television show in very specific ways, but by the time we got to the end of the third season, there was a different understanding among all the actors on the show. We didn’t have a lot of jealousies and prima-donna behavior in this cast.
“There was a sense we were building something as a collective. That sounds like a pep talk, but if you talk to the actors, particularly the African-American actors, they’d done a lot of ordinary sh!t in order to pay the bills and suddenly they were looking around and this facsimile of an American city was coming to life. And it was a proudly African-American city and they saw actors representing people across the board, in all situations, in all professions. By season three, when they saw what we were building, there was something a little bit giddy about it.
“A lot of them hadn’t worked on a show like this and a lot of them don’t expect to work on one like this again. That part was pretty cool. We had no racial agenda, we were just depicting the city we knew. But because the thing started to feel very unique, we were able to say to certain actors, ‘You’re going to have to lay back for five or six episodes; you’re not going to be big for the first half of the season,’ or ‘We’re going to need less of you this year but we’re really going to need you next year, and here’s why.’ We went to them with the idea that story was paramount, and there was a lot of selflessness. I don’t expect to have that dynamic again.”
On how some journalists reacted negatively to the show’s depiction of newspapers in this final season (Simon used to work for the Baltimore Sun, which after this show now can boast two anal orifices):
“What’s happening in newspapering right now is terrifying and there doesn’t seem to be a bottom yet. If you believe in newspapers and you don’t see any alternative to newspapers in terms of high-end journalism, as I do, it’s frightening.
“I think a lot of journalists look at a critique like this – they look at a newspaper like this that’s being gutted, and has fewer people and less veterans and is able to cover less of its city and has less resources to do so and at the same time makes the argument that in terms of newsroom priorities, that newspapers are also a little complicit in making themselves less relevant. At that moment, a lot of journalists tend to resent the implication. Because right now, there are so many open wounds in terms of what’s happening at these newsrooms that a lot of journalists want to say, ‘We’re the victims. We’re not complicit.’
“And while I understand that and I’m a little empathetic with it, the problem is, I was at a newspaper in the ’80s and the mid ’90s, before the Internet reared its ugly head and before the technology turned on newsprint. And, at that moment, my paper and a lot of other monopoly papers in big markets were cash cows, and were making a lot of money.
“Ultimately, they were making a lot of money for out of town ownership and stockholders, and the money was not plowed back into making the product better and deeper and more viable so that it might be an essential resource and that it might be the kind of thing for which you might charge online for or a significant amount of money for online ads for and you could retain your audience.
“If you look at the paradigm of what happened to newspapering, you don’t see something as simple as ‘We were just minding our business doing a great job and the wave overtook us.’
“It’s a little like Detroit in the ’70s, when they thought, ‘We’re the only game in town and we can put out Chevy Vegas and Gremlins and Pacers and what are they going to do? Buy a Japanese car?’ Not that the Internet is a Japanese car – it’s not built that well. But unfortunately, it’s stealing enough of the froth of the commentary, of debate, of the humor and rage of the Zeitgeist that fewer and fewer people are there for the first-generation news gatherers, and that’s terrifying.”
- “The Wire:” 9 and 11:05 tonight; also 11:35 p.m. Tuesday, 11 p.m. Wednesday and 10 p.m. Thursday and Friday, HBO.
As circumstance would have it, the series finale of HBO’s “The Wire” and the season-one finale of AMC’s “Breaking Bad” will both air on Sunday. Appropriate, or perhaps somewhat backwards, as “Breaking Bad” is a show that explains “The Wire” to white people.
In “Breaking Bad,” an accomplished chemist who has fallen on hard times (dead-end job, unexpected baby on the way, oh, and diagnosed with terminal cancer) turns to cooking up crystal meth to pay his medical bills and leave something behind for his family. It asks viewers, “What would you do if you were hit with some epic bad luck in an environment where help is not forthcoming?” And the viewer, familiar with the notion of successful people hitting hard times, silently responds, “Why, peddle crystal meth, of course.”
