I Am A Child Of Television

¡Rob! Stomps On My Memories

2012-01-16T05:19:00.000-06:00

The new CBS series ¡Rob! takes the idea behind an old Canadian show that I remember quite fondly and manages to strip out everything that I found charming and funny about the original. And really all it took was some really bad writing and Rob Schneider.

Many years ago (about 40 years ago actually) when I Was A Teenaged Child of Television (hmm, that might be a good title for some sort of blog) and CTV first established itself in the Saskatoon market, one of the shows they had was a sitcom called Excuse My French. The show was about a young couple who decide on the spur of the moment to get married. There are a number of complications. For one thing, his family (well there’s only his father really) is rich while hers is working class. But the big hang up is that they’re living in Montreal and he’s an anglophone and she’s a francophone (although in Montreal then, and even now, if you were French-Canadian you probably spoke some English). The show starred Stuart Gillard (probably best known today as a director in Canadian and American TV, whose credits include Charmed, One Tree Hill, and 90210) as Peter Hutchins and Lise Charbonneau as his new wife Marie-Louise and a number of French-Canadian actors who are pretty much unfamiliar outside of Quebec playing Marie Louise’s family. This included her parents, an uncle and a separatist brother (also in college). I remember the show as being rather funny even if it was being done on a budget that would make a shoestring look obese.

Over the years I’ve often thought that you could take the basic concepts behind Excuse My French and use them in an American sitcom. The basic idea would be a clash between cultures and across economic class lines. You could make the lead characters the college aged son of a rich Anglo and the daughter of a working class Tejano family. In fact, if you wanted to throw in a really fun twist, you could make the husband be the first generation of the family born in the United States (his family are Canadian – a recognition of the Canadian original) while his wife’s family can trace their history in Texas back to before Texas was a republic, in fact before the American Revolution. I’m not saying that the concept would work of course. There are a lot of ways that this could go wrong, and ¡Rob! not only finds all of them, it finds a few that I never thought of.

I should start out by stating that I don’t like Jon Schneider. He evokes Jon Lovitz levels of annoyance in me and that’s saying a lot (its an 8 on the annoyance meter, with the late Chris Farley being a 10) and I find myself unable to even think of watching just about anything that he’s in. And with all that being said, even if I liked him as an actor, Rob Schneider would have been wrong for this part because of his age. At 48 he’s too old for the role playing opposite 32 year-old Claudia Bassols as Maggie, his new bride. In fact Schneider is six years older than the woman playing his mother-in-law on the show Diana-Maria Riva (who you might remember from Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip or the last season of The West Wing). The age difference between Schneider and Bassols removes any charm that the relationship might otherwise have possessed had the characters (particularly Schneider’s) been younger or at least closer together in age. The thing is that the Rob and Maggie relationship has to work from the very beginning because it is the source of conflict between Rob and Maggie’s family.

The Spanish speaking members of the cast are generally good at least in terms of acting qualifications. Cheech Marin plays family patriarch Fernando, opposite Diana-Maria Riva as Rosa. Eugenio Derbez, one of Mexico’s best known comedic actors plays Rosa’s younger brother Hector (despite being seven years older than Riva), and Lupe Ontiveros (who played Gabrielle’s mother-in-law in the early episodes of Desperate Housewives) plays Rosa’s mother. Claudia Bassols is probably the least experienced cast member with most of her previous work being in series in Spain. They’re a good cast but the writing that they are forced to work with in this show is abominably bad.

Many of the alleged jokes in this show are either borderline offensive or sophomoric; and high school sophomoric not college sophomoric either. Some of the others are allegedly funny because they’re trying to play the turn-about card. Here’s a few examples:

When Rob first arrives he’s mistaken for Maggie’s cab driver.
Rob goes to meet his new in-laws and meets his new wife’s extended family. Rob: “Well now I know what’s going on with all of those siestas.”
Rob tells to his new mother-in-law (whose husband owns eight car washes) that he’s a landscape architect. She thinks that means that her daughter has married a gardener. Later in the episode she complains to him, “I wish you people wouldn’t use a leaf blower”. This is funny(?) because one of the stereotypes of Mexican immigrants is of the gardener using a leaf blower.
Rob assures his new father-in-law of his liberal credentials on immigration. His father-in-law responds that he thinks they should build a big wall along the border with gun turrets to keep the illegal immigrants out. They’re competition (although of course all or almost all of his employees are illegal immigrants). This is funny because it’s coming from a immigrant who’s got his and doesn’t want anyone else to get theirs.
Eugenio tells Rob that he’s in the US “for a visit”…and then immediately confides to Rob that he’s not going back. He then announces that Rob is lending him $7,200, which is news to Rob.
Rob goes upstairs to find Maggie and somehow wanders into her grandmother’s bedroom. He accidentally tips over the candles in a shrine in her room, spilling was onto his pants. He takes them off because his genitals feel like they’re burning, just as grandma comes into the room. She shrieks and people come running. Rob tries to hid behind her but she bends down in front of him, so when the family arrives it appears as though he’s somehow humping her. It’s a visual joke that comes damned close to being a joke about rape.
Maggie claims that Rob has some sort of OCD. When they are planning a party at Rob’s place for his in-laws, Rob has to have everything planned out meaning, naturally, that “hilarity” will ensue when his “well planned” evening goes awry.
Things are icy between the in-laws and Rob until Rob announces that he has wedding pictures. Of course they’re on his phone only, and of course within one or two photos, Rob clumsily drops the phone into a pitcher of Sangrias. He then reaches in to try to grab the phone, and then serves the Sangrias that he just had his hands in. This did allow Eugenio to get one of the few good – or at least above the standards of the rest of the show – jokes in the show: “This is very good. What type of phone did you use in it?”
Trying to make small talk he brings up the murdered Tejano singer Selena. “What a tragedy. So sad.” Everyone looks at him like he’s a tonto. Or perhaps an idiota.

Rob wasn’t the worst comedy to debut in the past couple of weeks. After all it did appear two days after the second (and as it turned out the last) episode of Work It, a show so abysmally bad that most people are convinced that it wasn’t released it escaped. As bad and at times distasteful as it might be ¡Rob! isn’t as bad as that. There is also the possibility, albeit an incredibly slim possibility, that the show’s writing could get better in the next few episodes. I don’t think it will, but if the ratings for the first episode manage to hold up it is likely to get a chance. There are so many ways that this show could be improved without actually eliminating the guy the show was named for.

I hope and expect that the ratings for ¡Rob! will collapse in the next couple of weeks. It’s not a great thing to say but the fact is that I hope that public, having seen the first episode of the show, will desert it by the time the second episode airs. I know I won’t be watching it. Forty years ago I saw something better done for a fraction of the cost of this mess. But very few people even knows it existed. Too bad, because the people responsible for ¡Rob! could have learned a few things from it.

(Correction: Apparently CBS changed the title from ¡Rob! to Rob. I’m sticking with the first title because that’s what has appeared in the promos.)

Booth & Brennan And The Norwood Builder

2011-12-28T04:59:00.001-06:00

As part of my “post-Christmas confection” of taking Sherlock Holmes cases and modern procedurals I’ve decided to combine the characters and methods from Bones with the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure Of The Norwood Builder story from The Return Of Sherlock Holmes. This was actually the story that that cause me to develop this idea – to the degree that I did develop it – and the pairing is made for what will become obvious reasons.

For reasons about as logical as they are in most of the cases that Booth and Brennan confront FBI Agent Sealey Booth and his partner/lover/baby mama Dr. Temperance Brennan are sent to investigate the murder of Jonas Oldacre, a retired builder. The local police have already arrested John McFarlane, a young lawyer for the crime. McFarlane has everything needed to be guilty. He had the opportunity – he was at the victim’s home on the night that the crime was committed – he had motive – Oldacre had asked him to draw up a will for the builder which left everything to McFarlane – and he brought the weapon – MacFarlane’s walking stick with blood on it (hey, in the 1890s people carried walking sticks, and it’s important to the plot). Oldacre’s safe was found open, his papers rifled through, MacFarlane’s bloodied cane was found in the room, there were drag marks across the carpet through the French doors to a pile of building timbers that Oldacre found on the property. The wood pile has been on fire and Oldacre’s housekeeper reported smelling “burning flesh” from the fire. When Booth and Brennan arrive they find the FBI “Bluejackets” (the nameless and faceless – and usually lineless – FBI crime scene techs who are always there when Booth and Brennan get to a crime scene) are going through the ashes of the woodpile. They’ve already found Oldacre’s trouser buttons.

And stop. Because this is where Doyle’s story fall flat on its coccyx. Not to blow the whole story but there’s no body in the woodpile. Or at least not a human body; at the end of the story Holmes assumes that the perpetrator used a couple of rabbits to provide the smell of burning flesh which the housekeeper reported. The assumption on Doyle’s part is apparently that the heat of the fire would totally consume the rabbit corpses and everyone would assume that a human corpse would also be burned, not just beyond recognition but totally to ash. The problem is that the heat of a wood fire would not be sufficient to totally destroy a human body; modern crematoriums usually operate at between 1600 and 1800 degrees F. If it was hot enough to so totally destroy the body that you wouldn’t know it was rabbits, it would probably be enough to destroy the trouser buttons, So even the “Blujackets” would recognise the difference between a rabbit carcass and 54 year-old man with or without trouser buttons. Which in turn means that not only is there no proof that MacFarlane killed Oldacre but no evidence that Oldacre was even dead. And yet Holmes spends most of the story despairing over whether or not he will be able to clear MacFarlane until the real villain – Oldacre himself – makes a crucial mistake.

To be fair, the producers of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series recognised the absurdity of the rabbits and substitutes in the body of a tramp that Oldacre murdered because he was the same size and weight as the builder. So, to make this go on a bit longer, let’s do that and turn Booth, Brennan and the Jeffersonian crew loose on that.

The body is taken back to the Jeffersonian. Dr. Camille Saroyan doesn’t have much to do although she can probably get enough tissue for DNA comparison with the blood on the walking stick. This causes a bit of a problem in setting up the timeline. For the purpose of the story MacFarlane has to leave the house late at night – the story says around midnight – because his reason for not taking his hat and walking stick and exiting the front door is so as not to disturb Oldacre’s housekeeper. If the tramp is going to be killed with the walking stick, Oldacre has to lure him to the house, kill him, plant him in the woodpile and start the fire after MacFarlane has left at midnight. If he kills the tramp ahead of time and hides the body in the woodpile until needed he has to get blood for the walking stick.

Meanwhile, Brennan and whichever “squintern” is working this week are stripping the flesh from the bones. Assuming that Oldacre killed the tramp after MacFarlane left she should be able to determine the height and relative strength of the person who dealt the killing blow. On the other hand if the tramp was killed beforehand she’d be able to determine by blood in the shattered bone that the blow delivered by MacFarlane’s cane was not the killing blow. Moreover she’d also be able to determine that the tramp wasn’t standing when the blow from the walking stick was struck.

The big break in the case would of course come from Angela Montenegro, the artist who does the facial reconstructions on her whizbang computer set-up. It will take her about as much time as it took me to read the original story and figure out that this would make an interesting (?) piece for my blog to come up with a face that was most definitely not Jonas Oldacre and that no one, not MacFarlane, not MacFarlane’s mother and not Oldacre’s housekeeper would recognise as Oldacre. With the evidence from Cam, Tempie and Angie, there is no way an even half-way competent prosecutor would have issued an arrest warrant for John MacFarlane.

Of course, in the story the big break in the case comes when Lestrade comes to gloat to Holmes about a new bit of evidence in the case, MacFarlane’s bloody thumb print near the hat rack near the front door where MacFarlane’s hat was hanging. Holmes realises that the print hadn’t been there when he first viewed the crime scene, and determines that someone used a wax impression on sealing wax to make a wax “positive” mould of the print.. He sets out to measure the length of the ground floor of the house and of the top floor and determines that there is a hidden room in the house. He literally smokes Oldacre out by having some constables burn some straw and shout fire, forcing Oldacre to escape the “burning” house. On our modern reality of course, the FBI “Bluejackets” and the local cops would have photographed every blood stain and taken finger prints in the murder scene, and probably in the front hall as well, so they would know that there wasn’t a fingerprint where one suddenly appeared. A modern criminal probably wouldn’t have made this sort of error. And in truth I doubt that today Oldacre would have stuck around his house after framing MacFarlane. Since Oldacre’s motive in trying to frame MacFarlane was not just to get revenge on the young man’s parents but to also to escape with his money and avoid paying his creditors it would make sense for him to flee immediately when it wouldn’t have in the days when one travelled on foot, on horseback or bicycle, or in some sort of wagon or carriage. Now if he’d transferred his funds in the way that he did in the story – mailing checks to a fictitious identity, it would make him a bit harder to trace, but why do that when the funds can be transferred to a numbered off-shore account and then moved around some more electronically. In short, I’m not absolutely sure Booth would have arrested Oldacre. That would be for more talented writers than I to figure out.

A Christmas Confection–Sherlock Holmes vs. Crime Procedurals

2011-12-26T05:15:00.001-06:00

I’m not able to do a “Twelve Days Of Christmas” this year (not that my attempts in recent years have been brought to completion) so I’ve decided to come up wit a sort of Christmas confection. Since I just bought a Kindle a couple of months ago (and I love it) I’ve been stocking it with a number of free books, including two books of Sherlock Holmes short stories. One of the stories got me to thinking about how well Holmes would fare in comparison with the crime-solvers on several of the current police procedurals the answer I fear is not very well although there are a few cases where Holmes would have never been called in.

The Adventure of Black Peter is one case where ordinary, real life police would have been ahead of the case before Holmes was even out of the city and the person that the police eventually (wrongly) arrested would never even have been a suspect. In that case a former sealing and whaling captain is found in a small cabin that he maintains on his country estate, impaled with a harpoon that the Victim kept there. On the table in the room are two glasses that had been filled with Rum. The police arrest a young man who breaks into the cabin the day after the killing in search of a tin box which has disappeared. Holmes determines that it is impossible for a man of the suspect’s size to have pushed the harpoon though the victim’s body, and that the murderer had to be a former sailor – because only a sailor would drink Rum when there was better liquor available – and put an advertisement in the paper for a harpoonist because only a harpoonist would have had the strength to throw a harpoon through the body of a grown man.

Today of course Holmes would never have gotten out of London before the police would have had all o f the information they needed to make the arrest, and the “suspect” that they arrested in the story would never have been even looked at as a possible killer. Why? Because even the smallest police force would have dusted the harpoon and the glasses for fingerprints, and since this was obviously an unpremeditated killing there would have been finger prints. And sailors being sailors our mysterious harpoonist would most likely have been fingerprinted at some point during his life on a drunk and disorderly charge. Case solved without all of Holmes’s ratiocination.

On the other hand, if Holmes had to depend on today’s police in the Adventure of the Six Napoleons he – and they – would never have heard the story that led him to the recovery of the Borgia Pearl and the murderer of a Mafia member. Holmes becomes interested in the case when Inspector Lestrade poses him a problem about a “lunatic” who goes around smashing cheap plaster busts of Napoleon, one in a shop, one taken from a home burglary, and one in an burglary at the office of a doctor (in fact the same man whose how was broken into). A fourth bust is taken from another home where the body of a man, quickly identified as an Italian criminal and member of the Mafia (yes, that’s actually in the story) is found murdered on the house’s doorstep. Holmes determines that the bust is from a particular batch of six made at a particular factory on the same day. The prime suspect in the case, an Italian, nicknamed Beppo, who worked at the shop where the first bust was smashed, had previously worked at the factory and had been arrested on the same day that this particular batch of six had been made. Holmes,Watson and Lestrade learn where the other two busts are located, One in suburban London and one in the country, and stake out the suburban residence. Sure enough they catch the man after he broke into the house and smashed the bust. Holmes then contacted the owner of the sixth bust, bought it at a significant profit from the owner, smashed it and found the Borgia Pearl which the culprit had stolen and hidden in the bust just before he was arrested for another crime.

What would have happened today is that Holmes would never have heard of the case because Lestrade would probably never have heard of it. In the incident at the shop, the value of the busts wouldn’t have been sufficient for the police to have been involved while the first burglary wouldn’t have attracted much police attention because nothing was taken. The first home burglary would have raised a few flags as would the break in at the Doctor’s office. In the latter case the primary interest of the police would have been whether any drugs had been stolen, but since there weren’t the police would most likely have filed it and given it only a slightly higher priority than the home burglary. Either that or they would have wondered what the Doctor had been hiding in the busts of Napoleon. Suffice it to say that of the crimes committed only the murder at the site of the fourth burglary would have drawn the attention of a Police Inspector like Lestrade, and would therefore be told to Sherlock Holmes would have been the murder, and in that case the break-in might have been regarded as important but the smashed bust would have been just a curious incident, indicating that the robber had been disturbed before he had started robbing the place. Without knowing about the previous incidents with the cheap busts of Napoleon, no one – including Sherlock Holmes – would have been able to deduce who the killer was, and what his motive was. Beppo wouldn’t have been caught and he would have recovered the Borgia Pearl. All while Holmes, Lestrade and the whole police force were trying to figure out if the murdered man was simply a good Samaritan trying to stop the burglary and who was stabbed for his troubles or whether it was a case of a falling out amongst accomplices.

But these sorts of puzzle are relatively simple ones. In first of these “confections” l’ll show you how one of Holmes’s cases would prove no match for the modern TV detective and his forensic anthropologist partner and lover, and how Conan Doyle made a huge mistake when he wrote the story. It will be called Bones and the .

We Don’t Deserve This

2011-11-24T07:13:00.001-06:00

Over the years we all seen our fair share of game shows. There are the classics, like Jeopardy and Wheel Of Forturne, flashes in the pan like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, The Weakest Link, and Deal Or No Deal, and show that were – in one way or another – duds. Million Dollar Money Drop, Show Me The Money (starring William Shatner), and of course Downfall (the one where if you don’t answer the questions in time your prizes – and in some circumstances your friend, and you – get dropped off a ten story building). In my opinion the new ABC series, You Deserve It, which debuted on Monday following a one hour episode of Dancing With The Stars, falls into the dud category.

The hook for You Deserve It (because every good game show needs a hook whether it’s answering in the form of a question or dropping the prizes off the side of a building) is that the players aren’t actually playing for themselves but for some person – or I suppose some organization though that isn’t clear – that the player thinks “deserves” the money. In the series premiere the woman who was playing the game was playing to benefit her best friend since college, a widowed mother of two young children whose husband drowned while diving. The woman was faced with bills that needed to be paid particularly health insurance (I’d like to point out that if she were Canadian she wouldn’t have to worry about that). The beneficiary of the game – who doesn’t know that she’s the beneficiary – is sequestered (in this case she and her kids went, or were taken, to a movie).

The show opens with host Chris Harrison (better known as the host of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette) introducing the player of the game and showing a tear-jerking piece about what makes the beneficiary deserving. Then the player, who is accompanied by some of the people who appeared in the introductory piece starts to play the game. I should mention here that the people who are with the player play absolutely no part in the actual play of the game. They’re entirely there for moral support.

The gameplay itself is pretty basic. The game has five rounds of increasing value: $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 and $250,000. There are three types of questions: Who, What, and Where. In each round the player has to identify the person, place or thing to win money. If they give the wrong answer they don’t get money for that round but do carry on to the next round. The player is given one “Free” clue. There are nine other clues available but each clue has a price. There are nine prices for clues, which are randomly assigned to numbers from 1 to 9. Each time a player decides to buy a clue after the “Free Clue” (which is so general as to be virtually useless; in one case the Free Clue was “White Collar” from which the player was supposed to deduce “Santa Claus”) they give a number. The value that has been assigned to that number is then deducted from the prize that the player is able to win. So, for example in the $250,000 round, if the player picks “8” first and “8” has a dollar value of $75,000, the maximum the Player can win is $175,000. So while theoretically the player can win $435,000 for the person they’re trying to help the reality is that they will win significantly less. The total of the nine levels is the same amount as that round’s value so if someone uses all nine clues in a round they’d get nothing. Needless to say the best policy is for the player to have an answer by the eighth clue.

Meanwhile the show’s other host, Brooke Burns (who I at least remember fondly from when she hosted Dog Eat Dog on NBC a few years back) hangs around the place where the beneficiary is being sequestered with more friends who are rooting for the player. That’s all she does for the first 50 or so minutes of the show (including commercials. In this particular episode she stands in the lobby of the theater with the beneficiary’s friends and introduces shots of the woman in the movie theater watching the movie with her kids and eating popcorn. At one point she “sneaks” up into the projection booth to do one of these intros, leading one to ask “Why?” But surely you say she comes into her own when the game ends right? Well not quite. Once the final round of the game is over and the audience knows how much has been won for the beneficiary, Burns leads the group of friends in the lobby into the theater, where the film is stopped and she reveals that they’re with You Deserve It and that there’s a special message for her from… Chris Harrison and the player projected onto the movie screen. That’s pretty much all that Brooke Burns has to do on the show.

I really don’t like the mechanics of this show. The random nature of how much is taken from the pot for each round is straight out of Deal Or No Deal but in this situation it really doesn’t feel “right” somehow. There is no linkage between the amount lost in each round and the quality of the clue that is given. Which is a problem when the first three clues are just about as useless as the "”Free Clue.” Still I guess I could forgive this in the name of randomness if it weren’t for the fact that I believe that for the most part players are going to be more cautious in taking a guess when they’re playing to win money for someone that that they have an emotional connection to than they might if they were playing to win money for themselves. The woman who played the game in the first episode averaged about six clues before she ventured an answer even though in a couple of cases she had the answer (or maybe should have had the answer) earlier. Then there were the friends who were with the player. They needed more of a role in this game than simply cheering the player on. For one thing they really didn’t get much chance to even fulfill that role. For another thing, these people could be a valuable resource for the player. There was at least one question where I could see one of the people (the beneficiary’s father-in-law) knew the answer a couple of clues before the player knew the answer. Even interviewing the friends about the beneficiary between rounds would have been better – particularly if that cut down on the segments of Brooke Burns doing nothing.

But my real problem with the show is tied to the very nature of the show. It is maudlin, mawkish and self congratulatory. It embodies all of those things that I came to dislike and then hate about ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Yes, I know that the people who participate on this show on behalf of their friends are sincere in their desire to help their friends. I just don’t like the way that this show goes about it. Chris Harrison comes across as particularly unctuous in this, and I can form no opinion of Brooke Burns because quite frankly I can’t see what she contributed to this show. I can’t even say that ABC has even a portion of its heart in the right place because this show has enough of being a cynical ratings grab that I find it off-putting. And based on the ratings, which lost a large percentage of the Dancing With The Stars finale lead-in and which were lower than the rating for the show that followed it (Castle), it would seem that the viewing public didn’t care much for the show either. With Dancing With The Stars off the air until March and “encore programming” (repeats) leading into it until it ends its run, expect the ratings for this mess to sink even lower. It is likely that You Deserve It will complete it’s intended six-week lifespan no matter how low the ratings go, if only because ABC doesn’t have anything that they can replace it with. If we’re all very lucky we won’t be seeing it again.