“The Wire,” of course, took that question quite a bit further: “What would you do if you never had any luck to begin with, if society had written you off and given up on you without paying you so much as a glance?” And for five seasons, it showed viewers the most abject victims of the system’s chaos, some surviving the only way available to them: by dealing drugs.
Not the stuff of feel-good, hit TV, by any means. In an online chat with fans, “Wire” creator David Simon suggested that part of the reason his show didn’t have a larger viewership had to do with a certain racial disconnect in the country, a certain empathy fatigue, if you will:
“I do not believe the average white viewer catches a glimpse of ‘The Wire,’ screams ‘Negroes!’ and grabs the remote in a cold sweat. It is nothing as venal or racist as that. But human empathy has its limits and some of those limits are based on race and culture. Personally, this has always been a disappointment to me, but it is simply human nature.”
And so, “The Wire” ends its run with McNulty’s (Dominick West) fake-serial-killer scam blowing up in the Baltimore Police Department’s face. Do you think the newshounds at the Baltimore Sun will pick up the scent of this story? If so, you haven’t been paying much attention to how Simon has depicted his former employer over the course of this season.
Simon brings a surprising amount of closure to the series, given how many strings he’s left dangling in previous seasons. The fates of his characters are variously bittersweet, just, ironic and inevitable. When, in the future, some neophyte comes across a copy of a “Wire” DVD and pops it in a player, s/he’ll no doubt be astonished at how well-observed, prescient and even visionary a show it truly was.
Meanwhile, “Breaking Bad” finds Walt (Bryan Cranston) feeling his oats after facing down the ruthless drug lord last week: He’s feeling up his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) under the table at a parents meeting at his school, then testing his car’s shock absorbers with her out in the school parking lot. “Where did that come from and why was it so damn good?” she asks, incredulous.
“Because it was illegal,” Walt responds.
And from there a discussion of crime and punishment ensues: Even Walt’s DEA-agent brother-in-law likes to indulge in a Cuban cigar from time to time. Which emboldens Walt to step up his lab time, which means he needs some more supplies, which leads to a funny, Murphy’s-Law-infused break-in at a chemical supply plant that’s not pretty, but it gets the job done.
“Breaking Bad” was supposed to run nine episodes its maiden season, but due to the writers strike, only completed seven episodes. Hence, the finale here isn’t really a finale; it just sort of ends. But at least there is some resolution as well as some intriguing questions that one hopes get to be answered in a season two.
- “The Wire:” 9 p.m. Sunday, HBO.
- “Breaking Bad:” 10 p.m. Sunday, AMC.
Under the plan, DirecTV would get to present the series multiple times on its service (likely, on its Channel 101), giving TiVo-less fans more opportunities to watch it. Otherwise, I’m not sure what the upside is for DirecTV, since its fan base is pretty small and they can't really call this an exclusive since other cable and satellite services will still be able to show it via NBC and perhaps one of its cable networks like USA and NBC will have it available online.
But Finke got at least one thing wrong: The fan campaign involved sending light bulbs to NBC executives, not mini-footballs. Neither trade has confirmed this deal yet, and NBC wouldn't comment when I asked. So this might be another of her writers-strike-will-be-over-mid-December “exclusives.”
Having given up on the 2007-08 season, NBC announced a slew of new and returning shows under the theme “All-American Summer” that’ll fill the time until they bring you the Olympics from, uh, China. Not to be outdone, CBS announced that they’d be airing a couple of scripted series during the summer in a desperate quest to burn them off while nobody’s noticing.
NBC’s umbrella title “All-American Summer” was apparently inspired by the fact that a couple of the shows already had some variation of the word “America” in their names. Why they didn’t just step up and shoehorn “America” into the rest of the shows is anyone’s guess, but I’ll do that for them.
“American Gladiators” returns May 19 at 8 p.m. “America’s Got Talent” – executive-produced by British person Simon Cowell (so much for that “All-American” meme) returns June 24 at 9 p.m.