Tim Allen Retread, And Why I Don’t Like It

2011-11-12T03:44:00.001-06:00

What do you get when you take comedian Tim Allen, add a “manly” work environment with a work place friendship with a guy with facial hair, three kids (including one who makes with the wise cracks), and a real actress to play his wife? That’s right, you get Home Improvement, Allen’s 1991-99 series with Richard Karn, Zachary Ty Bryant, Jonathon Taylor Thomas, Taran Noah Smith, and Patricia Richardson.

Now take that show and turn the three boys into three girls, make the work place friend with facial hair into his boss (and friend) with facial hair, and replace Patricia Richardson with Nancy Travis, and what do you get? Tim Allen’s new show Last Man Standing.

In Last Man Standing, Allen plays Mike Baxter, the Marketing Director of a chain of sporting goods stores owned by Ed Alzate (Hector Elizondo), who also happens to be one of his best friends. In the past this has meant travelling to various places around the globe to shoot ads for their catalogues. However the catalogue is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the Internet Age, and Ed needs Mike to focus more on the website. The website includes videos for demonstrations of the merchandise, but Mike turns these into personal rants with only passing reference to the merchandise, but that doesn’t matter since his rants generate hits for the website, and as one of his younger employees tells Ed, “Hits are good.”. Though Ed is willing to let Mike go back on the road for the catalogue, he decides that maybe he should spend more time with his wife and daughters.

At home, Mike has to deal with his wife Vanessa (Nancy Travis) a normally level-headed woman who sometimes goes a bit overboard, and his three daughters. Kristin (Alexandra Krosney) is his oldest, a 20 year-old single mom (she has a life-long memory of her prom in the form of her two year-old son Boyd) who works as a waitress and is trying to go back to college. Middle daughter is Mandy (Molly Ephraim), a self-centered 17 year-old “girly girl” who loves to shop (as long as she’s spending her parents’ money), hang out with her boyfriend Travis and update her website, Mandyland. Finally there’s Eve (Kaitlyn Dever). She’s her father’s favourite largely because she a tomboy interested in all of the things he’s interested in, including sports and guns.

The most recent episode of Last Man Standing is a fairly typical one. There are two plotlines, a “Home” plotline and a “Work” plotline with the “Home” plotline being the dominant one of the two. This time around the story focuses on Mike always being the “good cop” of the parents in their relationship with their daughters – the one who says “yes” to whatever they want – while Vanessa feels that she’s forced onto the role of the “bad cop” – the one who always has to say “no”. This might have been fine when Mike was on the road so much but now that he’s back home it’s causing problems. One of the problems is that Mandy wants to enter the Denver audition for a reality show, America’s Next Hot Teen Model. There’s probably only going to be 10,000 girls there so she figures she’s got a pretty good shot. Her mom forbids it but Mike figures why not, since she’s too short anyways. Eventually Vanessa browbeats him into saying no as well. But that’s not enough to stop Mandy from doing what she wants to do. She enlists Kristin and Eve into helping her shoot some photos for a portfolio, but her full blown diva attitude alienates them and they walk out, without a photo being taken. Even that doesn’t stop Mandy. She can take her own photos with a remote control, and proceeds to do some shots that she thinks will work. Then she decides to do something a bit more provocative, and takes off her top. Of course it’s fine (as far as she’s concerned) because she’s got here hands over her breasts and you can’t see anything except the bottom of them sometimes.

Of course her parents find out – Kristin finds the pictures on the camera – and they both go ballistic. Pictures like these will get out and they have the potential to harm her future prospects if an employer or someone else finds them. They take the SD Card from the camera, but Mandy is one step ahead of them; she’s emailed the photos to her boyfriend Travis’s phone! So Mike has to go to Travis’s house. He’s practicing his trombone so his mother answers the door. When Mike mentions that the photos involve Mandy not wearing her top – even though nothing was showing – Travis’s mother calls the photos pornography, and says she should have known better than to allow Mandy in her house because she comes from such an “immoral” family. Proof of their immorality is that Kristin had a baby out of wedlock. Mike gets very angry at her over that, and rather than simply taking the pictures off the camera before Travis had the chance to see them, he drops the phone into a vase full of water. Which, as we find out, is not nearly as extreme as what Vanessa would have done if the woman had called Krisitin and Mandy immoral to her face; Vanessa says she would have “cut her.”

The Workplace plot of the show always takes second place to the Home storyline. In this episode, Ed is feeling left out because Mike is making marketing decisions (he is the marketing director) like moving the parkas out front in the stores and moving the fishing vests back – well it is nearly winter and fishing season is over. He feels like he’s losing some control of his business so he decides to do some marketing of his own. To promote the store’s selection of snowmobiles, he hires some local models – his “snowmo-bunnies” – to dress in fur bikinis and talk to customers. Initially Mike is fine with this – at least he is when he sees the sales figures that the models are ringing up – but he eventually ends the promotion before Ed wants it to end (when all of the snowmobiles are sold). It seems that in his argument with Mandy over her entering the America’s Next Hot Teen Model auditions she brought up the calendars featuring scantily clad models that he can’t get enough of. He said that “They aren’t my daughter,” to which she responded, “They’re somebody’s daughters.” It doesn’t hit home until he discovers that one of Ed’s “snowmo-bunnies” is a girl who went to school with Kristin. Needless to say, Ed isn’t happy about yet another decision being taken away from him, and all of his feelings come out. He’s afraid that Mike is trying to force him out of his own company, and that he’s at the age his father was when he retired. Retirement killed Ed’s father. Actually it was the husband of the woman that Ed’s father was having an affair with who killed him, but he wouldn’t have had time for that if he hadn’t retired. Mike reassures Ed that he’s not trying to force him out of the company and the whole crew at the store has a birthday party for him. That restores Ed to his normal, cranky, self as he complains about breaking the “no birthday party rule”, then about the cake and about their present (they had his chair reupholstered).

Last Man Standing is a pretty bad show that is getting pretty good ratings and a full season order because Tim Allen is in it. The three daughters are a pretty standard set of TV tropes; the smart tomboyish one, the self-centered shopping obsessed one, and the one trying to get her life on track. They’re a cookie cutter assortment of problems that could be fitted into just about any family sitcom. They really don’t have any discernable character traits beyond those that define the stereotype. Nancy Travis is fine as Mike’s wife Vanessa, but Vanessa is no Jill Taylor because Travis isn’t given the same sort of material that Patricia Heaton was given to work with, even at the start. As for Hector Elizondo, well casting him in this role seems like such a waste of a first rate character actor in a role that could be played by just about anyone.

The writing of this series shows little in the way of originality. It wouldn’t have been hard to take these characters and this concept and give it a real twist that would the people more “real” with more than one dimension. They have had solid situations to deal with – a teen taking inappropriate pictures of herself; “too sexy” Halloween costumes; a tomboy who wants to get a particular boy to “notice” her – but their approach to these situations has scarcely pushed the envelope in either developing their characters in these situations or taking a different direction. They seem most interested in going for the cheap and easy laugh. My big concern is how many of these decisions are flowing from series star Tim Allen through the Writers’ Room and onto the screen. Sure, I know that this show and this character fits into ABC’s current efforts to show the problems that face affluent married employed white men in modern society as comedy. And yes, I do get that part of the way to do that is to recycle a well remembered character (someone who is a lot like Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor) that fits right into that mould. But I think it does a disservice to the audience, because the show isn’t funny, and it does a disservice to its star.

You see, my big problem with Last Man Standing is that it’s not a property that is going to stretch Tim Allen’s acting ability. See here’s the shocking thing; I happen to think that Tim Allen has some acting ability. Oh he’s no Kelsey Grammer, let alone a Tom Hanks, but he is personable and shows more range as an actor than Roseanne Barr ever did (there’s a reason why Roseanne’s filmography is a tiny as it is – she’s a lousy actress). Maybe he couldn’t replace Steve Carell on The Office (but that might have been something to see if just for one episode) but he could have given us something new that represents the next step in his development as an actor. Instead, Allen is in a property that is a bad retread of what he did before on Home Improvement. And a car guy like Tim Allen should know that a retread rarely performs as well as a new tire. I’m sure that barring a catastrophic drop in ratings this show is going to be back next season. I just don’t think it should be. I just wish that Tim Allen would have waited for something better to come along. He deserves it, and we, as an audience, deserve it as well.

The New Season – A Status Report

2011-11-06T04:52:00.000-06:00

I saw something interesting at Marc Berman’s page at TV Media Insights on Thursday. Apparently of twenty seven series that debuted this fall, thirteen of them have been given a full season order. Several other shows have been cancelled. Now the thing is that – if I’m not mistaken – November sweeps began on either Wednesday or Thursday, meaning that these thirteen seasons have been renewed before sweeps. Regardless of that I thought it might be of interest to look at the status of the shows from the 2011-12 shows.

ABC

Last Man Standing – Full season order
Man Up – Status pending
Suburgatory – Full season order
Revenge – Full season order
Charlie’s Angels – Cancelled after nine episodes
Once Upon A Time – Full season order
Pan Am – Status pending. The network has ordered five additional scripts

CBS

2 Broke Girls – Full season order
Unforgettable – Full season order
How To Be A Gentleman – Effectively cancelled after three episodes
Person Of Interest – Full season order
A Gifted Man – Status pending

FOX

Terra Nova – First season will end in December after 13 episodes. No information on renewal expected until May 2012
New Girl – Full season order
I Hate My Teenaged Daughter – Debuts November 30, 2011
X-Factor – First season will end on December 22, 2011. Has been renewed for a second season
Allen Gregory – Status pending. Will be replaced by Napoleon Dynamite after 13 episodes

NBC

Playboy Club – Cancelled after three episodes
Up All Night – Full season order
Free Agents – Cancelled after four episodes
Whitney – Full season order. Will move to Wednesday nights (replacing Free Agents) from Thursdays when 30 Rock returns to Thursday night
Prime Suspect – Status pending
Grimm – Status pending

The CW

Hart Of Dixie – Full season order – 1.7/3
Ringer – Full season order – 1.4/2
H8R – Cancelled after 2 episodes, will be replaced by One Tree Hill January 11, 2012
The Secret Circle – Full season order

Here are the overall audience (in Millions), overall position, rating in the 18-49 demographic and position in the demographic for each of these shows in their last airing. Shows that have a full season order or will be ending at mid-season are in red.

Network	Show	Overall	Position	Demo	Position
Sunday
ABC	Once Upon A Time	11.64	3	3.9/9	2
ABC	Pan Am	5.59	3	1.9/5	3
FOX	Allen Gregory	4.73	4	2.4/6	4
Monday
CBS	2 Broke Girls	11.14	2	4.2/12	1
FOX	Terra Nova	6.38	3	2.1/6	3
The CW	Hart Of Dixie	1.97	5	0.6/2	5
Tuesday
ABC	Last Man Standing	9.30	2	2.6/8	3
ABC	Man Up	6.41	4	1.8/5	4
CBS	Unforgettable	11.27	1	2.3/6	1
FOX	New Girl	7.53	3	3.5/9	1
The CW	Ringer	1.80	5	0.8/2	5
Wednesday
ABC	Suburgatory	8.49	3	3.1/8	3
ABC	Revenge	8.57	2	3.0/8	1
FOX	X-Factor	11.50	2	3.9/10	1
NBC	Up All Night	4.75	4	1.8/5	4
Thursday
CBS	Person of Interest	11.66	1	2.7/7	3
NBC	Whitney	4.33	4	2.1/5	4
NBC	Prime Suspect	4.47	3	1.2/3	3
The CW	The Secret Circle	2.27	5	0.9/2	5
Friday
CBS	A Gifted Man	8.39	1	1.2/4	2t
NBC	Grimm	5.92	2	1.8/5	1

Put “Man Up” Down

2011-10-26T03:22:00.000-06:00

(Author’s Note: I started writing this review of Man Up a week ago when the show debuted. However there were some things from the pilot that I was unable to remember. And believe me when I say that this in itself is an indictment of the show since I normally remember just about all the details from a TV show that I watch. As I’ve said, I didn’t remember details of the episode and so was forced to try to locate and watch the show online. I eventually found it on the CTV Two section of the CTV website. However I kept finding reasons not to watch it and relive the agony I felt when watching the show the first time. I eventually watched it and that is what I am reviewing. I am not going to willingly watch this show again.)

I have, for the most part, attempted to avoid reviewing the pilot episodes of series this year. I am breaking this self-imposed restriction in order to review Man Up, the new ABC Tuesday night comedy, and I am doing this for one reason: I would do anything short of ripping my own testicles off with my bare hands in order not to have to watch a second episode of this abomination. And under the right – err, wrong – circumstances I’d think about the testicle thing.

Man Up is a comedy (allegedly) that centers around three friends, Will Keen (Mather Zickel), Kenny Hayden (Dan Fogler) and Craig Griffith (Christopher Moynihan). Will is married to Kenny’s sister Theresa (Terri Polo) while Kenny was married to Theresa’s friend Brenda (Amanda Detmer). Rounding out the adult cast is Bridgette’s new boyfriend Grant (Henry Simmons).

The pilot opens with Will, Kenny and Craig playing Call Of Duty online together while talking in their headsets (sorry I don’t own a game console so I have know idea of the exact terminology). Will was able to get permission to play by suggesting to Theresa that they have sex while she was folding laundry, a suggestion that provoked an eye roll from Theresa. The game chat isn’t entirely game related. Will’s son Nathan’s thirteenth birthday is later that week and Will doesn’t know what to get his son that says “I’m a man.” Craig (who has never been married) is obsesses with Lisa, a former girlfriend who he had lunch with earlier in the day. She’s getting married on the same day as Nathan’s birthday party but from their conversation and she talked about a song he used to play for her on his guitar. This he took as “a cry for help.” Kenny says that this woman is crazy and he should know because he used to be married to a crazy woman. Will then has to tell Kenny that Brenda will be at the party. Kenny calls Theresa on her cell phone to tell her to uninvite Brenda, while Craig calls Lisa, which breaks up the game because the only one playing is Will.

The next day Will and Theresa are in their kitchen. Theresa gets a package which she has Will open. He uses his pocket knife. It turns out to be a video game which Will initially thinks is for him because it is violent and scary and rated for 17 year-old and older. In fact it’s her gift for Nathan. He himself is searching for the right gift for his son to usher him into manhood and he thinks that this would have been a perfect gift to usher him into manhood. His point is undercut somewhat by his use of Hazelnut coffee creamer. Theresa further undercuts him by telling him that his grandfather fought in World War II and his father fought in Vietnam but he plays video games and uses pomegranate body wash. He’s “man…ish.” Just then Kenny arrives to tell his sister that Brenda has to be uninvited, that she can’t come to the “fluffin’” party (the kids are present and he has to use a substitute word). Just then Brenda arrives with some party hats and tells Kenny that there is no way that she isn’t going to be at the party They argue about her coming to the party. Eventually Will pulls Kenny out of the argument and tells Kenny that he has to deal with it and he should try to act like the “coolest guy he can think of .” For Kenny that’s Toby McGuire (?!). Kenny tries to act cool like Toby McGuire but then Brenda informs him that she’s bringing a date to the party, and Kenny loses it.

Will’s at work but still looking for a “manly” gift for Nathan’s birthday.when Kenny comes in. He’s a pharmaceutical salesman with a product that has side effects worse than what it treats. Will lists some of the options that Will has found for Nathan’s gift when Craig, who works at the same insurance company, comes in to tell him that not only aren’t they paying a particular claim but that not claims would be paid that day; it’s in a memo. Kenny notices that Craig is growing a beard to which Kenny objects, because a beard is “my thing.” Will remembers that Lisa liked him with a beard and this is how it’s revealed that Craig called Lisa six times the previous night. Kenny and Craig still want to go out for lunch in spite of the fact that it’s only 10:15 but Will does go out because all the talk of beards gives him a great idea for a gift for Nathan.

At the party, Craig is telling Brenda and Theresa about Lisa, and while everybody is telling Craig that Lisa is just feeling a bit nostalgic for what they had, Brenda totally agrees with him that it is a call for help and that he needs to make some sort of a gesture, that when you realise that someone is your soul mate it is forever. Kenny says that Brenda used to say that he was her soul mate she tells him that her soul mate is coming soon and he is bringing lemon bars. There’s a first meeting between Kenny and Grant that really shows a certain amount of perfect pomposity on Grants part, and which is hard to explain in words. Later, when Grant is shooting hoops with some of the kids, Kenny decides to challenge him to a game of one on one. It does not go well for Kenny. every time he tries to make a shot Grant blocks him (not surprisingly since Grant is tall and perfectly muscled, while Kenny is short and not muscled at all.

The crisis suddenly erupts when Nathan unwraps Grant’s gift. It’s a shaving kit. Will’s gift for his son, something that only a father would get his son (he thought) was a shaving kit. So he has to make a mad dash to the mall to get a replacement gift, and he takes Craig and Kenny with him, with Craig driving. Suddenly Craig announces that he needs closure with Lisa. Coincidentally (not really) they’re right in front of the church where Lisa is getting married. Will needs to be back for the cutting of the cake so he gives in and let’s Craig go in the church. Lisa is in the middle of her vows when Craig bursts in singing “Brown Eyed Girl”. Soon after he, Will and Kenny are rushing for the car, with an angry mob of groomsmen following them, yelling “You’re dead.”

Back at the house Will gets everybody in the house just as the angry wedding party shows up and demolishes his mail box. They want “the brown-eyed girl,” meaning Craig. Kenny wants him to give himself up while Craig is about to call the police. Then Nathan says “Dad” and Will decides that the three of them will go out to confront them, because that’s what their fathers would have done, because “they were real men, not the over evolved generation of pantywaists we’ve become.” Craig will stay on the porch while Kenny will go through the garage and get Nathan’s hockey stick to cover Will’s flank. Then Grant wants a job. Kenny doesn’t want him involved but Will tells him to stay on the porch with Craig. Grant says he’ll do something cool. Kenny can’t find the hockey stick; the best he can come up with is a pink pogo stick. The two groups stare each other down when suddenly Grant charges off the porch and tackles the groom and two of the other men. Later as Craig, Kenny and Will are congratulating themselves, we find out that he’s the only one who actually got into a fight, which was why he was the only one actually arrested. Brenda then tells Kenny that they are leaving; they have to go bail out Grant…and Kenny had better have his ATM card because they’re going to need bail money. Finally, after everyone leaves, Will has some time with Nathan. Turns out that between the party and the fight (and kissing a girl named Samantha in the “bounce house”) it has been the best day of his life. Will is about to apologise for not getting Nathan a gift when the boy reveals that Theresa said that the game was from Will. He can’t get it unwrapped so Will takes out his pocket knife and suddenly he realises what the perfect gift would be. He passes down “the old Mohaska” to his son just as his father passed it down to him.

I can’t fault the cast of Man Up. This is a Grade A cast in a Grade F series. Dan Fogler is a Tony Award winning Broadway actor, while both Mather Zickel and Christopher Moynihan have extensive experience both in series and in film roles, as has Amanda Detmer. And I’ve always been impressed by Terri Polo in just about anything that she’s done, either comedies like Sports Night and dramas, including the last season and a half of of The West Wing where she played Helen Santos. She has a nearly chameleon-like quality that allows her believably take on a variety of roles an not only be believable in them but to sometimes make me fail to recognise her in a role until I look at the credits. And while Henry Simmons will always be Detective Baldwin Jones (from NYPD Blue) to me he was almost ideally suited to play the all too perfect (if not necessarily too bright) Grant. Part of the problem is that he has to play that role, just as all of the other actors have to play their characters they way they do.

A big problem that the pilot had was that it was simply not funny. In fact there were places where it was catastrophically unfunny. The scene where Craig went into the church was cringe worthy, as was the scene where Grant charges into the weeding party. The scene where Kenny “played” basketball with Grant didn’t make me feel any sympathy for Kenny at the same time that it didn’t make me feel anything at all about Grant. I don’t really know how to feel about that scene. It’s sort of like watching someone goading a peaceful animal into charging and then feeling ill-served that it attacked. And yet, in watching that scene play out the way that it did, I don’t feel any sympathy for Grant because of the way that he was introduced.

But the biggest problem in the writing is with the characters. I don’t feel any emotional attachment to any of them. There's nothing about any of them that I fell that I can relate to, and they are too self-centered and self-aware. In their own ways, Will, Kenny and Craig are all doofuses. No sane man would take a lunch with a former girlfriend who is about to get married as a “cry for help” or an effort to rekindle an old relationship the way that Craig does. And Kenny, who plays the angry divorced guy, is still so “whipped” by his ex-wife that despite seemingly trying to “lay down the law” he ends up paying the bail for her new boyfriend. Grant is basically “The Old Spice Guy” brought into the everyday world, and even then it is a caricature rather than a character with any real dimension. And while Henry Simmons has the ideal look to portray him, and he did a good job with it, it’s not exactly a character that you can deal with in large doses.

And the two female characters don’t come off very well either. Brenda is a bitch, and not in the pro-feminist badge of pride sense that the word can have if said in the right way. She delights in treating Kenny like dirt and humiliating him at every opportunity. In fact that’s the reason – maybe the only reason – why she’s dating Grant. She treats Craig just as badly by encouraging his delusion that Lisa wants to reconcile with him. The only reason I can see for her taking that action is to see the “fun” when Craig takes the advice of the only person who agreed with him. And Theresa is only slightly better. Her best friend is Brenda, someone who takes pleasure in messing with Theresa’s brother. She’s the one who undercuts Will when she says that his grandfather fought in World War II and his father fought in Vietnam but he just plays video games on a console and uses pomegranate body wash. Theresa calls Will and his friends “man…ish” And the thing is that the qualities that she presumably finds unmanly are undoubtedly the qualities that she found attractive in the first place.

It is the concept that is probably the worst part of Man Up. The basic notion, that modern man are “an over-evolved generation of pantywaists,” is a running theme through a number of series. It was the basis of the late and unlamented How To Be A Gentleman, and of the ABC series which precedes Man Up, Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing. I think that the idea that men in general are becoming less masculine, or “man…ish” as Theresa puts it, is a fallacy. Maybe it’s a by-product of the feminist movement and the or maybe it’s just a result of a misguided view of what being a man entails. When Will tells his friends that their Vietnam War vintage fathers (and presumably their grandfathers, the World War II fighters) wouldn’t have called the police when there was a mob of angry groomsmen on their lawn threatening to beat Craig to a pulp, he was wrong. They would absolutely call the police. (Of course if they had met Craig, they might well have thrown him out to the mob, but that’s a different story.)

Man Up fails in some of the most important ways. The characters are poorly drawn and in several cases are unlikable. At best they are only mildly engaging, and the leading male characters were people that you didn’t really want to know (and hope that other people don’t thing you’re like). The humour was at best weak and at worst depressingly unfunny, and median edged closer to the latter than to the former. In a year which has produced a number of good comedies (several of which have featured strong female characters) this is particularly bad show. If you’ve watched the first episode – or worse the first two episodes – do yourself a favour and don’t watch any more. If enough people do that maybe this abomination will go away.