On May 22, “Last Comic Standing” “America’s Laughing With You, Not At You” will return at 9:30 p.m. before settling into its 8:30 p.m. timeslot on the 29th. Anti-All-American Alert: Comics from around the planet will be competing, and the co-host is yet another Brit.
“Fear Itself” – let’s rename it “America Itself” – premieres on May 29 at 10 p.m. And guess what – this isn’t some crappy reality show, but a horror anthology series featuring work by John Landis and other directors who’ve actually made Hollywood movies (we’re not promising they were good Hollywood movies) and featuring people you may very well have heard of: Brandon Routh ("Superman Returns"), Shiri Appleby ("Charlie Wilson's War"), Elisabeth Moss ("Mad Men"), Cynthia Watros ("Lost"), Eric Roberts ("Heroes") and John Billingsley ("Star Trek: Enterprise").
An anthology show hasn’t worked in pretty much forever, but did we mention it’s not a crappy reality show?
“Nashville (Which Is In America) Star,” a reality-competition show NBC cadged off some cable network, debuts June 9 at 9:30 p.m. Billy Ray Cyrus, fresh off his triumph of being Miley Cyrus’s father, will host, and the winner will get to go to Beijing during the Olympics, where they really love their country music, and if s/he doesn’t humiliate him/herself and his/her paperwork is in order, s/he’ll be allowed to return home and not spend the rest of his/her days in a labor camp.
The idea behind the generously titled “Celebrity Circus,” which should probably just be called “Slightly Better Known Than The Average American Circus,” may induce cringing, so those with genteel sensibilities may want to go rent “Hostel 2” instead. “(C)elebrities … participate alongside avant garde professional circus troupes in a visually arresting new competition series.” Call it “Cirque du Schlock.”
But wait! “The series will … showcase some of the most death-defying circus acts ever seen on television!” Perhaps this is just an altruistic measure on the behalf of NBC to cull the celebutard herd. It premieres June 11 at 9 p.m.
And on June 25, NBC uncorks “Baby Borrowers,” which was supposed to debut last month and which I’ve previously raved about. In it, teenaged couples considering parenthood are quickly disabused of the notion when given the chance to take care of babies, toddlers, pre-teens and so on.
CBS is also presenting some summertime original programming: “Swingtown,” an “Ice Storm”-type drama starring Molly Parker (“Deadwood”) and Jack Davenport as a couple who move into a Chicago suburb and there’s wife-swapping and drugs and drinking and debauchery but nothing like you’d see on Showtime, premieres May 29 at 10 p.m. Which puts it up against “Fear Itself,” meaning two of the exceedingly few examples of original scripted programming will be competing against each other, while everywhere else it’ll be reruns and reality.
Also coming to CBS on an undetermined date is “Flashpoint,” the network’s co-production with Canadian TV, “an emotional journey into the tough, risk-filled lives of a group of cops.” Enrico Colantoni (“Veronica Mars”) stars.
With original cable programming chewing up the broadcast networks and leaving them for dead in the summer, it’d be nice to think that “Fear Itself,” “Swingtown” and “Flashpoint” represent the networks pushing back against the cable hoards. But more likely they’re just burning these shows off.
When it comes to buzzwords, “free speech” has nothing over “decency” at the Federal Communications Commission, and “decency” is crippling our very republic, TV Week says.
Or at least I think that’s the point. The story is kind of all over the map, noting that while the FCC has lost a couple of rulings battles, it’s won the war, as the networks may have just thrown up their hands and said, “OK, already, we’ll stop with the smutty double entendres! Just leave us alone!” It mentions that ABC is still very miffed that the FCC decided to fine it $1.2 million this past year for an episode of “NYPD Blue” that aired back during the Eisenhower Administration, proof of the bureaucratic red tape plaguing Washington. And then there’s a bit where some Parents Television Council says it’s a jungle out there and we should install V-chips directly into the cerebral cortex of every American and then there’s another bit where they say all these indecency fines are all going to blow over once FCC Chairman and Self-Appointed National Morality Guru Kevin Martin gets the hell out of Dodge because the next President won’t be so hellbent on Protecting Our Children© from the morass of filth that is Television so they’ll likely recruit HeckuvaJob Brownie as Chairman and so of course nothing will get done.