Falling Angels

2011-10-09T06:01:00.002-06:00

I wasn’t sure if I should start writing a review of ABC’s revival of Charlie’s Angels. There is a definite sense that the show is not long for this world. I certainly wouldn’t bet on it getting a full season order. Based on what I’ve seen it doesn’t deserve one. It is one bad piece of television.

The original Charlie’s Angels ran from 1976 to 1981 and featured Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett-Majors (as she was then known) and Jacklyn Smith as three young women who had gone through the police academy but found the reality of their lives as cops less than fulfilling – writing parking tickets, acting as crossing guards and doing office work – until the mysterious Charlie Townsend took them away from all that. The show used the same plot all the time; the women go undercover to solve the crime of the week along with their “handler” (for lack of a better term) Bosley. Somehow the cases all took place in locales where the women had to be skimpily dressed and with minimum of “support”. Farrah Fawcett-Mjaors once said, “When the show was number three, I figured it was our acting. When it got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra.” It was the epitome of T&A TV from Fred Silverman. In fact when Shelley Hack replaced Kate Jackson on the show and ratings started to fall, Hack was fired; it was rumoured at the time that super-model Hack was fired because she didn’t have enough to jiggle. She was replaced by Tanya Roberts (who did have a lot to jiggle) and ratings continued to fall. ABC insisted that the show was empowering to women by showing them as being capable and in non-traditional roles. The series was later rebooted as a pair of theatrical movies starring Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz as women who, although not trained as police officers, had various skills that the never seen Charlie (played in the original series and the movies by John Forsythe) felt would be more useful as private detectives than in their traditional fields. While the original series played it fairly straight – well as straight as any show featuring three women solving crimes wearing as little in the way of clothing as the broadcast censors of the time (who were apparently more liberal than they are today if Farrah Fawcett’s comments about bras is accurate) – the movies are described as “action comedies.”

The new Charlie’s Angels has ex-criminals as it’s lead characters instead of former cops or experts in various fields. Abby Simpson (Rachel Taylor) is a former cat burglar, Eve French (Minka Kelly) is a former street racer, and Kate Prince (Annie Ilonzeh) is a former Miami detective who was caught taking bribes. Even Bosley (Ramon Rodrigues) – now given the first name of John, and not looking at all like David Doyle or even Tom Bosley – has a past. He’s a hacker who now uses his talents for good. He still acts as the Angel’s handler but in this version of the show he goes out on cases and even goes undercover. Canadian actor Victor Garber supplies the voice of Charlie (replacing Robert Wagner) and is not seen at all; in the original you nearly always saw Charlie, or at least his hand or the back of his head or the women who surrounded him.

In the most recent episode of the show, Charlie has an assignment for the Angels. They have to find a missing investigative journalist, who just happens to be the woman who broke the story of police corruption that resulted in Kate being caught. The woman, Amanda Kane (Tahnya Tozzi) was last seen aboard a cruise ship. So naturally the Angels go undercover on the ship. Kate becomes a cruise director on the ship while Abby temporarily takes on the role of a IT tech on the ship. This allows her to break into the ship’s security office and hack into the video records, which she downloads to Bosley. Eve takes on the role of a passenger. Abby gets her upgraded to the suite that Amanda had previously occupied. This not only gives them a base to operate from but also gives them the chance to search the room at their leisure. In the room they find a mysterious plastic cylinder. On the security files they find Amanda on the ship and discover her being manhandled by a man who they identify as the croupier in the ship’s casino. Eve goes to the casino and wins a lot of money playing Blackjack – card counting of course – which attracts the croupier’s attention. they head back to his suite, which gives Eve the chance to search it. She finds a cylinder like the one they found in Amanda’s room, this one containing an unusual flower. She takes a photo of the flower with her cell phone.

Bosley and the Angels somehow link the croupier with four major crime figures who are also aboard the ship. They decide to have Bosley replace the one man that the croupier hasn’t met by having Eve “incapacitate” during a massage. Bosley is given one of the flowers by the croupier which gives him entry into the suite. They’re there to bid on a mysterious product but to ensure security, not only are they stripped of their weapons but any electronic device they may have and then are drugged. They disappear from the ship only to wake up on an island.

Needless to say, the Angels and Charlie are anxious when Bosley doesn’t check in. Conveniently there are only three islands near where the ship was when Bosley disappeared. They’re privately owned but while two are owned by Hollywood celebrities, one is owned by the mysterious Morgan Finch. Moreover they are able to determine from satellite imaging that one of the buildings on the island is radiating a great deal of heat. Somehow Charlie arranges to get the Angels off the cruise ship and onto a boat which allows them to infiltrate the island to find Bosley and hopefully Amanda.

The big building that is radiating so much heat is a huge greenhouse and refining operation. The mystery flower – still unnamed – produces a drug that Morgan Finch (D.B. Woodside) calls Island Ice, something that he describes as being like Heroin on steroids. Finch is auctioning off exclusive distribution rights for the whole country to one of the four criminal cartels represented by the people brought to the island by the croupier. Everyone but Bosley seems eager to bid without even knowing that the drug was legitimate. He was the only person to ask for evidence that the drug was as potent as Finch said it was. Finch provides proof in the form of the only person currently addicted to the drug: Amanda Kane. Unfortunately when the auction restarts it halts again when the croupier brings in a cell phone with the picture of the man that Bosley is supposed to be replacing, who of course looks nothing like, him.

On the island, armed with high powered weapons the Angels infiltrate into the combination greenhouse and processing lab. They proceed to split up with each taking on a different job. Abby will look for Amanda, Kate will search for Bosley, and Eve will try to destroy all of the plants by connecting the irrigation system into a barrel conveniently labelled “Poison.” In short order all three of them get captured before they even have a chance to use the fancy weapons that they brought with them. And in equally short order they are able to administer a major ass-kicking to the people who captured them. I think the most laughable example of ass-kicking comes when Eve and the guard fight in the greenhouse as the irrigation system – you know, the one now pumping poison to the plants – is drenching them, and incidentally getting into Eve’s mouth. In short order the bad guys are all subdued, Amanda and the captive labour is freed and the Island Ice is destroyed. All by four people. In the coda, Charlie calls to tell the Angels – minus Kate – that the Bahamian government has agreed to extradite Finch to the United States (for reasons I’m not entirely clear on; he operated his growing and processing operation on an island presumably in Bahamian jurisdiction, and the ship that he abducted Amanda from was registered in the Bahamas so that crime was “legally” committed in that country. Frankly I’m not sure what crimes he had committed in the United States. Meanwhile Eve was meeting with Amanda, now going through rehab, although they’re apparently not meeting at the rehab facility. Eve wants to tell her that she’s really happy that she was caught as a dirty cop because it was a wake-up call about what she was becoming. The end.

There are any number of things about this episode and the show in general that I find to be just wrong. In a lot of cases things happen with little or no explanation, as if someone had waved the magic TV wand and no explanation was needed. Except I needed a little bit of explanation. Just as an example, how did the croupier, apparently working alone, manage to get four people from his suite (and incidentally I believe that cruise line employees are required to live in staff cabins on board ship, but that’s minor) to whatever boat took them from the cruise ship to Finch’s island without someone from the ship – passengers, hotel staff or crew – noticing that he was moving four unconscious people around the ship. The magic wand reappeared when Charlie – or someone was not only able to get the Angels off the cruise ship in mid-ocean but also got them a boat and some hi-tech appearing weapons. And of course Charlie apparently has access to real-time infra-red satellite imaging for the island which allows them to find the heat signature of the greenhouse facility. That goes a bit beyond willing suspension of disbelief.

It goes beyond that of course. I’ve watched two episodes of this and quite frankly I don’t really understand the characters because there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of character development. In the second episode (the first that I saw) we met Eve’s former fiancé Detective Ray Goodson, played by Isaiah Mustapha (who should hang on to the Old Spice gig) who may be a recurring character if the show lasts long enough – which I doubt, and in this third episode we met the woman reporter who turned her in. I still don’t feel like I have any grasp of their characters. Of course that may be because the character development of these people are thinner than the actresses who portray them. That’s a real problem. I don’t know if Taylor, Kelly and Ilonzeh are doing a good acting job because I don’t know what the characters are supposed to be.

The writing is bad, as we’ve established, but the concept is also badly realized. The two Charlie’s Angels movies were billed as “action comedies.” The modern TV version of Charlie’s Angels isn’t an action comedy. I was going to say that it would be more accurate to say that it isn’t deliberately trying to be an action comedy, but I can’t because that would create the impression that the show was so bad that it was funny. It doesn’t even qualify as funny by accident. Show producer Alfred Gough, who with his partner Miles Miller created Smallville, has said that he wanted to avoid doing anything “retro” or “campy.” In other words they’re playing it relatively straight. This is a problem because for all that Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg who produced the original series paid lip service to the idea that their show had some sort of feminist quality back in 1976, it was never meant to be taken seriously. I don’t think you can get away from that in a revival – particularly thirty-five years later – unless you do some serious re-imagining of the concept. That’s what Miller and Gough did with the Superman mythos by approaching it as the story of Clark Kent’s development into a superhero. I think a different sort of approach could have worked here as well.

In the past thirty-five years a lot of things have changed. Women’s roles have evolved far beyond what they were when the original Charlie’s Angels debuted, and television’s portrayal of women has evolved as well. In fact television has evolved in a lot of ways. I have to believe that this show would not have been made if it weren’t called Charlie’s Angels. I’m not sure that we needed Charlie’s Angels back at all, but I am absolutely sure that we didn’t deserve to have this version of Charlie’s Angels. Between underdeveloped plotlines with holes that you could march Godzilla through, gossamer thin characterizations, and a determination to make the show much the same as it was thirty-five years ago, the result is indescribably bad. I am literally unable to express just how bad I think this show is forcefully. The good news is that I don’t think it will be around much longer. The bad news is that it took the place of a show that could have been better. The really bad news would be if ABC didn’t have anything better available to them.

Update: As a lot of people expected, Charlie's Angels has been cancelled after airing its fourth episode. ABC will air the remaining four episodes that have been shot. There's no word about what will replace it once the remaining four episodes have aired. At least we found out something about the "new" Bosley and his link to Charlie before it was cancelled.

Polls Closed - NBC Cancels Free Agents

2011-10-06T23:15:00.002-06:00

The second – or maybe the third – series cancelled this year and the first comedy is…

Free Agents

NBC has cancelled Free Agents after four episodes. The American remake of the frankly profane (not to mention nudity filled) series from Britain’s Channel Four lasted four episodes in the United States despite the presence of Anthony Stewart Head who appeared in the original. Just as a matter of interest, the American series lasted 2/3s as long as the British version. For the foreseeable future, Free Agents will be replaced by reruns of NBC`s new comedy Whitney.

Also cancelled today (and the reason why I can’t really decide whether Free Agents was the second or third new series cancelled this year) was The CW`s reality series H8R created and hosted by Mario Lopez. Apparently The CW`s viewer (and given the ratings the network as a whole has been pulling this year the lack of an ‘s’ there is only barely an exaggeration) didn’t care to see “celebrities” confront the people who claim to hate them and convert them into fans.

I didn’t poll on reality shows, but the voting on the comedies was quite lively, with 25 votes being cast. All but two of the shows got votes. FOX`s New Girl and ABC`s Last Man Standing (which debuts next week) had no votes. Suburgatory from ABC, Up All Night from NBC and FOX animated comedy Allen Gregory (which has not yet debuted) had one vote each. CBS`s How To Be A Gentleman had two votes while the network’s 2 Broke Girls and Free Agents both had three votes. FOX live action sitcom I Hate My Teenaged Daughter got four votes and NBC’s Whitney and ABC’s Man Up had five votes each. Last Man Standing, Allen Gregory, I Hate My Teenaged Daughter and Man Up are all yet to debut. Additionally Up All Night and Whitney have been given full season orders from NBC, 2 Broke Girls has received a full season order from CBS, and New Girl has a full season order from FOX.

Update: CBS has announced that production on How To Be A Gentleman will be moving to Saturday nights effective immediately while Rules Of Engagement, which had been scheduled to air on Saturdays will be moving back to the time slot following The Big Bang Theory on October 20th. Production on How To Be A Gentleman will halt after the completion of the show`s ninth episode. According to Deadline Hollywood, "That is effectively a cancellation for the sitcom with the Saturday run qualifying as a burn-off, though CBS never officially cancels a series before the upfronts." For our purposes, while the series has aired only two episodes, the fact that the remaining seven episodes will in fact air, even if it is in the Saturday "death slot," still qualifies as airing more than the four episodes that Free Agents got.

Second Update: CBS has pulled the episodes of How To Be A Gentleman from Saturday nights after a single episode. While the network still has six episodes in the can and won't announce the final fate of any of its shows until the May upfronts this amounts to the cancellation of How To Be A Gentleman with three episodes having been aired, one fewer than Free Agents.

And We Have Winner….Er Loser

2011-10-05T02:42:00.000-06:00

The first show and the first drama to be cancelled this season is…

The Playboy Club

The show was cancelled after three episodes, so it is possible that another show from this fall season will be cancelled in two. Nothing currently airing really screams out for a two episode cancellation however. In terms of the poll, four of you got it right, saying that The Playboy Club would be the show cancelled earliest. However it was tied with Charlie’s Angels (and anecdotally, it seems to me that most of the votes for Charlie’s Angels came after the show started airing), a show which could tie with The Playboy Club. Five other shows each got one vote: Revenge, Unforgettable, Prime Suspect, Grimm, and Hart Of Dixie.

The Playboy Club, which was the first series picked up by NBC Entertainment President Bob Greenblatt for the 2011-12 season will be replaced temporarily by reruns of NBC’s Thursday series Prime Suspect (which is also not setting the ratings on fire) until October 31st when NBC new newsmagazine Rock Center With Brian Williams on October 31st. Since the original plan was to replace The Playboy Club with the new musical based series Smash in the winter, it is likely that Rock Center’s time in the Monday third hour time slot will itself be temporary.

The Dick Van Dyke Show Blogathon: In Praise Of Laura Petrie’s Ass

2011-10-03T14:44:00.000-06:00

I have a confession to make. I am in love with Laura Petrie. And her ass. So maybe not love, maybe just lust.

Now there are a few reasons why this couldn’t possibly work out. For one thing, Laura Petrie is a fictional character. For another thing while I am in love (or lust) with Laura Petrie, I have no particular feelings of either love or lust for the actress who portrayed her, Mary Tyler Moore. I never had a “reaction” to Mary Richards or almost any other character that Mary Tyler Moore has played in her long career. Well maybe the woman she played opposite Robert Wagner in a little known farce called Don’t Just Stand There. But Change of Habit did nothing for me, and she played a hot nun in that, which usually tickles a certain pervy side of me. Certainly I never wanted to sleep with Mary Richards. Finally, even if she were real, Laura Petrie is old enough to be my mother. I know that because her son Little Richie is a year older than I am; well at least Larry Matthews, the actor who played Richie Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show is one year older than me, to the day (August 15th; Rose Marie, who also starred on the show was also born on August 15th, but over thirty years before Larry and I). Never the less, had the term MILF existed in 1961 when the Dick Van Dyke Show began airing, Laura Petrie would have been one.

I pretty much discovered The Dick Van Dyke Show while I was an adolescent. Oh sure, I was around when the show was in its first run. In fact it was even shown on the one TV station that we had in Saskatoon in the 1960s. But I didn’t see it at that time. It was on relatively late in the evening, and my family had a rather absurd idea of when a five year old should go to bed. So I saw the show as an adolescent and we all know how adolescent boys are. It might have made a difference if I had seen the show as a child…but probably not.

Now lest you think that I was (and remain) a horndog with the mind of a sex obsessed fifteen year old, I would like to inform you of two things. The first is that I was and remain fully cognizant of the brilliance of this series. While many shows fixate on either the work environment or the home as the center of the action, with the other locale relegated to a secondary position if it’s shown at all (that’s one of my huge complaints about most modern procedurals – the protagonists seem to live entirely at and for work). The Dick Van Dyke Show mixed domestic stories in which the work cast would barely appear, and work based stories in which Laura and maybe (but not always) Richie would show up but you’d never see Jerry and Millie. And then of course there were the “neither fish nor fowl” flashback episodes most of which took place during Rob and Laura’s courtship and first year or so of marriage at Camp Crowder.

The second is that it took me a while to fully realize just how hot Laura Petrie (and Mary Tyler Moore) was. It is a testament to how brilliantly cast this show was that Moore was placed amongst a brilliant and experienced comedy and entertainment ensemble cast and she keeps up with the others as a comedic actor in spite of her age and her lack of experience in doing comedy. In fact she really hadn’t done much acting at all – one movie (X-15), Sam on Richard Diamond, Private Detective, a “role” that was almost entirely dependent on pure sex appeal – we usually only saw her legs and heard her voice. She’d also done a variety of guest appearances on dramatic shows of the period. The Dick Van Dyke Show was her apprenticeship as a comedic actress and she took to it like a duck to water. It is a testament to her abilities that I at least really noticed her as a comedic actress, with a comedic cry second only to Lucille Ball’s (“O-o-o-oh Ro-o-o-ob!” versus “Bwaaaa!”) before I really became aware of how sexy she was.
I think I have to date my realization of how damned sexy Laura Petrie was to the episode “It May Look Like A Walnut” and in particular the scene in which Laura slides – nay surfs – prone on the tidal wave of walnuts that issues from the Petrie closet, not unlike Fibber McGee’s closet…if Fibber had filled his closet with walnuts. I have to confess however that having managed to find the scene on YouTube, it isn’t quite what I remember thanks to the way that they shot the seen. In my memory I was convinced that they shot the scene with the camera facing the door, so that Laura would be seen emerging in profile. Instead they shot it with the camera facing the junction of the interior wall and the exterior wall, so that we saw her emerge in a three quarter view. It’s not quite as sexy – I was sure that we saw her ass in that scene more than we did – but it does get the job done, particularly when she props her head up and starts talking to Rob. The sight of her there is something to behold.

There are a lot of things at the root of Laura Petrie’s sexual attractiveness. At the time she started the show Mary Tyler Moore was 23 though she lied about her age to get the part. She’s playing a slightly older woman of about 27 or 28 when she started in the role. (In preparing for this I tried to figure out Laura’s age using Larry Matthew's’s actual birth year of 1955 as the year of Richie’s birth; by my calculations 17 year-old Laura – claiming to be 19 – met and married Rob in 1952 or ‘53 making her about 27 in 1961 though claiming to be 29. It’s not really exact though.) She was a professional dancer as was Laura. Here I have to admit my fondness for dancers; my two big Star Trek crushes are Gates McFadden and Nana Visitor, both dancers who became actresses. Dancers generally have lithe taut bodies. Much of Laura’s wardrobe accentuates these features. The famous Capri Pants, which were supposedly used because Mary Tyler Moore insisted that the women that she knew didn’t wear dresses or skirts around the house, accentuated her body shape, particularly her butt. No wonder an adolescent Rob Reiner found it impossible to resist the desire to grab her ass (a deplorable act of course, but at least a little bit understandable). Laura’s wardrobe has a certain elegance to it. The Capri Pants were usually matched to a plain white blouse or a pull-over sweater. When she was out of the house and wearing a skirt or a dress it was usually simple and unadorned; the simple black dress or something not particularly flashy. (Mary Richards didn’t have that but then she was a creature of the 1970s when no one could manage elegance; Mary was a victim or fashion, fashion and polyester.) And then there are those rare occasions when she wears a dancers tights. Wow! As for her hair, there is something irresistible about that short but feminine cut that Laura has. It’s eminently practical for a young housewife of course, but it works with her face in a way that Mary Richards’s “big hair” really doesn’t.

Of course once you start thinking of Laura Petrie as sexy, you can’t help but see it everywhere, and a lot of questions emerge. Why the twin beds? If I were married to a woman like Laura there is no way that I’d want to sleep separated by a nightstand. In fact I’m pretty sure that I’d be like Reverend Brooks in Dick Van Dyke’s 1971 film Cold Turkey (and if you’ve seen that movie you know exactly what I mean!). And then of course there’s the question of why Richie was an only child, given the nature of 1961 birth control technology.

Well, I think we all know the answers to these questions. The TV industry was busy pretending the sex didn’t exist in 1961. The only onscreen married couple with a double bed were Ozzie and Harriet and that’s because they were married in real life too. It wasn’t until Dick York bedded down with Elizabeth Montgomery in the same double bed on Bewitched that an actor and an actress who weren’t married to each other were seen in a double bed. That was the 1965-66 season, the year after The Dick Van Dyke Show ended. And adding a baby to the cast – the natural consequence of married life and double beds, was pretty much unthinkable too. I’m pretty much convinced that shows in this period only added babies when forced to by the actress getting pregnant. After all, Tabitha and Adam Stevens coincided with Elizabeth Montgomery’s two real life pregnancies. Of course, given the lack of continuity on the show – and indeed most shows of period – had Laura gotten pregnant the baby would most likely have been born and then all evidence of his or her existence would have vanished from the show like Rob’s political career (he beat Wally Cox in an election for city council in New Rochelle), Richie’s dog, the family goldfish (who actually had a speaking part in one episode) the rock in the basement that kept Rob from having a pool table until they needed a basement pool table for an episode, or Jerry and Millie’s kid… or was it kids.

I think that it may be in the first season of Mad Men that one of the characters says that women are either Marilyn or Jackie, referring to Marilyn Monroe or Jacqueline Kennedy. Set in 1960, the first season of Mad Men is almost contemporary with The Dick Van Dyke Show in terms of period although of course Mad Men is a modern recreation and the attitudes expressed may be a reflection of modern attitudes with modern knowledge of John F. Kennedy’s relationships. Nevertheless there’s a nugget of truth there. Laura Petrie is clearly modelled on Jackie Kennedy in terms of her hair and clothing sense (but done on a comedy writer’s budget). I think that there’s an extra element to Laura Petrie that I can’t really put my finger on that appeals to me.

And in truth it isn’t just her ass.

Show Debuts - September 26-October 2

2011-09-26T12:59:00.000-06:00

After last week when shows were debuting either for the season or for the first time ever, things have settled down. But no quite to normal. We have eight shows starting their seasons this week, with four of those being series debuts. And as yet there’ve been no public rumblings of shows being cancelled. Compared with the last few seasons that’s a surprise. When will the shoes - and shows – start to drop?

Monday, September 26th

8-10 p.m. Series Debut of Terra Nova on FOX
8-9 p.m. Season Debut of Gossip Girl on The CW
9-10 p.m. Series Debut of Hart Of Dixie on The CW
9:30-10 p.m. Season Debut of Mike & Molly

Wednesday, September 28th

8:30-9 p.m. Series Debut of Suburgatory on ABC
9:30-10 p.m. Season Debut of Happy Endings on ABC

Thursday, September 29th

8:30-9 p.m. Series Debut of How To Be A Gentleman on CBS
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of Private Practice on ABC

New Series Synopses

Terra Nova is the long anticipated (since it was supposed to preview in May, much longer anticipated than was hoped) new series from Steven Spielberg. In the not too distant future the Earth is nearly uninhabitable, used up by people. A potential new start exists thanks to a scientific discovery that apparently opens a portal into Earth’s past, allowing a colony to set up in the age of the dinosaurs – Terra Nova. But all is not perfect in paradise.