But then this guy Adam D. Thierer, a senior fellow at the Peace & Progress Foundation (how do you get a job like that, “senior fellow,” aside, I guess, from growing old? What does a “senior fellow” do, exactly, aside from offer ideological quotes to interviewers? And if you Google “Peace & Progress Foundation,” you don’t get any direct hits, suggesting they got the name wrong or it’s some kind of scam), notes, accurately, that the FCC is tilting at windmills:
“The real follow about this is that the ‘NYPD Blue’ fine probably drove more young eyes to see it on YouTube than on television. Increasingly, broadcast decency enforcement is more about protecting adults from themselves than it is about protecting their kids. Kids aren’t in the broadcast audience. They’ve flocked to alternative platforms.”
Anyway, even more fun than the FCC are the people who write in to complain about the filth that pours into their home from that box in the corner. And we’ll discuss them soon!
The New York Observer posits an interesting question: Why didn’t CBS News sponsor a debate, and place its pricey anchor Katie Couric in the moderator’s chair?
Felix Gillette writes, “Throwing a debate is a budget-busting expenditure for a news division because of both the cost of setting up a staging facility and because of the advertising revenue lost due to the limited commercial inventory during such news events—but what networks gain is a voice in the election cycle, for the network and for the network’s rising and established stars.”
“You think about how much they wasted early on in billboards and other crap [to promote Couric’s debut as “CBS Evening News” anchor]; wouldn’t it be smarter to invest in substance now?” a source inside or close to CBS or the Democratic National Committee told Gillette. “Either the network is fundamentally dedicated to spending the money, or they’re not. If you’re really dedicated to bumping your news to another level, you host a debate. But there’s either no interest or no follow-through.”
MSNBC seemingly hosted a debate or two a week during the hottest portion of campaign season, so much so that Keith Olbermann frequently joked about the number on the air. And it’s expensive to mount these things – a friend who works for a college radio station that’s an NPR affiliate said they tried to co-sponsor a debate, only to discover that whoever’s in charge of OKing these things is all about bringing in huge chunks of money for the political parties.
So: YouTube and Politico.com can pony up the money to get involved in national discourse, but CBS News sits idly on the sidelines? The network did try to throw together a bit of a half-assed effort, a December event at CBS’s Television City at Fairfax and Beverly that would’ve been the only skirmish not to feature a live audience. But that was during the writers strike, and the Democratic candidates said they wouldn’t cross any picket lines, and that was that. But Gillette makes it clear that there was more going on at CBS News than just one muffed debate, and if Couric has any clout, she could’ve forced the issue had she wanted to.
Meanwhile, MSNBC scored record numbers with its debate last week: Its political coverage trounced “Big Brother,” which is what CBS was airing opposite the debate. And Couric, who has just about dropped off everyone’s radar, didn’t get a chance to demonstrate whether she has the chops to handle such an important assignment, which could’ve been helpful given she’s still sort of perceived as uneven when it comes to serious political interviews.
CBS News head Sean McManus tried to spin his way out of this one, but confessed of Couric, “She is disappointed.” Or was that “disappointing?”
In the cyber-realm, at least: They're making a vidjogame based on "Dexter."
Some press-release-ese:
"'Dexter' is the extremely rare TV show with enough layers of action and tension to translate perfectly into a compelling videogame," said Marc Fernandez, Vice President of Marc Ecko Entertainment. 'Our game designers, writers, and artists are going to give Dexter's morally complex world the kind of interactivity that gamers will love.'"
"'Dexter' is one of the most popular shows on SHOWTIME with a particular strong fan base among gamers. It's a very logical jump to create a game,' said Len Fogge, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Digital Media and Research at Showtime Networks.
I'm not sure it's such a "very logical jump" to take an admired cult TV show that deals with thorny psychological and sociological issues and reduce it to a videogame gorefest, but becoming a video game is just another rite of passage for TV shows these days. On the show, Dexter wrestles with his decisions to kill, so how will they score this? 100 points if you don't kill someone, 150 points if you do? Or vice versa? And does he get extra points or lose points for putting off sex with his girlfriend Rita?