Hart Of Dixie from The CW is a drama about a young woman doctor who, when she doesn’t get the surgical residency she was counting on is forced to take an offer that she would have normally rejected – to work in a General Practice in a small town in Alabama. Trouble is that the man who offered her the job has died…and left his half of the practice to her, but she’s not exactly popular with her new partner, and not particularly popular in her new “fish out of water” role.

Suburgatory is a comedy from ABC. When a single father finds condoms in his 16 year-old daughter’s room he decides to move from the city to the suburbs to find a better life. What they find is a place that seems too perfect, and a different sort of problems from those in the city.

In the new CBS comedy How To Be A Gentleman, the writer of an advice column in an Esquire like men’s magazine finds himself facing the prospect of being fired when the magazine is sold to a new publisher who wants it to become “younger and hipper.” To save his job he has to make his column more”modern and sexy” which means becoming friends with a personal trainer who used to beat him up in school.

Show Debuts - September 19-25

2011-09-19T16:38:00.002-06:00

The Emmy Awards mark the real start of the new TV season. Here are the series debuting on all the networks this week (all times are Eastern).

Monday, September 19th

8-10 p.m. Season Debut of Dancing With The Stars on ABC
8-10 p.m. Season Debut of The Sing-Off on NBC
8-9 p.m. Season Debut of How I Met Your Mother on CBS
9-9:30 p.m. Season Debut of Two And A Half Men on CBS
9:30-10 p.m. Series Debut of 2 Broke Girls on CBS
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of Castle on ABC
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of Hawaii Five-0 on CBS
10-11 p.m. Series Debut of The Playboy Club on NBC

Tuesday, September 20th

8-10 p.m. Season Debut of The Biggest Loser on NBC
8-9 p.m. Season Debut of Glee on FOX
8-9 p.m. Season Debut of NCIS on CBS
9-10 p.m. Season Debut of NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS
9-9:30 Series Debut of The New Girl on FOX
9:30-10 p.m. Season Debut of Raising Hope on FOX
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of Body of Proof on ABC
10-11 p.m. Series Debut of Unforgettable on CBS

Wednesday, September 21st

8-10 p.m. Series Debut of The X-Factor on FOX
8-9 p.m. Season Debut of The Middle on ABC
9-10 p.m. Season Debut of Criminal Minds on CBS
9-10 p.m. Season Debut of Modern Family on ABC
9-10 p.m. Season Debut of Harry’s Law on CBS
10-11 p.m. Series Debut of Revenge on ABC
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of CSI on CBS
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of Law & Order: SVU on NBC

Thursday, September 22nd

8-9 p.m. Series Debut of Charlie’s Angels on ABC
8-8:30 p.m. Season Debut of Community on NBC
8-9 p.m. Season Debut of The Big Bang Theory on CBS
8:30-9 p.m. Season Debut of Parks and Recreation on NBC
9-10 p.m. Series Debut of Person Of Interest on CBS
9-9:30 p.m. Season Debut of The Office on NBC
9:30-10 p.m. Series Debut of Whitney on NBC
9-11 p.m. Season Debut of Gray’s Anatomy on ABC
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of The Mentalist on CBS
10-11 p.m. Series Debut of Prime Suspect on NBC

Friday, September 23rd

8-9 p.m. Season Debut of Nikita on The CW
8-9 p.m. Season Debut of Kitchen Nightmares on FOX
8-9 p.m. Series Debut of A Gifted Man on CBS
9-11 p.m. Season Debut of Dateline on NBC
9-10 p.m. Season Debut of CSI on CBS
9-10 p.m. Season Debut of Supernatural on The CW
9-9:30 p.m. Season Debut of Fringe on FOX
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of Blue Bloods on CBS

Sunday, September 25th

7-9 p.m. Season Debut of Extreme Makeover Home Edition on ABC
8-9 p.m. Season Debut of The Amazing Race on CBS
8-8:30 p.m. Season Debut of The Simpsons on FOX
8:30-9 p.m. Season Debut of The Cleveland Show on FOX
9-9:30 p.m. Season Debut of Family Guy on FOX
9-10 p.m. Season Debut of Desperate Housewives on ABC
9-10 p.m. Season Debut of The Good Wife on CBS
9:30-10 p.m. Season Debut of American Dad on CBS
10-11 p.m. Series Debut of Pan-Am on ABC
10-11 p.m. Season Debut of CSI: Miami on CBS

New Series Synopses

2 Broke Girls is reminiscent of The Odd Couple. Two young women from very different backgrounds are forced to live together because of the one thing they have in common: they’re both broke. Somehow the former rich girl and the one who has always had to work two jobs just to make ends meet have to survive each other and maybe become more successful as a team than they were as individuals.

The Playboy Club is a a period drama focusing on events at the hippest night club in 1960s Chicago, the Playboy Club. The women who wear the bunny uniform are a major part of the show’s focus and there’s a bit of a mystery attached as well.

The X-Factor is the American version of Simon Cowell`s British talent search sensation.

The New Girl stars Zooey Deschannel as a woman living – platonically – with three male roommates after catching her model boyfriend cheating on her. Jess is a quirky young lady re-entering the dating game with the help of her three new roommates and streetwise model, and Jess`s best friend Cece.

Unforgettable stars Poppy Montgomery as Carrie Wells a former cop who has hyperthymesia and is incapable of forgetting anything. An ex-cop now living in New York she goes back to being a cop after she becomes involved in a murder investigation led by her former partner who was also her lover.

Revenge is billed as a modern take on the classic The Count Of Monte Cristo. Under the name Emily Thorne, Amanda Clark returns to the Hamptons house where she grew up, seeking revenge on the people that she blames for the wrongful conviction and death of her father and the destruction of her family.

Charlie’s Angels is a remake of Aaron Spelling’s 1970s T&A classic, this time produced by Drew Barrymore who was one of the stars of the two movie remakes of the series. This time the Angels aren’t unfulfilled women cops, but ex-cons with talents that make them an effective team as private investigators.

In Person Of Interest a mysterious software billionaire has developed a computer program that predicts the identity of people connected to violent crimes that will take place in the future. To help him prevent these crimes before they happen he hires a presumed dead former CIA agent to effectively become his leg man.

Prime Suspect is an American remake of the classic British series. Maria Bello plays the new leader of a team of detectives whose new squad isn’t enthusiastic about taking orders from a woman, particularly a woman that they suspect has slept her way into her new job.

A Gifted Man is the story of a self-absorbed doctor whose encounter with the ghost of his ex-wife changes his life. He helps to run the free clinic that she had worked at and encounters people who really need his help.

Pan-Am is another period piece, this time looking at the lives of a group of flight attendants – or stewardesses as they were known then – in the 1960s when air travel was glamorous and the stewardess was the symbol of that glamour, even if the reality was nowhere near as good as the image.

It’s A Wonderful(?) Night For Emmy

2011-09-19T05:10:00.000-06:00

There are a lot of adjectives to describe the 2011 Emmy broadcast; controlled, planned, anal.

Boring.

Most of all boring. And I think it was boring because it was so controlled planned and precise. There were no obvious moments when comedy bits were dumped because the show was running overtime, The show seemed as well timed out as a Japanese train schedule and there was no room for deviation from timetable. It showed. The result was that it was an almost total lack of spontaneity. Even those moment that were supposed to feel spontaneous – the speeches by the winners – felt as planned out by the producers. The only winner to be played off was Kyle Chandler and that’s because he started to walk off and then realised that he forgot to thank Connie Britton for five years as Mrs. Coach. With one exception – Outstanding Actress in a Comedy – they didn’t even let the presenters actually read the names of the nominees they were going to be presenting to. You know, just in case someone screws up a name or laughs or something. How anal retentive is that! And yet they somehow managed to find time for the guy who named the winners – just in case we missed it when the presenters said the names – to make silly lame jokes. We don’t want this. As Joe Friday never said “Just the facts man.”

There were a couple of major musical numbers. One by Lonely Island it didn’t understand at all. I felt like Temperance Brennan on Bones: “I don’t know what that is.” I had to look it up and as a result…I’m feeling old and I still don’t understand the link that the song had to television. The other musical number was The Canadian Tenors – who I’ve also never heard of – singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during the Memoriam sequence. Now you’ll excuse me for saying so but I dislike this tendency, seen here and at the Oscars, of having the Memoriam segment underscored with live singers, particularly when the show’s director cuts between the memorial clips and the singers, which is exactly what they did this time.

I suppose we should discuss Jane Lynch’s hosting duties at the Emmys. Given what was allotted to her, I guess that she did an adequate job. FOX tried to recreate the excitement of last year’s opening musical number based on “Born To Run” but it didn’t come off quite right. Or maybe I just missed it because I was plating my dinner (in a manner that would drive Gordon Ramsay to apoplexy). She had a brief monologue at the beginning and from time to time has a couple of jokes, some referring to her sexual orientation. She also had a sketch later in the show wearing a black wig about why New Jersey is the setting for so many shows – among them House, Real Housewives of New Jersey, and of course Jersey Shore. Suffice it to say there was also a reference to another show that took place in New Jersey which had a controversial final scene. On the whole I wish that Jane Lynch had been given more to do on the show. Or maybe just better stuff to do.

Turning to the actual winners, the Comedy categories were dominated by Modern Family. The show won in every comedy category except Outstanding Actor and Actress in a Comedy, and that’s only because the show’s ensemble cast was all nominated in the supporting categories. Ty Burrell won for Supporting Actor in a Comedy while his onscreen wife Julie Bowen won as Supporting Actress. In one of the only “spontaneous” moments in the broadcast Melissa McCarthy won as Outstanding Actress in a Comedy, and received a tiara and roses in addition to the Emmy over the winner of my reader poll, Amy Poehler. That was a real shocker, and unlike a lot of people I’m not going to say that she won it for the movie Bridesmaids rather than Mike & Molly. Steve Carell failed to win an Emmy for playing Michael Scott on The Office, losing to Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory, who won the reader poll unanimously.

The Variety, Music and Comedy Series awards were lumped together with the Reality-Competition Category. I don’t care much for the Variety, Music and Comedy categories, although I noted a couple of things; they cut the segments naming the writers in this category – often the funniest damned thing in whole damned Emmy Show – down to 15 seconds each, thereby eliminating virtually all of the humour in those bits; and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart won both of the categories and absolutely no one was shocked or surprised. Mostly they were resigned to the fact. The Amazing Race won the Reality-Competition Series category; the reader poll said So You Think You Can Dance, but then only three votes were cast.

The Drama categories were, for the most part surprising. Martin Scorcese won the directing Emmy for the first episode of Boardwalk Empire, and that shouldn’t be surprising until you realize that Scorsese has lost six Emmy in various categories before winning this one. The first big surprise was Jason Katims winning the Writing category for Friday Night Lights. You could say, “after five year’s of being as great as it was, it’s about time,” but considering that there were two episodes of Mad Men nominated – including “The Suitcase” – not to mention the highly touted Game of Thrones, well it was surprising. Peter Dinklage won for Game of Thrones in the rather weak Supporting Actor in a Drama category, while Margo Martindale won as Mags Bennett in Justified. In the days leading up to the actual awards she became a critical favourite for the Emmy in a category with some truly strong actresses. In maybe the only non-surprise in the Drama categories, Julianna Margulies won the Lead Actress Emmy for The Good Wife, just like my reader polls said she should (but again, only three votes; I wanted Elizabeth Moss to win). The biggest surprise maybe of the whole night came in the Lead Actor in a Drama category when Kyle Chandler won for playing Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights over Jon Hamm (my readers’ choice), Steve Buscemi and the others.

I have little interest in the Movie and Miniseries categories, mainly because I see so very few of the entries in the category, and inevitably one or two shows dominates the category. This year was no different; I was actually on the edge of falling asleep while these categories were being announced. Downton Abbey won for Writing and Directing, and Supporting Actress (Maggie Smith). HBO’s Mildred Pierce (which was mercilessly panned by many critics) won for Supporting Actor (Guy Pearce) and Lead Actress (Kate Winslet). The dominance of these two was broken when Canadian Barry Pepper won the Lead Actor for playing Robert Kennedy in The Kennedys.

This left us with the three "Best Show” categories. Despite the threat from Game of Thrones, and The Good Wife – which won my reader poll – Mad Men won the Outstanding Drama Series for the fourth straight year. Since it’s only been on for four years, perhaps we now know what it will take for something else to win the category – Mad Men just has to be ineligible (which it won’t be next year). Downton Abbey won for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie (*yawn*). Finally, in the last, and most shocking (not) award of the night Modern Family took the Emmy as Outstanding Comedy Series.

If I were to apply my usual yardstick for awards show – did the show feel as if it was longer or shorter than it actually was – then Sunday night’s Emmy Award Show was a failure. It felt like it went on a lot longer than it actually did. I’m convinced that the reason why it felt that way is that FOX stifled the spontaneity of the show. While the networks expect every awards show except the Oscars to fit into a strictly enforced three hour window, I think that FOX was so determined to make it run on schedule – and coincidentally to not cut anything that they had planned – that they sucked all of the fun of the unexpected out of it. And while blame for this sort of thing usually falls onto the host, it does not seem to me that Jane Lynch bears any responsibility for this one. This one is entirely FOX’s failure.

New Polls (2 of ‘em) Up

2011-09-18T03:51:00.000-06:00

I couldn’t set them up as one this time around, and I couldn’t use my usual polling service but these are a pair of polls that I really like running. As always with these polls the premise is simple (like their author!). Simply choose the name of the show that you think will be cancelled after the fewest number of episodes. Note, I didn’t say which show would be cancelled first. The reason is that since some shows debut a week or two (or more) after everything else it is possible for a show to be cancelled after which airs fewer episodes than the first show to be cancelled chronologically. For example, lets say that Show A debuts on September 19th is cancelled three weeks after it debuts. It is possible that Show B, which debuts on October 3rd to be cancelled on October 18th, fifteen days after it debuted. Show A was cancelled first, but Show B aired fewer episodes.

This poll will run until October 16th OR until the first show in each category is cancelled, whichever comes first. As always, feel free to post comments on why you voted the way you did with this post.

Poll Result - Outstanding Drama Series

2011-09-17T21:17:00.000-06:00

For the final Emmy Poll of the year, I asked which show would win the Emmy as outstanding Drama Series. This time around there were more votes cast than in most of the polls this year, but two fewer than in the Comedy series poll.

Eight votes were cast. Receiving no votes were Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, and Friday Night Lights. Receiving two votes (25%) was Mad Men. And in a tie for the lead with three votes each (37.5%) were The Good Wife and Game Of Thrones.

This is a tough category for me. I’ve seen three of the shows – obviously not the two that are on HBO and not Dexter either. I’ve seen a couple of episodes of The Good Wife, and have watched both Friday Night Lights and Mad Men sporadically since they debuted. I will say that I’ve seen some episodes of this past season of Mad Men and found it excellent as always. In fact, if the nominations for Outstanding Drama Series were based on single episodes, as so many of the Emmy categories are, I think a great many people would support Mad Men if they nominated the episode “The Suitcase.” Viewed overall I personally think that Mad Men is one of the best shows on TV and if I had voted, it probably would have gotten my vote. And as good as Friday Night Lights has consistently been, I don’t think that it can overcome the handicaps that it faces having been on DirectTV and then being a bit of an afterthought for NBC. That leaves us with two HBO series and The Good Wife. I haven’t seen enough of The Good Wife to effectively judge how good it is, but I suspect that it will do better in the acting categories than it will here. Is the Academy going to reward a broadcast network show when there are so many cable shows including bridesmaid Mad Men? I’m afraid I have to discount the chances for Game Of Thrones because of the long-standing Emmy prejudice against Science Fiction and Fantasy genre shows. (But is that just my reaction to Fringe never having a nomination in any of the main Emmy categories.) By default then I think the big HBO contender is going to be Boardwalk Empire. The three most likely winners are Boardwalk Empire, The Good Wife and Mad Men and because I’ve seen more of Mad Men, that’s the one I’m going with.

Todd Mason has a different opinion:

THE GOOD WIFE has weak moments, but remains the best drama on US television, despite impressive work on the part of the folks at FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and MAD MEN and DEXTER.
BOARDWALK EMPIRE has an excellent cast for the most part, and shows why an excellent cast can't carry a series without decent scripts.

For what it’s worth Todd (less than the price of a cup of tap water) I can see your point about The Good Wife, and maybe if I had watched more episodes I’d agree with you more whole heartedly, but I do love my Mad Men. As far as Boardwalk Empire is concerned, I agree with your general premise about an excellent cast needing decent scripts (and/or superior direction) but since I haven’t seen the show I will refrain on commenting on whether that’s the case with this show.

I want to have a new poll up for the “Cancellation Derby” in the next day or so, although it might turn out to be two polls running simultaneously for Comedy and Drama. Be back soon.

Show Debuts - September 12-18

2011-09-12T12:10:00.000-06:00

The summer is finally over. For most of us Labour (Labor) Day marks the end of summer and the beginning of Fall – although based on the weather around here last week you couldn’t tell; we had the hottest days of the year last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. For TV the beginning of the Fall season is supposed to be right after the Emmy Awards on Spetember 18th. However, some shows will be debuting from four of the five US networks. The only one not to debut new shows is FOX (although ABC’s debut is a bit of a cheat; 20/20).

So here is what’s coming this week (all times are Eastern):

Tuesday, September 13th

8-9 p.m.: Season Debut of 90210 on The CW
9-10 p.m.: Series Debut of Ringers on The CW
10-11 p.m.: Season Debut of Parenthood on NBC

Wednesday, September 14th

8-9:30 p.m.: Season Debut of Survivor on CBS (originally scheduled for one hour but extended to 90 minutes)
8-9 p.m.: Series Debut of H8R on The CW
9-10 p.m.: Season Debut of America’s Next Top Model on The CW
10-10:30 p.m.: Series Debut of Up All Night on NBC
10:30-11 p.m.: Series Debut of Free Agents on NBC

Thursday, September 15th

8-9 p.m.: Season Debut of The Vampire Diaries on The CW
9-10 p.m.: Series Debut of The Secret Circle on The CW

Friday, September 16th

10-11 p.m.: Season Debut of 20/20 on ABC

New series synopses:

Ringers is the much anticipated return of Sarah Michelle Gellar to network TV. She plays estranged twin sisters, Bridget and Siobhan. Bridget a recovering addict who is a key witness in a murder trial goes to visit her estranged twin sister Siobhan. Siobhan is married and wealthy, but her perfect life isn’t perfect, as Bridget discovers when she assumes her sister’s identity after Siobhan apparently dies at sea.

H8R is a new reality series from The CW hosted by Mario Lopez in which celebrities confront their biggest haters and try to make them realize that their animosity is misguided. featured celebrities include Snooki, Kim Kardashian and Jake Pavelka, while others booked for the series include Kat Von D, Eva Longoria, and Barry Bonds.

Up All Night from NBC stars Christina Applegate and Will Arnett in a comedy about a couple trying to cope with parenthood in the modern world. In this case that means a career woman mom with a vulnerable and needy boss played my Maya Rudolph, and a stay at home dad.

Free Agents is NBC’s remake of a British comedy. This version stars Hank Azaria as Alex, a newly divorced man and Kathryn Hahn as a woman whose fiance recently died. They have a drunken one night stand and the series deals with the awkwardness between the two of them which is magnified since they work together at an advertising agency run by Stephen (played by Anthony Stewart Head, the only hold-over from the original British cast).

The Secret Circle follows The Vampire Diaries on The CW, which is only fitting since both are based on the novels of L.J. Smith. The story focuses on Cassie Blake, who moves to live with her grandmother in Chance Harbor Washington. There she discovers that not only is she the latest in a long line of witches, but she’s the last member needed to complete a coven of teenaged witches known as “The Secret Circle.”

New Poll - Outstanding Drama Series

2011-09-08T03:28:00.001-06:00

Right now I have a headache and heartburn, largely caused by things that this computer is doing to me, so let’s keep this short and sweet. It is our last Emmy Poll and as always there is only one rule: vote for the series that you think should win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series rather than for the show you are sure will win…if they aren’t one and the same that is. I enjoy getting your comments and responding to them here, so please feel free to comment on the relative merits of the nominees.

Deadline for this poll is Saturday, September 17 at Noon (not that I’ve ever made the Noon deadline myself of course). That’s the day before the Emmys are broadcast on FOX.

Poll Results - Outstanding Comedy Series

2011-09-08T03:04:00.000-06:00

I nearly forgot about this one and I need to get on with it. There were ten votes in this category. The Big Bang Theory received no votes. In a three way tie for third place with one vote each (10%) are Glee, from FOX, and The Office and 30 Rock, both from NBC. In second place with three votes (30%) was ABC’s Modern Family. But the winner in this category with four votes (40%) was NBC’s Parks & Recreation.

I’ve stated often enough that I don’t watch a lot of sitcoms. The rare exception is The Big Bang Theory which I find hilarious. Thus I’m not really equipped to discuss the relative merits of the various shows that are nominated. However, this time around we have enough comments to get a feeling of the people who voted…even if a few “spammy” comments slipped through.

First up we have this from Todd Mason:

COMMUNITY was actually better than this slate, but only a bit better than PARKS and 30 ROCK. GLEE and MODERN FAMILY don't belong on the ballot.

I happen to agree with you about Glee. The thing is that I don’t know where the show really fits. It gets lumped into the comedy area because it has music and the inevitable association of “musical” is with “comedy.” Just my opinion of course.

Next this statement in support of this stance from Roger Owen Green:

I don't care what they say: Glee is not a comedy! (And neither is Nurse Jackie.)

I agree, particularly about Nurse Jackie. Of course the show wasn’t nominated as a Comedy this year though star Edie Falco was.

My good friend Toby O’Brien had this to say:

Although I enjoy all but "Glee" among the nominees, but only "Parks & Recreation" really took it to a higher plane this year. "Modern Family" and especially "30 Rock" had too many off episodes.....

I’ll take your word for it.

Alex wrote this:

I have to go with Parks & Recreation. Over the past few years, it's found its groove and stepped up its comedy game. Glee is, although entertaining, fundamentally not a good show. It focused on cheap, instant laughs and thrills rather than character development.

I think that the comments about Glee may be right on the mark. Based on some reported slippage in the ratings this past year it may be that the public is growing tired of the Glee “formula.”

Finally we have this from Tom Myler expressing a minority opinion:

Contrary to what of people think, The Office did great this past season! The final arc after Michael Scott left was hilarious.

This definitely does seem to be a minority opinion, even to your point about the arc after Michael Scott left. While there were some moments that professional critics found to be excellent, like the episode where Dwight ran the Scranton branch, many thought there were too many gimmicks in those final episodes. Adding to that is some negative reaction to a lot of the earlier episodes.

New poll up in a few minutes.

New Poll - Outstanding Comedy Series

2011-08-28T01:24:00.000-06:00

I had planned to do this poll of undeserved nominations, and came upon a sudden realization that this year at least it isn’t as easy to find undeserved nominations. Oh they’re there. They always are. Here’s the thing though; they aren’t as easy to find (this year at least) as the Emmy snubs. More to the point the egregious and obvious ones are pretty obvious. I mean I think we can all agree that when an actress appears in every episode of the first season of a show, the way that Cloris Leachman did in Raising Hope, she shouldn’t be nominated as the Outstanding Guest Star in a Comedy no matter what the rules in the category allow. That’s about as “undeserved” as they get. As a result, what I’m going to do is expand the two series categories to ten days rather than one week.

First up is the Outstanding Comedy Series. As always the rules are simple: vote for the show that you think should win not necessarily the show you think will win. I will be running and answering any comments that I might receive in this category so long as those comments aren’t comment spam. Deadline for this poll is Wednesday September 7 at Noon (approximately).

Poll Results - The Biggest Emmy Snub

2011-08-27T16:50:00.002-06:00

Last week I switched up the Emmy polls by asking what people felt was the biggest Emmy snub this year. I offered ten possibilities and we had three votes cast. The polls haven’t exactly been popular this year…sigh.

But on to the results. The following got no votes: Fringe, Community, Survivor: Redemption Island, John Noble, Mayim Bialik, and Delroy Lindo. And the winners – it was a three-way tie – are Anna Torv, Nick Offerman, and Kyra Sedgwick with one vote each (33.3%)

If this were the sort of poll where I’d cast a tie breaking vote, though it pains me to say it – because I am a huge fan of what Anna Torv has done on Fringe – I would have to cast my vote for Kyra Sedgwick. I think it was nearly criminal that Sedgwick, who was nominated and won in this category last year didn’t receive a nomination, while Mariska Hargitay has earned her eighth nomination (and won once) for Law & Order: SVU and Kathy Bates was nominated for Harry’s Law. I’m sorry but this just doesn’t seem right to me.

We had two comments about this category. Tim Tipton wrote the following:

Here's a great show that is always snubbed by the emmys and I never hear anyone speak in it's defense: it's always sunny in philadelphia. I think because it's low brow humor, it is overlooked. But Danny DeVito should at least get an emmy. He's funny.

I know that there are a lot of fans of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia although it’s not a show that I have seen, and not one that, from the descriptions, particularly appeals to me. Still, it’s hard to argue against Danny DeVito in just about anything that he does. He is invariably funny. That being said, I think that he and the show have two things running against them. The first is that the show is a very dark comedy and to a large degree the characters are not particularly likable. The Emmys are not kind to dark comedies and to characters that appear to have few redeeming qualities. In other words it’s too dark to get the approval of the Academy.

The other comment came from Ben who wrote:

There are a lot of deserving should-be candidates here. As I commented earlier in the year, it reflects badly on the ATAS that neither Community nor Fringe get any nominations at all. Nick Offerman deserves recognition, but at least P&R has Amy Poehler.

I voted for Anna Torv. In Fringe's first season she played Olivia Dunham as a tightly controlled, unemotional cop, and many people thought she just couldn't act. Cut to season 3 and not only has Olivia gone through amazing development, but Torv plays a different version of the character with a whole other arc. Critics start to sit up and take notice, but the Emmys remain oblivious.

I happen to agree on both points. As I mentioned, I love what Anna Torv has done on Fringe, and cast my “non-vote” for Kyra Sedgwick only because the failure to recognize here work on The Closer this year is particularly magnified because she won the Emmy in her category last year. That being said, I can offer an explanation why Fringe – and by extension Torv – didn’t get nominations. Fringe is, to be frank, a low rated genre (aka Science Fiction) show on a broadcast network, and those three things combined are anathema to the Television Academy (I don’t consider Lost a genre show in this sense, although it increasingly became one as it went on). Despite some amazing groundbreaking work, neither Sarah Michelle Gellar nor Buffy The Vampire Slayer were ever nominated in the acting or series categories (and Joss Whedon was only nominated for Outstanding Writing in a Drama once…for the episode Hush, which was essentially a silent movie). I think you have to go back to 1997 when Gillian Anderson won for The X-Files to find the Emmy giving an award to a “genre” series in one of the major categories.Even if you include Lost, it only won as Outstanding Drama Series in its first season, only had one nominee in the Actor in a Drama Category, and won two Emmys in the Supporting Actor category. No actresses were even nominated for the show. But of course Lost had the advantage of being a highly rated show. If Game Of Thrones manages to win a major Emmy – and I think it’s possible – one of the biggest reasons for its success will be that it was on HBO and got a reasonably good audience for that premium network. Being on HBO gave it prestige, while being on FOX (on Friday night no less) does nothing to help Fringe.

As for Community, the big problem is probably that it is the lowest rated of the NBC Thursday comedies. When you look at the ratings, you find that Community had a lower number of total viewers and a lower 18-49 rating than the cancelled Outsourced (Community 4.475 million viewers (115) and 2.0/6 in 18-49 (81); Outsourced 5.187 million (99) and 2.4/6 in 18-49 (59)). And while the Emmys aren’t supposed to be influenced by ratings, the fact is that to a degree they are. I don’t think the voters felt they could justify having two thirds of the nominees in the category coming from NBC and so decided to ignore the lowest rated one.

New poll – the flip side of the Snubbed Poll – up in a couple of hours. Right now I need a nap.

The PTC Hates The Playboy Club - Big Surprise, Right?

2011-08-25T11:56:00.000-06:00

My summer has been filled with unfulfilled promise. I promised to recap Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – unfulfilled. I bought a small notebook to take notes when I had thoughts on stuff to write when I’m not near the computer – unfulfilled. I haven’t had any real thoughts that desperately needed to record. But then the PTC came out with their latest campaign and suddenly I have something to sink my teeth into. You see, the PTC has – sight unseen of course, except for some promo clips – demanded that NBC affiliates follow the lead of KSL in Salt Lake City and refuse to air NBC’s new series The Playboy Club. Given the organizations’ attitude to anyone even peripherally associated with Playboy the magazine or Playboy the Corporation, this is about as surprising as the sun rising in the east. Of course this could have been a little bit more timely and would have been had it not been for my recent illness and the subsequent necessity to catch up with other things that I had let slip during that period.

The PTC’s letter to affiliates is a long and meandering one filled with the PTC’s usual mixture of hyperbole and not well veiled threats. Just to add to the mix they have statements from Shelley Lubben’s faith based Pink Cross Foundation, an organization dedicated to “helping victims of the pornography industry.” The statements have a particularly weird disconnect when you remember that the series is about the Playboy Club in Chicago in the 1960s and not Playboy Magazine in the 2010, or indeed in any era.

The letter begins with a number of statistics about the damage that porn addiction – defined as watching more than 11 hours or pornography per week – does to the addict and to society in general. While I won’t go into the actual percentages, I will say that the total number of “porn addicts” is less than two tenths of the American population. Which may explain why the rest of the paragraph refers to percentages rather than actual numbers. But the next paragraph is firmly tied to those figures.

I call these statistics to your attention because I assume you must be unaware of how damaging the pornography industry is to our society, to our families, and to individuals. Otherwise, how on earth could you, in good conscience, agree to broadcast in your community a program that glorifies and glamorizes this insidious industry?
I am referring, of course, to NBC's plans to air "The Playboy Club" this fall and am writing to urge you, on behalf of the Parents Television Council's 1.3 million members, to preempt the program in your community.

The PTC has received correspondence from NBC affiliates that describe the series is “a sophisticated series about the transitional times of the early 1960s and the complex lives of a group of working-class women.” These are dismissed as “canned responses,” which is laughable coming from an organization that provides its members with form letters to send to the FCC over every real or imagined violation of what it thinks is the broadcasting law. Nevertheless the PTC carries on with its assumption that The Playboy Club is about the pornography industry.

Putting a veneer of sophistication on an industry that exploits women and destroys families is not laudable, it is disgraceful. In what manner does such the airing of such material reconcile with your public interest obligations as a broadcast licensee? Whatever positive spin you may wish to put on the series, it is undeniably a betrayal of the trust you have built over the years with America 's families - the owners of the broadcast airwaves that you will be using to force this content into the living rooms of every family in your community.

Where the PTC letter really got “good” (in a strange definition of good it must be admitted) was when they introduced the statement from Shelley Lubben of the Pink Cross Foundation, an organization “dedicated to helping the victims of the pornography industry” (they don’t happen to mention that the organization is a “faith based initiative”). Lubben, a former actress in pornography stated:

"What's shown in The Playboy Club is not real...The series looks like it's all cute, taking place back in the old days. It seems harmless, but then they show a quick clip of three people going at it in the bathroom. NBC is breaking the law with this show. They're not meeting FCC standards."

Strong words, and they’re coming for someone who not only doesn’t understand the very basics about the show that she’s complaining about but also seems to have only such understanding of FCC standards as she has been fed by organizations like the PTC.

Much of the rest of the PTC letter is the same old stuff that the organization peddles. They promise that the organization will be “carefully reviewing every episode, and will urge its members to file complaints with the Federal Communications Commission about any content that may be in violation of broadcast decency laws.” Then they add this little threat to affiliates:

Please be mindful that it is the affiliate, not the network, that will ultimately bear the financial burden of an FCC fine should any of the content be found to violate broadcast decency laws.

First of all let’s address the specific claim of “three people going at it in the bathroom.” I actually found this scene in the promo clip provided by NBC (which I’m including below) – it happens around 1:58 – and beyond the fact that it is apparent that Ms. Lubben needs glasses (I see a man and a woman and a reflection in a mirror, not three people), it is also clear that this scene is little more than something that you could see in a soap opera most days…when there were soap operas. There is nothing here that the FCC could possibly object to: no bare breasts, no exposed excretory organs, no visible genitalia. The scene is benign, and shows far less than what can be seen on TV in most countries of the world, including Canada. Now that by no means guarantees that the PTC would not rise in righteous indignation over this scene, but there’s no there there.

Here’s the real issue. The PTC has had – dare I say it – a hard-on about anything even peripherally connected to the Playboy organization. When they were attacking the show My Name Is Earl, they inevitably mentioned the presence of Jamie Pressly (who played Earl’s ex-wife Joy), but every time they mentioned her, they took pains to mention that she had appeared nude in Playboy –I seem to recall that they referred to her as a Playmate, though she never was. What they rarely if ever mentioned was her work as an actress. It was a strategy designed to diminish and denigrate her as an actress and by extension the show, creating the impression that the only reason she was hired was because she had appeared in Playboy and was only on the show to titillate younger viewers.

Now here are the facts about The Playboy Club; not the tales that the PTC and its fellow travellers want you to believe about the show and not the salacious impressions that Shelley Lubben wants to see that aren’t really there. The show deals with the Playboy Club in Chicago in the early 1960s. It does not appear to deal with the magazine except peripherally (in the preview clip one Bunny says she’s going to be the first “chocolate” Playmate), or with photos of some Playmates from the 1950s that often didn’t show actual nudity. While there is more than a little criticism about the Clubs from a feminist point of view – notably the Gloria Steinhem article when she went undercover as a Bunny – the fact is that the aspects that the PTC claims will be seen on the show were never a part of what happened at the Playboy Clubs. There was no nudity at the clubs, and the rules about contact in the clubs between clients and Bunnies were quite explicit. Indeed a certain amount of what is shown in the clip – the two people making out in a bathroom, and the clients groping one of the Bunnies – would never have happened in the actual Playboy Club. The truth is that the real Playboy Clubs were high class private night clubs (the private nature being assured by the $25.00 annual membership fee – apparently only about 21% of the people who had memberships actually visited one of the clubs), that offered some of the biggest names in jazz and other entertainment.

Were the Bunnies sex objects? Undoubtedly, even if they were chaste “look but don’t touch” sex objects. Was it demeaning? Certainly Steinhem thought so. The question that Steinhem didn’t address was whether she would have found working another night club that didn’t bear the name Playboy equally demeaning. Was the association with the name “Playboy” the reason why she wrote her critical article? I have to think that the fact that the link with Playboy Magazine was a motivator in her decision to go undercover as a Bunny. She might well have found conditions at other nightclubs of the period equally demeaning (if not more so in many cases), but without the name recognition that the Playboy Clubs had.

And this of course is equally the point in the current situation in which the PTC is threatening NBC affiliates to try to get them to drop the TV show The Playboy Club from their stations. If the show was called something else and was about waitresses in a different nightclub, but maintained the storylines and the scenes shown in the preview clip, would the PTC be as outraged as it is by the show? The most likely answer is, no they would not. They might regard it as salacious after they saw an episode but I sincerely doubt that they had the same “pre-debut” fixation on the show. In this particular case, “a Rose by any other name” would not get nearly the attention, either from the PTC or for the PTC

I have no idea of whether or not The Playboy Club is a good show or not. I’m not privy to any more information than most of you are, and in fact because I’m Canadian it might even be less information, depending on whether or not NBC will allow Canadians to view clips of the show. I fully expect it to be a poor knock-off of Mad Men, lacking the qualities that make Mad Men first rate TV, like good writing, compelling characters and a vision that is more than just skin deep (an expression that undoubtedly fits in more than the obvious way). However I am willing to give the show a chance to at least present itself before I judge it, and I refuse to pass judgement based entirely on the name, and then look for proof wherever I can find it… or manufacture it. This is more than the PTC, with its vendetta against anything that is associated – even at second or third hand – with the word “Playboy” is able to say.

New Poll - Emmy Snubs

2011-08-20T18:48:00.002-06:00

This is a totally new concept on my part for an Emmy Poll. Basically it’s intended to partially fill the extra two weeks before the awards ceremony. I could find two other categories to use – the Reality Host and Miniseries or Movies categories spring to mind – but those categories tend not to draw the votes. The other acting categories are both paired Male/Female and Comedy/Drama, so you’d need four weeks to do something like the Outstanding Supporting Actor/Actress in a Drama/Comedy properly.

Instead I want to look at what I regard as mistakes made by the Emmy nomination process. The first poll is about snubs – nominations that weren’t made for people that are deemed deserving. Mostly by me, I must confess, although there are some cases that I’ve been influenced by what others have said.

So here’s the list of snubs and the categories they should be nominated in:

Fringe – Drama Series
Community – Comedy Series
John Noble – Fringe – Supporting Actor In A Drama
Anna Torv – Fringe – Lead Actress In A Drama
Mayim Bialik – Big Bang Theory – Supporting Actress In A Comedy
Nick Offerman – Parks And Recreation – Supporting Actor In A Comedy
Survivor: Redemption Island – Reality-Competition Series
Kyra Sedgwick – The Closer – Lead Actress In A Drama
Delroy Lindo – The Chicago Code – Supporting Actor In A Drama
Kunal Nayyar – The Big Bang Theory – Supporting Actor In A Comedy

The rules – such as they are – this time around are a little different. Because there’s no category at the Emmys for their biggest snubs, we really can’t vote for who should win. Instead, I want you to vote for the show or actor/actress that you feel was most deserving of the nomination that they didn’t get. And in the comments, please feel free to tell me why you chose who or what you chose. Or feel free to tell me that I’m all wet and that none of these people or shows deserved a nomination. If you have a different candidate for the biggest snub mention that too.

Oh, one more thing I should mention: I recently signed up for a service called Sendlove.to which is a system that “lets visitors rate and express opinions about people in the news – politicians, athletes, celebrities, authors and more.” If you see an article on the page with a bunch of other articles you won’t see this, but if you view the article alone on a page you will see some of the names highlighted (in pink I believe). Hovering your mouse over the names will bring up a ratings box where you can “vote up” or “vote down” that person, and you can also make comments about them. These comments are separate and distinct from the comments on the blog. I’m giving this a try because it seems like a neat idea but I doubt if it will have the sort of effects that the originators of the service have promised. Still it should be fun.

Deadline August 27, 2011 at noon (or sometime around that time).

Poll Results - Outstanding Reality-Competition Series

2011-08-20T18:38:00.000-06:00

We had the most votes cast in this category than any of the others so far this year – six. And those votes were pretty well spread out, but we did have a winner. Lifetime’s Project Runway received no votes at all (and I’m going to drop in an “I’m not surprised” for reasons that I’ll make clear shortly). The Amazing Race, American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and Top Chef each picked up one vote (16.6%). But the big winner with two votes (33.3%) is So You Think You Can Dance.

This is a bit of a puzzle to me I confess. I don’t watch the show. Indeed of the six nominees I only watch about three, and one of those – last year’s winner the original Top Chef – only sporadically. So You Think You Can Dance is the only one to run during the summer so there’s a part of me that thinks that people could be voting for this summer’s season – which I‘ve heard was great – rather than last season’s. And if there were more voters I’d suspect it even more. As it stands I just have to believe that people like the performance based aspects of So You Think You Can Dance more than I do.

I didn’t vote this year, or – and I’m sure you know this – there would have been a tie between So You Think You Can Dance and my favourite Reality-Competition series, The Amazing Race. That show has so many dimensions beyond what I think you see in the other shows in this category. I am afraid however that the show could use a bit of “freshening” to keep it on top. I’ve also said that even I would be hard pressed to vote for The Amazing Race or any of the other contenders in this category if the Redemption Island edition of Survivor had been nominated. It is rare when you see a player in any of these Reality-Competition series play as close to a perfect game as Boston Rob Mariano did in that season of Survivor. It was a thing of beauty and it ought to have been recognised.

New poll up shortly. It’ll be a bit different.

New Poll - Outstanding Reality-Competition Series

2011-08-14T04:24:00.003-06:00

This is the fifth of this year’s Emmy Polls, not that there are very many people participating in them. The question this week is who should win the Emmy in the category of Outstanding Reality-Competition Series. This category was an upset last year when Top Chef beat the only other show to win in this category The Amazing Race.

Just to remind anyone who is planning to vote of the “rules”: please vote for the actor that you think should win the Emmy in this category, not necessarily the one that you think will win it. Please feel free to comment on why you are voting the way that you are voting. If you comment I will run them.

Deadline for this poll is about noon on Saturday August 20th, although if the pattern holds, I won’t get around to doing anything with the poll results until a few hours later.

Poll Results - Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama

2011-08-14T03:48:00.003-06:00

I had some stuff that I planned to get written over the past seven days, including that article on Lucille Ball. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get that accomplished. The reason is – and there really is no synonym that really conveys this nor is there a genteel way to put it – I felt like shit most of this past week. I’m still not fully up to snuff but I feel a lot better right now than I did even 24 hours ago and that was a little better than I felt most of the week.

Enough of that. There were three votes cast in this week’s poll on who should win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama. Steve Buscemi, Kyle Chandler, Hugh Laurie and Timothy Oliphant received no votes. Michael C. Hall from Dexter has one vote (33%). But the winner is Jon Hamm with two votes (66.7%).

I think that Jon Hamm is the person who should win it, which is after all the way the poll has been written. Assuming that Hamm submitted the episode called The Suitcase for Hamm (as well as for Elizabeth Moss) then there is definitely some “hi-test” acting in the episode from both. Even if you take the season as a whole rather than a single episode for Hamm though this year has been an outstanding year for him. Don Draper was plunged into the darkest of dark places (including what was in my opinion his nadir – a few drunken moments of fumbling with his secretary) and managed to emerge bent but not broken, and probably no better than he had been before. As I said it was a great season for him.

Having said all of that, I don’t think that even with the absence of Bryan Cranston Hamm is going to win. I think that the likely winner will be Steve Buscemi. I think there are three basic reasons for this. The role of Nucky Thompson is a good one; Buscemi is a movie star, but one best known for his work in smaller, independent movies (which should appeal to the TV Academy’s snobbery) and; his show’s on HBO. Call me a cynic but that adds up to something that a better performance might have trouble trumping.

I had a couple of reader comments that I thought I should get too, both from Ben. First, on this category:

Jon Hamm's mix of cockiness and self-doubt as Don Draper carries it for me. A few years ago Hugh Laurie would be the best in a walk, but the scripts on House have been beyond his saving lately.

I think I agree on both points. As we know, Emmys in the acting categories are based on a single submitted performance so even though an actor’s performances might be superlative – or in the other extreme as you have said, beyond saving by an actor – it is the quality of the single episode submitted for him. At least how they’re supposed to be judging. Laurie’s writers have always produced one or two episodes of “Emmy Bait” for him every season. While I think that House has slipped over years (I still haven’t watched the end of this season, it’s just not a priority. I am also convinced that the writers have managed to give Laurie his two episodes.

Ben also sent this one on his vote in last week’s Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama category:

Since I didn't comment when voting, I'll own up to being the Connie Britton vote. Her performance seems to be a perfect example of invisible acting. You don't see her acting, you see a working woman behaving the way she would in the office and at home.
Moss is always deserving of praise, and I wouldn't be upset if Margulies won. But since this is the last chance to reward Britton, she's who I went with.

I think your view is valid but it’s tinged with a bit of sentimentality. I wouldn’t be unhappy if Connie Britton were win the Emmy – she deserved to be nominated since the first episode of the first season – but as good as she is, I guess I just prefer Moss.

New poll up in a few minutes.

New Poll - Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama

2011-08-07T05:25:00.000-06:00

This is the fourth of this year’s Emmy Polls, not that there are very many people participating in them. The question this week is who should win the Emmy in the category of Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama. This category would seem to be wide open given that last year’s winner, Bryan Cranston is ineligible as his show Breaking Bad did not air a new episode during the period covered by the 2011 Emmys.

Just to remind anyone who is planning to vote of the “rules”: please vote for the actor that you think should win the Emmy in this category, not necessarily the one that you think will win it. Please feel free to comment on why you are voting the way that you are voting. If you comment I will run them.

Deadline for this poll is about noon on Saturday August 13th, although if the pattern wholds, I won’t get around to doing anything with the poll results until a few hours later.

Poll Results - Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama

2011-08-07T05:13:00.000-06:00

I sort of put off posting this until now because I was working on a post about Lucille Ball’s Biggest Mistake (and no, it wasn’t the topless photo) in hopes that I’d finish it in time to post it on her 100th Birthday. I failed, but I should have that article up later today.

For now the subject is the poll for Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama. Following this year’s trend we had only three votes cast and no comments. *Sigh* And the results are as follows. Kathy Bates, Mireille Enos, Mariska Hargitay, and Elizabeth Moss received no votes. Connie Britton got one vote (33%). And the winner was Julianna Marguilies from The Good Wife with two votes (66%).

This is actually quite a good category for broadcast TV with half of the nominees coming from broadcast. Regrettably I think it is also a category with a high percentage of poor nominees. I’m thinking specifically of Kathy Bates who has been nominated for Harry’s Law, and Mariska Hargitay who is perpetually nominated for Law & Order: SVU. I have got a ton of Good Wife episodes sitting unwatched on my PVR, and I know that it’s both a strong female role and a showcase for Margulies. This would normally put her the lead for the Emmy, and in most years I don’t think anyone would be surprised or unhappy if she won. I think that Connie Britton is also deserving of the Emmy, and should have been nominated the first year that Friday Night Lights was on. This is a bit late, and the “unique” way in which the series survived in it’s last three seasons might count against the show and its stars.