It sounds more like a logline for an episode of “CSI: Miami” than a TV Guide headline:
“NEW ‘TOP MODEL’ JUDGE PAULINA PORIZKOVA: SUPERMODELS ARE DEAD”
Someone woke up grumpy: “Models are not superstars anymore,” Porizkova tells TV Guide in its upcoming issue. “With cheap computer retouching, anybody can be a cover girl. You can be 50 and have acne, but look gorgeous by the time they’re done with you. Models are back to what they were in the ‘70s: clothes hangers.”
And more: Porizkova says of the contestants on “America’s Next Top Model:” “[They want to be models] for the same reason I did—they’re looking for love. They think, ‘I’m on TV; people will realize that I’m worth something.’ But once the TV’s over and they join the real world, it’ll be a whole different thing.”
Thank you, Paulina, for doing your part to crush the dreams of a bunch of young women.
*
And thank you, The CW, for crushing the dreams of those hoping for a comedy renaissance on your network by shutting down your comedy division:
“The CW is restructuring some programming and marketing functions as part of an effort to streamline both areas," a press statement declared. Interestingly, the network’s layoffs and pole-axing of comedy weren’t mentioned in their press release yesterday announcing that they were picking up a number of low-rated series.
Hobbled by abysmal ratings brought on in part by the writers strike, this reorganization may make it even harder for the network to rebound. And now CW employees won’t even have any comedies to brighten their days. Comedy is dead in today’s world, people: Pass it on.
Given the myriad ways a highly anticipated show like “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” could’ve concluded its (admittedly truncated) first season, the producers opted for the boldest move possible: The lamest cliffhanger ever.
Here’s how it ended (spoiler alert for those who TiVo’d it, along with a big “Don’t bother”): An evil Terminator blew up an SUV containing Cameron (Summer Glau), the good Terminator. Ummm… Cameron’s the most sophisticated Terminator ever built, right? So the odds she’ll survive are pretty good, particularly since the truck itself didn’t even fly to bits, right? So someone somewhere should care – why?
Here’s how bad this was: Had they shown young John (Thomas Dekker) and his cyborg protector Cameron fall into a breathlessly lusty clinch, that wouldn’t have been as lame a finale. And that would’ve been a pretty lame finale.
There was a fairly cool bit before that, when a bunch of FBI guys were dispatched to the great beyond (in the form of a cheesy hotel’s swimming pool) while Johnny Cash sang “When the Man Comes Around.” But even that was a little gratuitous, and its payoff (Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) was spared) was far-fetched, necessary only should the series return.
But given the show’s ratings (it’s getting hammered by the likes of “Deal or No Deal,” a show produced at a fraction of the cost), that seems unlikely. If it does return, Fox will clearly have had a crummy pilot season (given the writers strike, that’s entirely possible). But, still: Given how expensive this show is to produce and the relative paucity of viewers (it averaged just under eight million last night, while doing better in the 18-49 demo), this thing’s probably done. And the inconclusive conclusion’ll kill it when the DVD boxed set comes out.
And: The second most disappointing moment of last night: “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s” interview with Hillary Clinton, the TV equivalent of a dropped cell-phone call.
“The star of 'Dinner: Impossible' has acknowledged fabricating some of the more fantastic parts of his resume, including having cooked for Britain's Royal Family and various U.S. presidents.
“Following the revelations, the network announced it would not renew Irvine's contract, though it would air the remaining episodes of the current season, the series' fourth.
“‘I was wrong to exaggerate in statements related to my experiences in the White House and the Royal Family,’ Irvine said in a written statement. ‘I am truly sorry for misleading people and misstating the facts.’”
And by that, of course, he means he’s sorry he got caught.
Hey, Food Network, no worries: I got your Irvine replacement – me. After all, I invented truffles. Says so right on my resume.