I wouldn’t see anything wrong with Julianna Margulies winning the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama. I just don’t think she should. I don’t vote in my own polls but if I did, my vote would have gone to Elizabeth Moss for her performance in Mad Men. Moss’s character has grown tremendously during the four years that the show has been on the air. More to the point, the Emmy awards are based on a single episode that the actors (and their agents) submit and Moss had one extremely strong episode in the 2010 season (The Suitcase) which critics at the time it aired called Emmy winning material. Not only do I think that Moss should win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama, I think she will win.

New poll up in a few minutes.

Button Button - Adult Style

2011-08-05T03:27:00.000-06:00

I’m trying to decide how I feel about the new ABC summer series Take The Money And Run. On the one hand it was created by Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri with Jerry Bruckheimer, who are the the people behind my absolute favourite reality-competition series, The Amazing Race. On the other hand I don’t really think that it’s going to work as a ratings draw for reasons that have nothing to do with the show itself; it follows ABC’s Wipeout which has overexposed this year by airing for most of the winter and into the summer, and it’s on opposite reruns of CBS’s popular NCIS: Los Angeles and FOX’s Masterchef featuring culinary enfant terrible Gordon Ramsay (in a kinder and gentler role), not to mention NBC’s huge hit America’s Got Talent. Regardless, by the time this is finished and posted we’ll know how it did in the ratings. Here’s the thing though: it doesn’t deserve to do well in the ratings. I much prefer the scripted show that follows it, Combat Hospital and not just because it’s produced in Canada by a Canadian network.

The premise of the game is amazingly simple. Two people (the “Crooks” if you will) are given a briefcase with $100,000 and have one hours to hide it. They have a car with GPS, and cell phones. After the time is up they have to wait for two local police officers (the “Cops”) to “arrest” them and take them to “jail” (the arrest isn’t real of course but the jail appears to be a former detention facility). The local detectives do the leg work, tracking down clues based on the cell phone records, GPS logs and any receipts that the “Crooks” have. Meanwhile the show’s two professional interrogator – 35 year veteran LAPD Detective and novelist Paul Bishop, and 25 year veteran LA County Deputy District Attorney and writer Mary Hanlon Stone – try to break down the “Crooks” stories at the jail. If the “Cops” aren’t able to locate the briefcase with the money in 48 hours the “Crooks” get the cash, but if the “Cops” find the money, they get it. The result isn’t really “Hide and Seek” or “Cops and Robbers” but rather a big game of “Button Button, Who’s Got The Button.” Well really “Button, Button, Where Is The Button.”

The idea sounds at least practical but in my mind it’s the execution that lets it down. In the first of six episodes, San Francisco brothers Paul and Raul Bustamante get the briefcase. Driving around the city in an effort to confuse the “Cops” who will be looking at their GPS coordinates, they also make phone calls to their brother, and two friends (Accomplices) to provide them with alibis. A plan to leave the briefcase in a friend’s restaurant falls because they didn’t know that the restaurant wasn’t open at the time they arrived there. Eventually they bury it in Lafayette Park, and after cleaning their hands and finger nails (because dirty fingernails would point to them having buried the case), they continue to drive around until they are told to stop and wait to be “arrested.”

Once arrested the brothers are taken to “the jail,” fingerprinted, dressed in orange jump suits and locked alone in separate cells. Then the “Cops” – San Francisco detectives Cliff Cook and Dean Taylor – and the Interrogators work out their plans. Cliff and Dean will hit the streets to back track along the brothers’ route as provided by the GPS and check out the alibis provided by the cell phone records. Meanwhile Paul and Mary will start questioning the brothers.

The legwork part of the show isn’t overly interesting. Cliff and Dean start out at Golden Gate Park, where they first “arrested” Paul and Raul. They question some bystanders and rapidly decided that the case wasn’t hidden in the park. They call Paul and Raul’s mom and identify themselves as friends of her sons to get the location of their brother (one of the three people Accomplices). Checking this on the map they decide that the case isn’t there because he lives nowhere near the route on the GPS. Another Accomplice is dismissed because he admits to not having seen them during the hour.

Meanwhile Bishop and Hanlon work out a strategy of how to approach the brothers in their questioning. They decide that Raul is the stronger brother, while Paul (who lives at home with their mother) is the less certain brother. This informs their interrogation style. When she questions Raul, Mary is almost friendly gaining his confidence and is able to pick up on his hesitation when talking about his brother Robert (the Accomplice) which is an indication to her that he’s lying. Meanwhile Bishop is working on Paul. His attitude is more confrontational and it yields results as his lies are more easily observed. Giving them some time to rest – and in Paul’s case to become increasingly tense and ill at ease about his surroundings and what he’s involved in – Hanlon and Bishop work out their next steps. They analyze Paul and Raul’s reaction to their interrogation, how to approach each brother and which one to spend the most time with. They also spend time analyzing the GPS material and the phone calls to give Cliff and Dean information on where there were gaps in movement and conversations. They reason that these gaps represent places where the money could have been hidden. While they maintain a rather easy approach to Raul, allowing him to grow increasingly arrogant in his certainty that the “Cops” are nowhere near to finding the case, they increasingly put the squeeze on Paul. They push in on his personal space and on at least one occasion they go into his cell and close in on him so that he has no space to escape. Eventually, as Paul spends more and more time in his cell alone they can see his confidence crumble. Eventually they make him an offer; he can end his discomfort right now if he’ll only let them know where the case is. He let’s them know that the case is in a park, but not Golden Gate Park, and that they buried it although he isn’t clear where the case is. After being called Cliff and Dean search Lafayette Park and after one wrong choice they finally find the case buried in a clump of bushes.

On his blog, producer Jerry Bruckheimer offered an explanation of some of the rules that the players – particularly the “Crooks” had to abide by. The “Crooks” had to use the vehicles provided. They are allowed to park it and walk places. They are also allowed to use pay phones in addition to cell phones. The “Cops” and Interrogators have access to GPS data and Cell Phone Records. Apparently they also had access to any Tweets or Facebook postings the “Crooks” may have made though that isn’t stated in Bruckheimer’s posts. The briefcase has to be hidden in a location that is accessible 24 hours a day. If they use a person to help hide the case – for example in someone’s house or business – that person must be accessible by the detectives. Finally, the “Crooks” are required to answer all questions asked of them by the “Cops” and the Interrogators, however both the “Crooks” and the “Cops/Interrogators” are both permitted to lie. Indeed lying is expected, and both sides are encouraged to attempt to deceive the other.

There are a number of things about this show that don’t really work and in the end one major problem that has to do entirely with a given episode and is a fault in the very conception of the show. One of the problems is the way the show is set up with the three pairs of people involved: the “Crooks,” The “Cops” and the “Interrogators.” The “Crooks” and the “Cops“ are contestants in a game. They aren’t paid by the production but are participating for the chance to win $100,000, while Bishop and Stone are constant participants, paid by the producers. They are, for lack of a better term, the professionals on the show. And yet they had the bulk of the screen time in the premiere episode – more certainly than Cliff Cook and Dean Taylor and arguably more than the Bustamente Brothers. The show becomes a battle of wits between Bishop and Stone and the Bustamentes while Cook and Taylor are at best supporting characters. If this show was a scripted production (like Castle for example – in fact this example) Cook and Taylor would be Ryan and Esposito. To do the show properly the battle of wits should be the two partnerships who are trying to win the money, while the people from the show would be the ones doing the leg work for them.Of course there’s no guarantee that you’d get real world cops who are strong interrogators let alone photogenic enough and polished enough to be able to split our sympathies between them and the “Crooks.” And yet, for me at least there was a sense that the “Cops” didn’t really do enough to deserve the money.

However for me the overriding problem that the show has is the most basic fault that any show – scripted or reality – can have. The show lacks any real sort of dramatic tension and as a result it is at its root, kind of boring. The development of dramatic tension is something that van Munster and Doganieri seem to do so well in The Amazing Race that I expected to see it here, and I didn’t. Truth be known of course, I’m not really sure where the dramatic tension could have been developed. We know that the “Crooks” will be caught, because it’s built into the structure of the game that they have to hide the briefcase in an hour and then pull over and wait for the “Cops.” This takes the “thrill of the chase” element out of the game. And we really don’t get a confrontation between the two groups who are after the money, the “Crooks” and the “Cops.” They are basically playing to separate games, with the link between them being the “Interrogators.” After they “arrest” the “Crooks” the “Cops” have nothing more to do with them on an interpersonal basis. And they also get much less screen time. What the show eventually devolves into is two people talking (albeit not necessarily the same two people). Such dramatic tension as exists is largely manufactured by Bishop and Hanlon commenting on which person is most likely to crack and the approaches to take. The act (commercial) breaks don’t occur in such a way that they hold our attention by being dramatic “mini-cliffhanger” moments as we see in scripted shows, and indeed in reality competition shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race. These are felt to be necessary in order to bring us back to the show immediately after the commercials. I’m not sure that even the best editors – and for The Amazing Race van Munster and Doganiei employ some of the best editors in the Reality-Competition business – could have built the dramatic tension in this episode. Even the final segment, where Paul and Mary “break” Paul Bustamante and get him to reveal where the location of the briefcase is anticlimactic. The producers “thoughtfully” put up a clock indicating how long remained in the 48 hours. With twenty hours left in the time that the brothers were being held and fifteen minutes left in the show, it wouldn’t take a genius to realize that the “Cops” were going to win the money, and since Bishop and Hanlon had focussed on Paul as the weaker of the two brothers that he would be the one to break. And of course that was exactly what happened.

Take The Money And Run was a series that I was looking forward to because of the people associated with it. I expected van Munster and Doganieri to produce a show as good as their other show, The Amazing Race. If they had produced a show that was even half that good It would be better than most of the summer shows on TV. I thought that Take The Money And Run had potential to be that good. The actual product was far less than what I had expected and hoped that it would be. It is a failure if for no other reason than that it violated the cardinal rule of Television; It’s boring. Worse, it’s boring without the redeeming quality of being smart.

(And as for the ratings, Take The Money And Run finished fourth in total viewers with 5.28 million, and third in the 18-49 demographic with a 1.9/5. the ratings for the other shows in the time period were America’s Got Talent with 11.92 million viewers and a 3.1/9 in the demographic; NCIS: Los Angeles with 8.13 million viewers and a 1.5/4 in the demographic; Masterchef with 5.87 million and 2.4/7 in the demographic; and Shedding For The Wedding with 410,000 viewers and a 0.2/1 in the demographic. Take The Money And Run retained 79.2% of the rating from the new episode of Wipeout that preceded it.)

New Poll - Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama

2011-07-31T03:02:00.001-06:00

This is the third of this year’s Emmy Polls and I hope that I get a better response for this one than I did for the previous two.

As usual, please vote for the actress that you think should win the Emmy in this category, not necessarily the one that you think will win it. Please feel free to comment on why you are voting the way that you are voting. If nothing else it will make a big change from dealing with comment spam about Viagra or the financial scheme du jour. If you comment I’ll run them, and I promise to be gentle when I tell you why you’re wrong.

Deadline for this poll is Saturday August 6th at 12 Noon (or later depending on how busy I am next week – hopefully not as busy as I’ve been these past two Saturdays).

Poll Results – Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy

2011-07-31T02:39:00.000-06:00

Late again. I spent most of Saturday dealing with some outdoor gardening type things, mainly cutting down a lot of trees that have grown along my fences without my wanting them there (well actually my brother did the cutting I did the dumping into an industrial sized garbage bin). For the record I really hate doing outdoor gardening type things even as I recognize that such activities are part of the price of home ownership.

It did keep me from getting this done and also from working on another article that I’ve been writing. This poll was even more disappointing in terms of voter turn-out than the previous poll for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy. Just four votes were cast and not to keep you in suspense, they all went to Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory.

I personally think that Parsons is an excellent choice, though I would have put some consideration in for his co-star Johnny Galecki. While Parsons as Sheldon is clearly the comedy highlight of the show, Galecki as Leonard is a great straight man for Parsons – and most of the rest of the cast – to work off of. And, unlike the case with Two And A Half Men where Jon Cryer has always been relegated (unfairly in my opinion) to the Supporting Actor category while Charlie Sheen was always submitted in the Best Actor category, in this case the people who were in charge of submitting names to the Academy realised that his part was just as important as Parsons’s. Clearly the Academy also chose to recognise Galecki’s work. I still think however that Parsons delivers the funniest performance of any on this show.

All of that being said, and even recognizing that as last year’s winner Jim Parson’s has a definite edge over most of the other nominees in the category, I am not entirely convinced that he will win. This is Steve Carell’s last nomination for playing Michael Scott on The Office. He’s been nominated five times in the past and hasn’t won an Emmy. Admittedly most of those losses were to Alec Baldwin for his work on 30 Rock who is also nominated again this year, but still the failure to recognize Carell has to be a major failing with the Academy. Depending on how sentimental the voters are towards Carell, and how much they want to rectify this omission, I think there is a distinct possibility that Carell will win the Emmy this year.

New Poll up in a few minutes.

New Poll - Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy

2011-07-24T01:20:00.000-06:00

This is the second of the 2011 Emmy Polls, and the category is Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy. I’m a little bit late with this but I’ve had a busy day and I wasn’t at the computer most of the day.

Just to go over the rules again, please vote for the actor that you think should win the Emmy rather than the one you think will win, assuming that the two are different. I will be running any comments that I get on this and any other category with the results posts, so please free me from the purveyors of comment spam (who are targeting older posts now – it’s all about getting your name and sites prominent for searches of course) with comments that I can actually print and debate about.

Deadline for this poll is Saturday July 30th at Noon (or thereabouts, depending on how busy I am next Saturday).

Poll Results - Outstanding Lead Actress In A Comedy

2011-07-24T01:02:00.000-06:00

So we have the first poll results for the Emmy Polls and as is usual we have a low turnout. In this case that means five votes which is six fewer votes that we had in 2010 and exactly the same as we had in 2009. That’s about where the similarity ends however. In 2009 those five votes were spread amongst four different nominees, while in 2010 the eleven votes were spread between five nominees. This time around the vote was split two ways

Receiving no votes this year were last year’s winner Edie Falco from Nurse Jackie, Melissa McCarthy from Mike & Molly, Martha Plimpton from Raising Hope, and three time winner Tina Fey from 30 Rock. In second place, with two votes (40%) is Laura Linney from The Big C. But the winner in this poll is the same person who won it last year, Amy Poehler from Parks And Recreation with three votes (60%).

We had no comments on this poll, so I’m going to have to make a comment based on my own personal sense of the matter. Which is a problem since I haven’t seen any of the performances in this category. I’ll say it right here: I don’t know who should win. I know that a lot of people that I respect like Amy Poehler and Parks & Recreation in general. They also seem to think that Martha Plimpton has done a great job on Raising Hope. But alas I don’t think either one of them will win. After Edie Falco’s win for Nurse Jackie last year, which a lot of people still don’t regard as a comedy I’m pretty much convinced that the Academy is looking for darker comedy. I think the winner is going to be Laura Linney. She’s one of the best actresses around in both comedy and drama and she is a multiple Emmy winner. As far as dark subject matter, I don’t think you can get much darker than a show about a woman with terminal melinoma. The writing is sharp and Linney is, as always, a brilliant performer. Or at least that’s what critics such as Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times and Hank Stuever of the Washington Post have written. I wouldn’t know, but I think that a win for Linney would fit the Academy’s tastes.

New Poll up in a few minutes.

New Poll – Outstanding Lead Actress In A Comedy

2011-07-16T14:26:00.000-06:00

Here’s the first poll in the 2011 series of Emmy Polls. There are nine weeks before the awards are given out on September 18th, and there are seven categories I want to cover. Past experience has indicated that the best results are delivered when I have seven day deadlines for the polls, which leaves me with an extra two weeks. So, I could either extend the deadlines for the Outstanding Comedy and Drama categories or I could come up with something else. What I think I’ll do is come up with two extra polls – Worst Nomination and Most Egregious Omission.

The rules – such as they are for these polls – are simple. Vote for the show that you think should win, rather than the show that you think will win. I will be running and answering comments for these polls so if you have something to say about an actress in this category – why their performance is deserving of a win or why one or more of them shouldn’t be on the list (or maybe even employed) – put it in the comments. I’ll publish them and quite probably respond. Deadline for this poll is July 23 at Noon.

2011 Emmy Award Nominations

2011-07-14T17:41:00.000-06:00

It’s that time of the summer when television begins the final stage of the process to honour itself. The nominations for the 2010-11 Emmys were announced Thursday. Around here this means Emmy polls will be forthcoming once I figure out how much time I have to get the polls up and running. Cable, and in particular premium cable, dominated the Drama categories while broadcast networks dominated the Comedy and reality categories. The made for TV movie and miniseries categories were fully merged and dominated by cable channels, the only exception being for PBS where Downton Abbey and the new version of Upstairs Downstairs got nominations. There are some notable absences from the nominees, the most notable being that last year’s Outstanding Leading Actress In A Drama, Kyra Sedgwick was ignored in that category. As always there are things to say about a nominations process that seems to totally ignore certain networks and genres, but for right now lets take a look at the nominations for the major categories. (Last year’s winner in bold, when nominated.)

Outstanding Drama Series

Boardwalk Empire – HBO
Dexter – Showtime
Friday Night Lights – DirectTV/NBC
Game Of Thrones – HBO
The Good Wife – CBS
Mad Men – AMC

Usually when a previous season’s winner is nominated in just about any category it automatically becomes the favourite to win the next season. That’s what happened with Mad Men last year, and the year before. This time around I’m not so sure. I think that show is one of the favourites, but not necessarily the favourite. I think that Boardwalk Empire has a legitimate shot at the Emmy as well. I’m not so sure about Game of Thrones. It’s a contender, but are they going to vote for this fantasy series, even if it is telling an epic story. The rest, including Friday Night Lights should be happy with the nomination. If I were to call it right now I’d say that Boardwalk Empire is likely to take it.
Egregious Omission: I really can’t think of any. I could and probably should say Fringe, but let’s face it, you could say Fringe in just about every category that it’s eligible for and it gets frustrating. I will say it in other categories though This was a very week year for new network shows and even some of the cable series didn’t fare well. I’ve heard good things about Terriers (but I haven’t seen it) but are Emmy nomination committees – or however it’s being done this year – really going to nominate a cancelled series; I think the answer is no, which also precludes my favourite new series of the year The Chicago Code.

Outstanding Comedy Series

The Big Bang Theory – CBS
Glee – FOX
Modern Family – ABC
The Office – NBC
Parks and Recreation – NBC
30 Rock – NBC

The one major category where the broadcast networks not only outnumbered the cable channels, they shut them out. This has the potential of being a real dogfight, although last year’s Emmy win gives Modern Family a huge advantage. I’ve heard that Glee is slipping and that The Office is nowhere near as good as it once was. Of course the only one of these shows that I watch on a regular basis is The Big Bang Theory so I’m not really in a position to judge. I think it may come down to Big Bang Theory, Modern Family and 30 Rock.
Egregious Omission: Two in fact. First up FOX’s Raising Hope. Not exactly my cup of Earl Grey but there are people that I respect who like it, and it is the most successful FOX live-action half-hour sitcom (see how I structured that to get around Glee?) The show picked up a couple of other nominations so it’s not a total loss, but still. The other missing show is Hot In Cleveland. Yes, Betty White got a nomination but here’s a secret, the show is more than Betty. It features sitcom royalty: Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendy Malick. And yet neither they notr the series get any recognition.

Outstanding Reality-Competition Series

The Amazing Race – CBS
American Idol – FOX
Dancing With The Stars – ABC
Project Runway – Lifetime
So You Think You Can Dance – FOX
Top Chef – Bravo

I love The Amazing Race, but last year’s loss to Top Chef may have opened the flood gates. The two series of the show that aired in the 2010-11 season weren’t the best that the show had to offer. Depending on which season was submitted Dancing With The Stars certainly had drama and fun.
Egregious Omission: Survivor. I’m specifically thinking of the Redemption Island season, also known as the Coronation of Boston Rob. In all honesty I don’t know what the Emmy voters have against Survivor. The show hasn’t been nominated in this category since 2006, and of course it has never won the Emmy

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Stephen Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire – HBO
Michael C. Hall, Dexter – Showtime
Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights – DirectTV/NBC
Hugh Laurie, House – FOX
Timothy Olyphant, Justified – FX
Jon Hamm, Mad Men – AMC

Last year’s winner, Bryan Cranston is ineligible because Breaking Bad didn’t air new episodes during the eligibility period for the 2011 Emmys. This gives Jon Hamm a real shot at the award. The problem is that he’s up against Steve Buscemi in a very showy role for HBO. Timothy Olyphant also has to be considered a contender in the category (although again, it’s not a show I get to see; then again neither is Boardwalk Empire). I lean towards Hamm for just that reason, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Buscemi take it. For the rest, remember it’s an honour just to be nominated.
Egregious Omission: None that I can think of. I really liked Jason Clarke in The Chicago Code but he was totally eclipsed by Delroy Lindo as Ronin Gibbons, and the Gibbons role was really a supporting part so where does that leave Clarke? And of course the show only lasted half a season. Donal Logue in Terriers – which people tell me was a great performance) is in the same boat.

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Connie Briton, Friday Night Lights – DirectTV/NBC
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife – CBS
Kathy Bates, Harry’s Law – NBC
Mireille Enos, The Killing – AMC
Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: SVU – NBC
Elizabeth Moss, Mad Men – AMC

Last year’s winner Kyra Sedgwick wasn’t nominated and that has to be seen as an upset right there. There are two previous winners in the category, Margulies and Hargitay, and I think of the two Hargitay had the best season. Elizabeth Moss is finally nominated in the category that she deserves to be in for the growth of her role in Mad Men but I’m afraid Emmy voters might still see hers as a supporting part. I think Kathy Bates is being nominated primarily on her name and that Oscar she won. I didn’t watch the show but she’s playing a typically quirky David E. Kelly character. The wild card here is really Mireille Enos from The Killing. Again, I haven’t seen it but those very same people that I respect in other categories say that this is a major performance. I’m betting on Margulies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Enos won it.
Egregious Omission: What the hell does Anna Torv have to do to get an Emmy nomination. This season she played a dual role as Olivia Dunham and her alternate reality counterpart “Fauxlivia.” Fauxlivia was also playing Olivia, while Olivia believed herself to be Fauxlivia (having been brainwashed by “Walternate.” And oh yes for a few episodes Torv was playing Leonard Nimoy’s William Bell trapped in Olivia’s body. That has to take some serious acting chops to pull off. Oh, and Kyra Sedgwick too.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory – CBS
Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory – CBS
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes – Showtime
Louie C.K., Louie – FX Networks
Steve Carell, The Office – NBC
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock – NBC

Parsons won last year and I don’t see much standing in his way this year.… Oh wait, there’s Steve Carell who is leaving his role as Michael Scott on The Office. You can’t ignore that as reason for voting for someone particularly since Carell has never won the Emmy despite being the lynchpin of what is generally recognised as one of the best comedies on TV. I think the category is going to come down to Parsons vs. Carell with Alec Baldwin as an outsider.
Egregious Omission: Can’t really think of one. It hasn’t been a great year for new comedies with men in leading roles. As part of an ensemble cast yes, but in leading parts? Not really.

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

Laura Linney, The Big C – Showtime
Melissa McCarthy, Mike & Molly – CBS
Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie – Showtime
Amy Poehler, Parks & Recreation – NBC
Martha Plimpton, Raising Hope – FOX
Tina Fey, 30 Rock – NBC

Okay I’m still trying to figure out how Edie Falco won as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy for a show which doesn’t seem to me to be a comedy. Is Nurse Jackie really a comedy? I don’t think she’ll win this year though. I think that the likely winner this year is the great Laura Linney playing a woman dying of cancer in The Big C. It’s another of those shows with a downbeat subject matter but it works as a comedy.
Egregious Omission: No idea. That shows you how much comedy I watch.

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones – HBO
Josh Charles, The Good Wife – CBS
Alan Cummings, The Good Wife – CBS
Walton Goggins, Justified – FX
John Slattery, Mad Men – AMC
Andre Braugher, Men Of A Certain Age – TNT

Last year’s winner, Aaron Paul, isn’t eligible for the same reason that Bryan Cranston wasn’t. The only people from broadcast TV are Charles and Cummings from The Good Wife, which I don’t watch. The only nominee in this category that I have seen is John Slattery in Mad Men and while it’s a good part I don’t see it winning. I can’t give you a name in this one.
Egregious Omission: Chris Noth. The main male character in The Good Wife. He certainly doesn’t fit in the Lead Actor category because the show is focussed on Julianna Margulies’s character but Noth’s character is a major player in the show. Also Delroy Lindo from The Chicago Code simply because he dominated every scene that he was in so completely that it became his show whenever the character appeared, regardless of who he was playing opposite. And then there’s John Noble who not only is playing someone a little bit nutty (not really mad or insane – nutty really is the best adjective to describe Walter) which is hard enough but he also played the ruthlessly Machiavellian alternate version of Walter Bishop. It’s a bravura performance that never gets recognised for being as good as it is.

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Kelly Macdonald, Boardwalk Empire – HBO
Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife – CBS
Christine Baranski, The Good Wife – CBS
Margo Martindale, Justified – FX
Michelle Forbes, The Killing – AMC
Christina Hendricks, Mad Men – AMC

Interesting category. Panjabi has had a lot to do this season, and the incumbent position is never a bad one to have. Michelle Forbes’s role in The Killing is a powerful one, while Kelly Macdonald’s role as Nucky’s mistress Margaret Schroeder is close to being a lead role. Does Elizabeth Moss moving up to the Lead Actress category help Christina Hendricks by eliminating vote-splitting. And yes, Christine Baranski is never bad. If anyone is going to beat Panjabi it’s probably going to be Michelle Forbes….or maybe Kelly Macdonald….or Christina Hendricks.
Egregious Omission: None that I can think of.

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Chris Colfer, Glee – FOX
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Modern Family – ABC
Ed O’Neill, Modern Family – ABC
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family – ABC
Ty Burrell, Modern Family – ABC
Jon Cryer, Two And A Half Men – CBS

I’m just guessing here, but I suspect that the winner in this category will probably come from Modern Family. Stonestreet has a leg up having won last year but if I wer to pick one of the other actors I’d tip towards Ty Burrell. Interesting that perpetual nominee Neil Patrick Harris isn’t nominated in the category. Not an egregious omission but you could easily dump Jon Cryer as far as I’m concerned.
Egregious Omission: Not really an egregious omission but either of Simon Helberg or Kunal Nayyar could find a place in this category.

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

Jane Lynch, Glee – FOX
Betty White, Hot In Cleveland – TVLand
Julie Bowen, Modern Family – ABC
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family – ABC
Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live – NBC
Jane Krakowski, 30 Rock – NBC

Jane Lynch is hosting the awards this year, and the “incumbent” theory suggests that she has an advantage here. The problem is that I’ve heard that Glee isn’t as strong as it was and that the Sue Sylvester character can wear on you. I know that Sofia Vergara and Julie Bowen are both very funny, but they run into the whole problem of vote splitting. The interesting nomination here is Betty White. She’s much beloved in the industry and her character is extremely funny. In an ensemble cast she stands out. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Betty White take this one.
Egregious Omission: Three, and none are from Hot In Cleveland. The first is Kaley Cuoco from The Big Bang Theory, though her role is so big and essential to the plot that she might deserve a Lead Actress nomination. Admittedly she plays the straight role to Parsons and Galecki but that’s a talent in itself. Also from Big Bang is Mayim Bialik as Amy Farrah Fowler who has been an amazing addition to the show’s cast as Leonard’s girl friend (a friend who’s a girl; no coitus). Her character, the female version of Leonard who wants to be Penny’s “bestie” is something that is hard to pull off. Finally there’s Cougar Town’s Busy Philipps. By turns the character is clueless and wise. There’s something about the character that really works for me.

Outstanding Reality-Competition Host

Phil Keopghan, The Amazing Race – CBS
Ryan Seacrest, American Idol – FOX
Tom Bergeron, Dancing With The Stars – ABC
Cat Deeley, So You Think You Can Dance – FOX
Jeff Probst, Survivor – CBS

Probst won last year and is definitely the favourite for this year in spite of what many feel is a certain sycophancy towards Boston Rob. My personal favourite in this category is Phil Keoghan who has a harder job than Probst in that he has to keep ahead of the racers and sometimes do the activity that they’re doing. Still, the host with the hardest job of all is Tom Bergeron. Not only is he introducing contestants but he is doing a lot more live television than someone like Seacrest is doing. He’s had to react to a lot more situations than Seacrest has as well, including contestants fainting, injuries and wardrobe malfunctions. Probst will probably win, but there’s something to be said for Bergeron getting it.
Egregious Omission: None I can think of. Heidi Klum? Padma Lakshme? Ho hum.

Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series

Bruce Dern, Big Love, HBO
Beau Bridges, Brothers & Sisters – ABC
Michael J. Fox, The Good Wife – CBS
Paul McCrane, Harry’s Law – NBC
Jeremy Davis, Justified – FX
Robert Morse, Mad Men – AMC

I know some of the actors in the category including McCrane, Fox and Morse but I haven’t seen shows so I don’t really want to offer an opinion.
Egregious Omission: Two from Fringe – Leonard Nimoy (or at least his voice since he’s playing an animated character in Olivia’s mind), and Christopher Lloyd as Walter’s favourite musician.

Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series

Mary McDonnell, The Closer – TNT
Julia Stiles, Dexter – Showtime
Loretta Devine, Grey’s Anatomy – ABC
Randee Heller, Mad Men – AMC
Cara Buono, Mad Men – AMC
Joan Cusack, Shameless – Showtime
Alfre Woodard, True Blood – HBO

No real opinion.

Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series

Idris Elba, The Big C – Showtime
Nathan Lane, Modern Family – ABC
Zach Galfianakis, Saturday Night Live – NBC
Justin Timberlake, Saturday Night Live – NBC
Matt Damon, 30 Rock – NBC
Will Arnett, 30 Rock – NBC

I’ve only seen Nathan Lane’s bit on Modern Family, which I liked.
Egregious omission: Nothing really. I loved George Takei’s cameo appearance on The Big Bang Theory (and this also applies to Katie Sackoff’s appearance in the same episode) but it’s too damned short, and there’s really no way to make it more than what it is.)

Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series

Kristin Chenoweth, Glee – FOX
Dot-Marie Jones, Glee – FOX
Gwyneth Paltrow, Glee – FOX
Cloris Leachman, Raising Hope – FOX
Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live – NBC
Elizabeth Banks, 30 Rock – NBC

Opinion no.

The 63rd Annual Emmy Awards will air on FOX on September 18th.

Studio 60 Remembered - The Cold Open

2011-07-12T02:45:00.000-06:00

The second episode of almost every new TV series sees a drop in viewership. It may be small or it may be huge, but the point is that it does happen. Studio 60 took a drop in the ratings. They went from 13.14 million viewers and a 5.0 in the 18-49 demographic to 10.82 million viewers and a 4.4 in the demographic. Moreover the critics who had raved about the Pilot pulled out their knives after the second episode. There were some strongly worded criticisms and in some cases some absurd statements were made by people who really should have known better.

The episode opens at the press conference introducing Jordan to the media, and incidentally formally announcing Matt and Danny the new Executive Producers of the fictional Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. Jordan is fielding questions about her programming philosophy as the new network head. She says that she has three criteria for new programming: “Do I like it. Would my parents like it. If I had kids would I want them to watch it.” If the answer to any one of those questions is “Yes” she’d put it on, if the answer to all of them was “No” she wouldn’t have the show on the network. She deflects a question about Wes’s rant with a little humour before saying that she refuses to comment on an internal matter. Backstage Matt and Danny are waiting to be introduced. Matt is irritated at Danny for sending him home for the weekend where he slept for 28 hours. Matt thinks that that’s time he could have been writing. Moreover Matt is angry that Danny sent Jeannie, one of the cast members home with him to make sure that he was okay. Matt and Jeannie have a sort of “friends with benefits” thing going on when they aren’t involved with anybody else, but Harriet doesn’t know about them, and this seems to matter to him. Matt’s also worried about the reception their hiring is going to get from the public. He heard a caller from Tolucca Lake describe them as “Barbra Streisand loving, Michael Moore worshipping jackasses.” Danny tells him not to pay attention to it. Then with a big build-up about how they’re going to restore Studio 60 to it’s past glory Jordan introduces Matt and Danny.

At the studio Cal has put the live feed of the news conference onto the studio’s internal system and we see the reaction of various people to the appearance of Matt and Danny. Jeannie (Ayda Field) comes into Harriet’s dressing room. It is clear that they are friends, and also that Jeannie hasn’t had the career that Harriet has: when Harriet says “I want my body to look like yours,” Jeannie replies “I want my talent to look like yours.” In an office off the Writers’ Room co-Executive Producers Ricky Tahoe (Evan Handler) and Ron Oswald (Carlos Jacott) are also watching the live feed. Ricky is by far the most vocal of the pair; he calls it “the most humiliating day of my life.” Matt makes it clear in the press conference that he’ll be overseeing the writing which leads one of the writers to ask if Matt will be overseeing the writing or doing the writing; they’ve all heard stories about how it was when he was with the show. Ricky responds, “I don’t know. I’m just Matt’s butt-boy right now.”

At the news conference a reporter asks why they’ve abandoned the movie project they were planning on doing to come back to the show. Matt starts to give a standard pat answer when Danny interrupts and tells them all about his drug test and how he won’t be able to direct for a couple of years. This gets Jack Rudolph, who has been watching in his office, to come down. More is to come. A reporter for Rapture Magazine asks about a sketch called “Crazy Christians.” Matt confirms that he wrote a sketch called “Crazy Christians” four years ago but it never aired. The reporter then asks if they can expect to see the sketch on Friday’s show. Matt starts to reply that he doesn’t know what’s going to be on the show yet but Danny jumps in and tells her, yes it will be on the show. With that the press conference ends and Shelly herds all of them off stage. Away from the public everyone is shouting at everyone else until Jack Rudolph gets out of the elevator. He stops them from cross-talking with each other. First he wants to know why Danny didn’t stick with the planned answer to why they were coming back to the show. Danny explains that it was going to get out anyway and revealing it this way was not only better than having it come out in drips, but being honest about it was also best for him as a recovering addict. He then turns on Jordan the joke she used handled a question about whether she knew about Danny’s drug test (“I don’t remember. I was high at the time.”), but Jordan is more concerned with why a reporter from Rapture Magazine was accredited to the news conference. Shelly angrily responds that it isn’t NBS policy to exclude religious publications from the network’s press conference, and when Jordan asks “how many whackjobs actually read Rapture Magazine” she reveals that the circulation is four times that of Vanity Fair, a statement that comes as a surprise to just about everyone else, including Jack. As the others leave Danny asks Jordan about her introduction for them, specifically the part about restoring the show to its former glory as the flagship of the network. He thinks that’s setting the bar rather high. She tell him, “Clear it.”

By the time they get to the theater Matt is trying to figure out how to clear the bar that Jordan had set. They need a big “cold open” for the show but he doesn’t know what it’s going to be. There are other details to work out, most importantly which one of them will take Wes’s office. Neither one of them wants it, but it’s obvious that Matt is going to get it whether he wants it or not. Matt reveres Wes, who wrote for the Smothers Brother and wrote with Pryor and with Cosby, invented Studio 60, and gave him his first job in television. He says “I rather sit in Lorne Michael’s office,” to which Danny responds “Lorne’s office is in New York and he’s still using it.” The office is a mess – it looks as though it had been ransacked, but one feature catches Danny’s eye as being new since they left. It’s a digital clock. when Danny turns it on it shows the days, hours, minutes and seconds left until the next show. Matt says, “No wonder he [Wes] went crazy.”

Matt has to go meet with the writing staff while Danny is going to talk to the cast. Matt doesn’t know any of the staff; they’ve all been hired by Ricky and Ron. Danny goes in for a moment as well to “put them at ease,” although he has an unusual way of doing it.What he says is more of an ultimatum than a pep talk: “This isn't TV camp. It's not important that everybody plays. Come at Matt with good ideas and you'll be a big part of the show; don't and it won't matter because he won't remember your name.” With that he leaves.

The cast are waiting for Danny in the basement dressing rooms. Tom is reading a post on from Bernadette of Bernadette’s Blog which says, “Studio 60 seldom rose to the level of Saturday Night Live at its best. The hiring of Matthew Albie and Daniel Tripp is a sideshow and that Wes's courageous and eloquent sign off last week should have served as the final nail in the show's coughin [sic – that’s how Bernadette spelled it according to Tom].” Simon tells Tom to stop reading the Internet and describes Bernadette as writing this in her pyjamas, with a freezer full of Jenny Craig and surrounded by her five cats. Tom responds that he has to care about Bernadette’s Blog because she’ll be be quoted by the New York Times to show that they’re listening to the public and aren’t part of the media elite. Tom says that he prefers it when they were part of the media elite. The conversation turns to Matt’s back. Simon has had the same surgery and is certain that Matt won’t be able to write the show. According to Simon you aren’t supposed to move around for a week and a half, and you certainly can’t sit in a chair for fourteen hours, which Harriet says is a short day for Matt. Jeannie tells them not to worry, Matt is doing forty leg lifts with 30 pound weights which Simon finds difficult to believe; he couldn’t tie his shoes so soon after his operation. Just then Danny comes in. His speech to the cast is about as diplomatic as his speech to the writers.He’s talked to them all and he’s sure that they’re probably worried about the changes he and Matt might make and whether they’ll be still be with the show . When Tom says not until just now, Danny says, well you should have. “Don't give me your very best or pick this week to complain about something you're going to make these decisions very easy.” Matt won’t be writing the first show around guest host Mark Wahlberg, and because he doesn’t know many of the cast he’ll be writing for the people he knows so they need to be patient…and become one of the people he knows. Simon asks about Matt’s back; he practically had to have an epidural to get out of bed when he had the surgery and Matt is claiming to be doing forty leg lifts. Jeannie says he isn’t claiming to do them she saw him doing it. Harriet is surprised: “Matt. At a gym?!” to which Jeannie responds, “No, at his house. he bought a machine.” That’s when the penny drops for Harriet and she realises that Matt and Jeannie have been involved. The room becomes so quiet that you can hear the noises made by building’s ventilation system. Harriet asks to be excused which Danny allows; when Jeannie wants to go after her, Danny refuses to let her go. Just as Danny is leaving, Simon asks him if he had seen the first show of the season. Danny replied that he hadn’t seen the show yet. There was a definite sense of tension in this exchange.

In the Writers’ Room Matt is becoming increasingly frustrated. The Room keeps proposing sketch ideas of the “Bush is stupid,” “The government gives things names the opposite of what something really is” variety. They aren’t funny and what really proves it is when Ricky explains one of the ideas to Matt – the rule that if you have to explain it it isn’t funny obviously applies double in the Writer’s Room. When Matt mentions that he needs a cold open the room bursts into anarchy with everyone talking at once and no one suggesting anything worthwhile. Matt eventually gets the room under control again and then comes down on the way the writers are dressed. Matt has decided that grown men dressing like they were in Junior High isn’t cool. When Ron says “It’s comedy Matt,” he replies “Not yet it isn’t, and until it is we are all going to act professionally. You understand. We're going to act dress talk write and behave professionally.” At that moment a very pissed off Harriet bursts into the room: “You are an adolescent, oversexed, whore monger with the sensitivity of a head of cabbage.” Matt excuses himself from the room and goes into the hall with Harriet. He makes it absolutely crystal clear that if she ever does that again he will bench, to the point where she’ll be the highest paid extra in Hollywood. Once he has made his point, they argue about what’s really bothering her. He slept with one of the people who works with her, and the way it came out humiliated her. She refers to the show as “my show.” Matt reminds her that it isn’t “her show” and that while she’s been there for seven years, he was there for two years before that and incidentally so was Jeannie. Matt reminds her that she broke up with him, and he’s got the email to prove it. She goes through a list of people he’s supposedly dated since the broke up ranging from Fiona Apple to Marlo Thomas (which is absurd since she’s married to Phil Donahue who can “still beat the crap out of me.”). Matt asks if she got confirmation from the Drudge Report and she says she got confirmation from Jeannie…about Jeannie. Matt tells her not to worry, he doesn’t date or do anything with people who work with him. What’s really really bothering her finally comes out: “I have an active imagination Matthew. They pay me a lot of money for it. And you had to know I was going to find out. So now I have this in my imagination. That's just mean.” She walks away but Matt follows her. He didn’t mean to be mean; Danny sent Jeannie home with him to make sure he was okay, and…it’s obvious that he wants to tell her something but instead he tells here that they need a really good show this week, and the need her head in the game. She tells him to sit down and write.

On Tuesday morning there’s a meeting in Jack’s office with Jack, Shelley, Peter (Scott Klace) from Affiliate Relations and Joe (Mark Edward Smith) from Sales. Jordan arrives. They have a problem; the affiliate owner from the Terre Haute station has been deluged with calls protesting the “Crazy Christians” sketch and he won’t air the show if the sketch runs. Jordan is dismissive, because it is “just” Terre Haute and tells them that she doesn’t tell “the guys” what they can and can’t put on the show. In fact she promised them that they can run the sketch. Terre Haute isn’t the real problem it’s the organized nature of the protests. Clearly it is the work of the editor of Rapture Magazine working through the various “family oriented” religious websites (they mention the AFE which as nearly as I can tell is a fictional organization but seems to be an analog for the Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association). Posting something like this on their forums is like the Batsignal for these people. Jordan asks how bad could it get. Shelly explains that they can expect the phone lines at Studio 60, the network headquarters, and twenty-two Red State affiliates to be flooded within the hour, it will be a news story all week and they’ll probably attack Jordan with personal stuff. Jordan’s willing to accept that, but Jack’s not sure the advertisers will feel the same way. Jordan feels that she’s bullet proof on Friday nights because half of the advertisers on the night are movie studios that release on Friday nights and want their movies associated with what’s hip and cool. As long as she delivers eyeballs she’s fine. Joe can’t believe her naiveté. Without the affiliates there aren’t going to be any eyeballs. If the big affiliate groups pull their stations NBS will be reduced to their owned and operated stations and whatever affiliates stick with them, or as Jack puts it “We'll be reduced to the size of a college radio station.” He practically begs Jordan to tell Matt and Danny to pull the sketch. She refuses: “I am the president of the National Broadcasting System and I won't be told what to put on my air by amateurs of any stripe.” With that she leaves.

Over at the studio, Danny is meeting with Cal and the technical staff. There’s nothing for them to do because Matt hasn’t written anything so all of the trades are on standby for when Matt does give them something to do. The meeting breaks up and Danny starts upstairs to his office. As he is halfway up the stairs his assistant Jane arrives to tell him that Jack White has severe tonsillitis. It takes Danny a couple of beats to realize that Jack White is the lead singer for the White Stripes… the show’s musical guest. He turns back and tells Jane to get in touch with anyone who isn’t touring or dead.

Upstairs Danny runs into Simon. He asks what the whole thing about whether he’d seen the first episode of the season was all about; Simon knows that Danny hasn’t watched the show since he and Matt left. Was Simon trying to embarrass him or make a point? Simon tells him that he would never try to embarrass Danny but the whole business with the drug test was new information. He thinks that Danny is spending two years “slumming” on TV. Danny tells him that it doesn’t matter, he’s here now and what matters is that if they hadn’t come Ricky and Ron would get the show but Simon replies that Danny left them with Ricky and Ron. Danny tells him that he was standing beside Matt and where was Simon. He responds that he was standing beside the show.

Danny goes into Matt’s office followed by Simon. According to “The Clock” there’s 3 Days, 7 Hours, and 22 minutes left until Friday’s show. Matt is standing in front of the line-up board. The only thing on it is the monologue and the two musical numbers from The White Stripes. Matt wonders if the White Stripes would mind playing for the whole hour and a half. Danny breaks the news that they won’t be playing at all. Just then Tom comes into the office wearing a wig, painted on moustache and soul patch. He’s heard that Matt is choking and is there to pitch an idea that for a sketch with him and Harriet as Jack and Meg White. Then Cal comes in to tell Matt not to “grip it too tightly;” it’s only Tuesday. Matt tells the four of them how he lectured the writers on clothing. He couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. He also explains the trouble he’s having with the cold open for the show. Unless something big happens between Tuesday and Friday they’re going to have people’s attention for the open. The problem is that there are so many things that it has to cover. It has to be self-deprecating, an acknowledgement and an acceptance, It has to be on a grand scale. It needs to be a song but not just a song, something bigger. Tom says “We take the show seriously but we don’t take ourselves seriously. We screwed up but we won’t do it again.” The Cal says, “We’ll be model citizens.” You can see the inspiration coming to Matt’s face. He asks the guys if they knew who did the greatest “Frat Humor” of all time. Tom mentions Rudy Vallee, Cal says Groucho Marx, but Danny says W.S. Gilbert. Danny comes up with the first line: “We’ll be the very model of a modern network TV show.” Simon follows with, “We hope that you don’t mind that our producer was caught doing Blow.” After a moment they agree to the line. Matt then says that they need something that speaks to the legacy of Television, in the style of Arturo Toscinini and the NBC Orchestra. Danny runs out the door to call to his assistant Jane. She’s on the phone with Clay Aiken’s manager. Danny tells her to get John Mauceri and the West Coast Philharmonic, and also the Los Angeles Light Opera Chorus. Jane asks if this is a joke; Matt says he hopes so, but Danny says no. Cal goes off to get the production people working, while Danny tells Simon and Tom to get a change of clothes and their shaving kits – it’s going to be just them this week (an indication that the writer’s room isn’t going to be involved in the writing). Tom asks, “Harriet too?” Matt replies “Harriet too.”