Busy day; quick hits:
* NBC’s continuing its online garage sale with another auction peddling props from its TV series. Now you can own a Mr. Muggles painting or Noah Bennet’s actual horned-rim glasses (how’s he going to see now?) from “Heroes” or wardrobe from “30 Rock” and “Law & Order” or gag props from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno!” Act now – or, act in eight days, because that’s when the auctions end.
* If NBC’s not going to do a May upfront for advertisers and media watchers in dire need of alcohol, TNT and TBS are stepping up and going all bigtime on us and offering its first splashy upfront on May 14. Turner cable sister truTV, formerly Court TV, will join them.
Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks, twists the knife: “Everyone in the industry realizes the broadcast business has been on a steep decline for years - this year in particular. For advertisers, our networks provide an alternative that is getting better and better.”
TNT plans to shift the network's Monday-through-Wednesday primetime schedule to an all-original lineup by 2010. TBS plans to continue developing primetime and late-night original comedy series. truTV is slapping together reality shows about road rage and helicopter rescues.
* The CW, ignoring my thoughtful advice that they should just throw in the towel, announced that it has renewed a few series for next season. “America’s Next Top Model,” “Gossip Girl,” “One Tree Hill,” “Smallville” (for its eighth (!) season – is he ever become Superman?), “Supernatural” and “Everybody Hates Chris” will all be back. Among those not on the list: “Reaper” and “Aliens in America.”
That’s six and a half hours of programming (counting the fact that The CW runs weekly repeats of “America’s Next Top Model”). That leaves another six and a half hours of programming The CW still has to come up with for its 2008-09 season. One wonders if the network has even developed six and a half hours of material. Or – might they beat a retreat from their Sunday schedule, where they’re getting downright hammered, and just program Monday through Friday?
Reality-competition shows: "I'm going to win because my epic myopia leads me to believe that I want it and deserve it more than anyone else. Woo-hooo!"
Celeb-reality shows: "I find myself so intrinsically fascinating that I touchingly misguidedly believe that some cable network's viewers will do so, as well, and not just to laugh at my fatuity."
The Parents Television Council/The FCC: Because three people in possession of a million Email addresses does not a censorship movement make.
Save Our Show campaigns: If your show was worth saving, it'd have higher ratings in the first place.
Awards shows: Ah, the glamour! Ah, the utter forgettability! Ah, the - wait! Whoa, shiny, shiny objects!
Bill O'Reilly: "Because I'm always right, even when I'm wrong, which is most of the time. And I invite all points of view. Don't believe me? Shut up!"
Anime: Because whacking off to cartoons is just plain wrong.
Last week, "SNL" guest-host Tina Fey gave an impassioned Presidential endorsement to Hillary Clinton, her catchphrase being, "Bitches get stuff done!" This week, Hillary appears on the show after a sketch that showed MSNBC crapping on her relentlessly (this, per the transcript from the East Coast):
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON : "The scene you just saw was a dramatization, sort of, of last Tuesday's debate and not an endorsement of one candidate over another. I can say this confidently, because when I asked if I could take it as an endorsement, I was told "absolutely not." But I still enjoyed the sketch a great deal. I simply adore Amy's impression of me."
AMY POEHLER: "Why thank you, Senator. You're looking lovely tonight."
CLINTON: "You are also looking lovely tonight."
POEHLER: "Why thank you."
CLINTON: "I'm going to need those earrings back."
(Poehler laughs like her impression of Clinton, the real Sen. Clinton follows suit.)
POEHLER: "So how is the campaign going?"
CLINTON: "Very well! Why? What have you heard? Oh, never mind. Tonight I just want to relax and have fun."
POEHLER: "So no politics?"
CLINTON: "No politics. But, I would like to take this opportunity and say to all Americans, be they from the great states of Ohio or Texas, Rhode Island or Vermont, Pennsylvania or any of the other ones..."
POEHLER/CLINTON – "We're Hillary Clinton and we approve this message: Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!!!"
- "Saturday Night Live:" See it on the West Coast at 11:30 p.m.
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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