It’s now Friday night. Outside the theater a reporter is doing a stand-up. According to her the police estimate that 200-300 protesters are gathered many of them carrying signs saying “NBS equals God-haters.” (From what we the audience can see the number can be counted in the dozens rather than the hundreds, but that may be as much a statement about the size of TV show budgets as it is about TV news hyperbole – though I personally prefer to think the latter rather than the former). This sets the scene for what’s going on inside the theater as the show prepares to go live. Matt wants to take a quick shower. It’s 102 degrees out and he’s worried that the crowd will be too hot. They go into Matts office and we can see that the board, barren on Tuesday, now has eighteen items on it, not counting guest Mark Wahlberg’s monologue and the good nights at the end of the show. Matt says, “In an hour and a half it'll be empty again.” The statement astonishes Danny: “Would you just enjoy the moment? Would please just live in what's happening right now and not time travel to the next...?” They’ve had the greatest dress rehearsal that either of them can remember seeing in the show. Things are going to go great. He does need to talk about one thing with Matt and that’s how things are between him and Harriet. Danny feels they’ll be in trouble if Matt is still in love with Harriet. Matt says he’s not: “I love her talent. The woman's got millions of fans but there are maybe fifty guys in town who really understand how good she is and we're two of them. I admire her. I'm knocked out by her talent. And I like it when she makes me laugh, and I like making her laugh, which isn't easy to do, so it's gratifying. She's undeniably sexy. I like it when she smiles at me, and a couple of other things, but that's it.” Danny says, “We’re screwed.”

In the dressing room Jeannie finally talks to Harriet about the situation with Matt. She apologizes for the way that it came out. She and Matt are friends but sometimes when they’re without anybody they wind up with each other. Harriet hits her over the head with a prop bottle, then smiles and says “Light’em up Jeannie with the light brown hair.” Elsewhere Danny meets up with Simon. He explains that at the start of Simon’s second year, which was Danny’s last year, Simon had lost a part in Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday to Jamie Foxx. He had been pissed at just about everyone, and said, “I just graduated from Yale Drama. I don't belong here,” which pissed Danny off because he did belong there. Now Simon says that he belong there, and says “So don’t fire me.” Simon explains that he can’t “do the voices;” Ricky and Ron have been pushing Simon to do imitations and gives a bad version of Bill Cosby saying “Jell-o Pudding Pops.” Danny doesn’t understand, how did Wes let Ricky and Ron take over the show but Simon defends him, explaining that Wes was tired, and Matt and Danny were like sons to him, and he didn’t stand up for them. Danny simply says, “We didn’t ask him too.” Danny promises that they’re going to be starting fresh and they’ll be playing to Simon’s strengths including having him anchor the news on the show.

Jack is in the VIP gallery of the theater getting a beer. He sees Jordan goes over to sit with her. He makes his presence known by saying, “Mary, you’ve got spunk,” then they both say “I hate spunk.” It was his way of reminding her that he likes television too. She asks what the final count was. They lost five affiliates including Terre Haute, four local advertisers and three national advertisers. And Jack had to change his email address… twice. “But,” says Jordan, “Frogs didn’t fall from the sky.” Jack tells her that if the ratings don’t go up or the public doesn’t find Crazy Christians as funny as she does things are going to happen that will make frogs falling from the skies seem like Club Med. He adds, “They always win Jordan.” She replies that that may be true but she’s not going down without a fight. And if the ratings do go up they’ll welcome back the advertisers who left them, at 120% of the original ad buy. “We’ll be the first network to charge a coward fee.”

Backstage, Matt and Danny gather the cast. Danny tells him that he’s watched them all week and he’s really impressed. Matt tells him that it’s hot outside and people who are hot don’t laugh as much because they’re sticky and uncomfortable. Then it’s Harriet’s turn to lead them in prayer: “Blessed are you oh Lord our God creator of the universe and Father of us all. Thank you for giving us one of your greatest gifts, a sense of humour. And if you have time please make something heavy fall on Matthew's head. We say this prayer in the name of your son Jesus Christ who had to have been funny to get so many people to listen to him. Blessed are you forever and ever, Amen.” Then just before she goes out on stage she asks Matt why she got a laugh in the table read of a sketch but not at the dress rehearsal. He tells her that in the dress, “You asked for the laugh;” in the table read, “You asked for the butter.”

After everyone takes their places, including Danny in a director’s chair on the floor in front of the stage and Matt in his office, The Clock counts down the seconds before the show starts, with a parody song based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s Modern Major General:

Cast:
We'll be the very model of a modern network tv show
Each time that we walk into this august and famous studio
We're starting out from scratch after a run of 20 years and so
We hope that you don't mind that our producer was caught doing blow.

Chorus:
They hope that you don't mind that their producer was caught doing blow
They hope that you don't mind that their producer was caught doing blow
They hope that you don't mind that their producer was caught doing lots of blow!

Men (Simon, Tom, Dylan, and Alex):
Yes it's hard to be a player when at heart you've always had a hunch
To bite the hand that feeds you is a scary way of doing much
But still when we walk into this august and famous studio
We'll be the very model of a modern network TV show!

Chorus:
But still when they walk into this august and famous studio
They'll be the very model of a modern network TV show!

Harriet:
I am a Christian, tried and true, baptized at age eleven so
Unlike the lib'rals, gays and Jews, I'm going straight to heaven.

Ladies (Harriet, Jeannie, Samantha):
But if you feel you've been cheated and our sordid content lets you down
We'll happ'ly do the favor of an intellectual reach around!
Chorus:
They'll happ'ly do the favor of an intellectual reach around
They'll happ'ly do the favor of an intellectual reach around
They'll happ'ly do the favor of a hundred-dollar hooker's reach around!

Harriet (whispers):
That wasn't the same thing we said.

Chorus:
They'll happ'ly do the favor of a verbal euphamistic reach around!

Studio 60 Cast:
We know the evangelicals are lining up to tag our toe
And then the corporations will not hesitate to pull their dough
But still when we walk into this august and famous studio
We'll be the very model of a modern network TV show!

Chorus:
But still when they walk into this august and famous studio
They'll be the very model of a modern network TV show!
But still when they walk into this august and famous studio
They'll be the very model of a modern network TV show!

As announcer Herb Shelton announces “Live from Hollywood, It’s Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip.” Matt turns away from the stage and looks at The Clock. It has started counting backwards from seven days again.

_____________________________________________________________

One of the things that a lot of critics and other people had trouble with is that we didn’t see the “Crazy Christians” sketch. We heard a lot about it, or at least heard its name bandied about a lot but we didn’t see the sketch or see or hear the rehearsals or the script or even learn anything about the content of the script. It was just a name. Some people, mostly commenters on media blogs – I think Alan Sepinwall’s blog was one of them – invoked Chekov’s gun when referring to “Crazy Christians.” As you may recall Chekov said that, “if you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.” In their minds “Crazy Christians” was built up as being a brilliant piece of writing (or as being so controversial) to such a point that you had to see it. I don’t think it was necessary to show it. In fact I think that “Crazy Christians” accomplishes its purpose best by not being seen. In a very real way it drives the show, or at least the beginning episodes of the show. Because I don’t think that “Crazy Christians” falls into the category of Chekov’s Gun at all; I think that “Crazy Christians” is a McGuffin, in the best Hitchcockian sense of the term.

Wikipedia describes a McGuffin as “a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction.The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is. In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot. Common examples are money, victory, glory, survival, a source of power, a potential threat, or it may simply be something entirely unexplained.” (Emphasis mine in both cases.) Hitchcock used McGuffins of course, and they were often unimportant to the story that was being told, serving as a motivator to the action rather than having any importance in their own right. Take for example The Lady Vanishes – one of my favourite Hitchcock movies. All of the action happens because of Miss Froy’s little song, and yet the song itself, and what it signifies, have no importance to the plot of the movie.

“Crazy Christians” fills that role in Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. It is the reason for Wes’s fight with Jerry in the first episode. It is why Wes has his on screen meltdown. It is emblematic of the way that the writing on the show has slipped and Wes’s weakness. In short it is why Matt and Danny have to be brought back. In the second episode it is symbolic of Jordan’s determination to take bold stands regardless of the opinion of those around her in the quest for a return to quality. That she is willing to air “Crazy Christians” in spite of the threat of viewer boycotts, affiliates refusing to air the show and companies pulling their ads falls squarely into the definition of a McGuffin; she is “willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it,” or in this case to use it.

“Crazy Christians” It motivates Jordan’s confrontation with Jack and the executives not to mention Shelly, and it becomes Jordan’s line in the sand – this far and no further. And the sketch was Wes’s breaking point at least twice. He wasn’t willing to stand up for Matt in 2001 when “Crazy Christians” was the sketch for the week that Matt was forced to quit, and it losing the fight with Jerry Wes Jerry on the first show to keep “Crazy Christians” in the show was the what drove him to his rant. “Crazy Christians” led indirectly to Ricky and Ron taking real control of the show leaving Wes as more figurehead than anything else.

“Crazy Christians” also sets up a lot of what follows. I’m thinking particularly of the revelation of Jordan’s DUI in the next episode, followed very quickly by her ex-husband’s proposed book and the stories that he was shopping around. After all Shelly had told Jordan that running the sketch would lead the other side to go after her personally. Another aspect of “Crazy Christians” as McGuffin can be seen in the two "Nevada Day” episodes later in the season. The Judge’s antagonism towards Jack and Danny is in part motivated by the sense that the actor, the show, and the network are making fun of people like him who are sincere in their beliefs. “Crazy Christians” is part of the basis for this antagonism.

There are of course real-world analogies in the “Crazy Christians” storyline, and they are as valid today as they were when Sorkin played with the idea in 2006. I’m not really referring to the decision by KSL in Salt Lake City to drop NBC’s new series The Playboy Club. It is at least understandable given that the station is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This isn’t a case of a station bowing to outside pressure out of fear in the way that the fictional Terre Haute station in the Studio 60 did, but rather a policy decision by station ownership. The more important aspect is the groups that create this climate of fear – the AFE in the show, the Parents Television Council in real life – which mobilize their followers occasionally based entirely on rumour. The PTC demanded that CBS change the name of $#*! My Dad Says and when that failed threatened boycotts and FCC action because “obviously” the show was going to be filled with obscenities. The truth is that the show was just another not particularly well realized sitcom. This year they’ve “slammed” NBC-Comcast for a supposed nudity clause in the contract for actors on The Playboy Club (presumably for possible foreign sales and possibly for inclusion in cable network airings and DVDs), and demanded the removal of the word “Bitch” from the title of the ABC series Good Christian Bitches (which was also the name of the book on which the series is based) despite the fact that ABC had already stated that that was only the working title of the series that became Good Christian Belles. The PTC promised to “use every method at its disposal to turn advertisers and viewers away from a provocative title that compromises respect for both women and Christians in an attempt to draw ratings.”And remember that statement was issued when the only thing known about the series was the working title which ABC had already said would be changed.

I also want to spend a bit of time in this extremely long and overdue piece to discuss the episode’s finally, the parody song Modern Network TV Show. Looking for some unrelated material recently I came upon a blog where the reviewer referred to the song as “a filk,” apparently feeling that any parody song qualifies as a “filk” (they don’t) and that somehow it being a filk makes it is somehow a lesser creation (this particular blogger was angry at Tom and Simon’s comments on bloggers as a class and the song got caught in the crossfire). Parody songs have been a mainstay of comedy for generations. This is no different.

A bigger objection to the song as found in the comments section of Ken Levine’s blog in which various commenters said that you don’t use a Gilbert & Sullivan parody song because it shows “how out of touch and superior the characters considered themselves,” and therefore using it unironically was an indicator of “how out of touch and superior Sorkin is.” I don’t think that I need to tell you that I disagree with this assessment. I liked the song. I like that Sorkin has a fondness for Gilbert & Sullivan. I have a fondness for Gilbert & Sullivan. After all he used “For He Is An Englishman” from HMS Pinafore in an episode of The West Wing, and posters from productions of Gilbert and Sullivan were seen in both The West Wing and Studio 60. But it goes further than that for me. I think that the song works for what it has to be. The show has to regain its status. This is something that Ricky and Ron and the Writers’ Room don’t recognise when they pitch the same old material that they’ve been doing all along. For them it’s just business as usual. Matt recognises that the opening has to be different. as he puts it, it has to be “self-deprecating, an acknowledgement and an acceptance, but it has to be on a grand scale.” The big thing, left unspoken, is that it has to acknowledge what Wes said without referring to him. It has to be an apology for the crap that the show has become and a promise that they’ll restore both the cutting edge comedy and the idea of quality that has vanished from TV. Most of all it has to be a clear indication that they won’t be treating their audience like morons. People who claim that using Gilbert & Sullivan shows “how out of touch and superior Sorkin is,” are themselves being superior by claiming that an audience is incapable of appreciating either Gilbert & Sullivan or the the message that the parody song was trying to put across. I don’t buy it.

Redo

2011-06-28T22:37:00.002-06:00

I decided that I wanted to redesign my blog a bit. Quite frankly I was getting a little sick of the white on black look and I wanted to spark it up a bit in much the same way that my friend Ivan Shreve has done with Thrilling Days Of Yesterday. I’m not sure that I’m quite where I want to be with it yet, so consider the sand coloured background and the “Indian Head” Test Pattern design feature (I assure you, it is the “Indian Head” Test Pattern that so many of us boomers would start the day with) and all the rest as permanently temporary features until I come up with some better ideas. Right now I kind of like it.

This Expedition (Not Race) Is Impossible (Not Amazing)

2011-06-28T02:57:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I wrote a post about the new ABC series Expedition Impossible: Kingdom of Morocco. The network had released a “sneak peak” video which was supposed to be embeddable. I had watched that sneak peak and to be very honest was very enthusiastic about what I was seeing. My one big concern was whether the rest of the show would live up to that first fifteen minutes. If the commenter at the Television Without Pity forums are to be believed, it was a boring Amazing Race rip-off, lightened only by a couple of comments by local Berber tribesmen.

Me? I liked it. So I guess that puts me in a minority position.

Expedition Impossible features thirteen teams of three individuals with a pre-existing relationship, and a first prize of $150,000 and three Ford Explorers. Series Producer Mark Burnett has stated that the prize was set so low to encourage teams who were in it for the adventure rather than for the money. The race will consist of ten stages with one team being eliminated at the end of each stage. So in that way at least it does sound like The Amazing Race. On the other hand Expedition Impossible doesn’t go around the world; it doesn’t even go outside of one country. In a way it is a lot more like Burnett’s original reality series, Eco-Challenge. In Eco-Challenge teams of four raced over a 300 mile course, but without set rest stops. Teams weren’t eliminated they either completed the course or dropped out.

Expedition Impossible takes elements from both shows but does it in some interesting ways. There are stages in Expedition Impossible, and at the end of each stage a team is eliminated. There are checkpoints and challenges, but for the most part the challenges follow fairly well out of what the teams are doing in the stage. The biggest thing of all of course is that the challenges are not the dominant aspect of the stages. In a lot of stages of The Amazing Race – a show which I love with a hot burning passion as just about everyone who knows me understands – the challenges dominate while the travel may have an impact but it isn’t expressly designed to. Position may depend on whether or not you can drive a stick shift or whether your cab driver knows where you want him to go (some of the best/worst incidents on The Amazing Race have been Racers dealing with cab drivers, including one incident where a contestant was nearly arrested in Kenya) but accomplishing challenges is the bigger deal. In Expedition Impossible getting there isn’t half the “fun,” it’s all the “fun.”

The first episode begins with thirteen white Ford Explorers driving across the Sahara desert while Berber horsemen ride along with them. The thirteen teams are:

- The California Girls: three women who met while attending UC Davis
- The Cops: three male police officers from suburban Boston
- The Country Boys: three boyhood friends from Mississippi
- The Fab 3: a brother and sister and the brother’s ex-boyfriend who all live together
- The Fishermen: two brothers and a cousin from Gloucester Massachusetts
- The Football Players: the former pro football players who first met while playing at San Diego State
- Grandpa’s Warriors: three generations of a family from central Illinois,father son and granddaughter
- The Gypsies: three self-described free spirited nomadic adventurers
- Latin Persuasion: three Latina women who are friends and co-wrokers
- Mom’s Army: a mother and her two daughters, both of whom have served in the US Army
- New York Firemen: three New York firefighters who all grew up in the same neighbourhood
- No Limits: three friends from Colorado, one of whom (Erik) is blind
- Team Kansas: Three sisters who were born in Kansas though one now lives in Houston Texas

The racers leave their cars and line up before show host Dave Salmoni who is a Canadian born wildlife expert who has hosted TV series for Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. He tells them that they are running the race in this area with the blessing of the local Berber Tribesmen and give a basic introduction to the contest. He also tells them a traditional Berber saying: “Choose your companions before you choose the road.” Good advice, because the contestants on this show are going to have to depend on their teammates, and possibly on other teams in order to complete every stage. Moreover, if one team member quits that team is automatically eliminated. With that he gives them their first task – to pass through a pair of flags and then find a camel camp where they’ll pick up their next instructions. The flags are on the top of a sand dune, Akbar, one of the football players, estimates that the sand dune is about four or five football fields high, so between 400 and 500 feet. Then at Dave’s signal the tribemen fire their rifles and the race has started.
The trip up the sand dune appears to be a trying one, although most teams follow the same route along the ridge of the dune to the flags. The lead alternates between the Fab 3, No Limits and the Gypsies. Trailing behind are the Country Boys and Latin Persuasion.part way up the dune one member of the Country Boys seems physically beaten and stops climbing. This is enough for the women of Latin Persuasion to pull past them. The Country Boys, who had been very disparaging towards the women from New York (CB1: “They look like a dance group.” CB2: “A damned ugly dance group.”) use this to try to motivate their colleague, and after the commercial it seems to have worked.

When the teams reach the Camel camp they receive their instructions. They have to select three camels from the handlers at the camp, load them with baskets to carry some firewood and other equipment, and take them to their next checkpoint, Lone Palm. The instructions say nothing about riding the camels although most of the teams try to do so. They soon discover something: camels are very ornery animals. In fact one of contestants say that instead of saying “stubborn as a mule,” people should say “stubborn as a camel.” For their part the camels aren’t exactly happy about being loaded or ridden by people whose main experience with the animals is seeing them in the zoo. A couple of people were kicked and several were thrown, with the local Berber tribesmen hired to control the camels until the teams arrived looking on knowingly and occasionally shaking their heads in disbelief. Some teams had better experiences than others, and some teams opted to lead their camels rather than have one or more members of their team riding them. The focus at the Camel Camp is on the leading teams – The Gypsies, the Football Players Fab 3, and No Limits – and on the final three teams Country Boys, Grandpa’s Warriors and especially on Latin Persuasion, There is a lot of focus on the disputes between the three women of Latin Persuasion who seem to be fighting practically from the beginning. Their lack of teamwork is definitely having an impact on them.

The walk to Lone Palm Camp – about a mile and a half from the starting line but probably longer because there is a specific route laid out in the instructions which is not stated in Dave Salmoni’s narration – apparently takes a considerable time. When they get there they have an assigned task. They have to “find water the local way,” but there is no indication of what that way is, or apparently a local “Berber dude” to suggest how they should do it. They have to fill a glass jug with water which they will then use to water the camels. The first three teams to arrive are Fab 3, No Limits and the Football Players, and none of them has any ideas of where the water might be. One of the Football players thinks they can cut open the hump of a camel because of course that’s where they store their water. And this is from a guy with a college education! (Okay, admittedly there are different standards for football players, but still…) The players look around at the various things scattered around the area, including some buckets and the glass jugs they’re supposed to fill, and there’s no watter. Eventually one of the people of Fab 3 decides that the water must be under the sand, and starts digging. This is an idea which the Football Players ridicule: “there is no way you are going to find water under the sand in the Middle of the Sahara Desert.” However Fab 3 persevere and are joined by the Gypsies and No Limits who help to dig. Meanwhile the newly arrived Fisherman start digging their own hole. When the three teams stop digging to see where they are, they’re astonished to see their hole filling with water. They’re almost as astonished to find the Football Player helping themselves to the water they dug for. As a result the Football Players leave in second place behind Fab 3, with the Gypsies close behind. As other teams arrive they are able to use the holes that the other teams had dug which allowed them to reduce the gap between them.
Meanwhile the three members of Latin Persuasion continue to argue with the greatest antagonism being directed at Mai, who seems totally disinterested in doing anything except sitting on the camel and looking prissy. When they reach Lone Palm Camp her two teammates do all of the work while she just stands around watching. Their constant yelling leads to a captioned statement from one of the Berber tribesmen at the location: “I would never have these women for my wife.” Smart fellow. Eventually, when her two teammates stop yelling at her and work at persuading her to contribute more because they need her and if they all work together they can kick some ass in this, Mai comes around and tries to contribute.

Before leaving Lone Palm on foot the teams have to give the water in their jugs to the camels. Then they head of to Todra Mountain on foot. They have o climb the mountain, which in truth sounds harder than it actually is; there seems to be a recognizable path at least at the start. The teams have broken into three groups. The lead pack are Gypsies, Fab 3, Football Players and No limits, followed by Fishermen, Cops, New York Firemen, Team Kansas and California Girls in the middle, with Mom’s Army, Country Boys, Grandpa’s Warrior and Latin Persuasion in the final group about an hour behind. Interestingly the youngest participant in Grandpa’s Warriors considers herself to be the weakest member of her team, becoming increasingly exhausted as they go along. And the terrain worsens as they go along, as evidenced by the addition of safety ropes on the steeper portions of the route. Reaching the end of their climb they find that they now have to rappel down the equivalent of 30 stories to the bottom of the Todra Gorge. It is one of the highest rappels in northern Africa. Once all of the team members are at the bottom of the gorge they must follow the dry river bed to the center of Snake Valley and their next checkpoint. Most of the teams have never rappelled before. Several team members worried about this, particularly the female member of Fab 3, but most took it ins stride. One person who had a lot of difficulty was Akbar from the Football Players, who explained that he didn’t have a fear of heights, but rather a fear of going backwards down something that high. According to him, even Superman wouldn’t have done that rappel. It must have shocked him when Erik, the blind competitor on No Limits zipped past him. Of course Erik has had significant experience in mountain climbing, including climbing to the summit of Mount Everest. The person who has the biggest problem with the rappel is the mother from Mom’s Army. She’s never done anything like this before and she’s clearly outside of her comfort zone. She’s tentative and nervous and worried abut her arm strength. Still one of the members of Latin Persuasion thinks that she’s amazing for even trying this: “My mother would tell me to go to hell if I told her to do something like this.” By the time they finish the rappel Latin Persuasion are ahead of Grandpa’s Army by a few minutes.

When the teams had reached the check point at the center of Snake Valley they found the final task that would lead them to the end of the stage. They had to watch a Moroccan snake charming performance, and pay particular attention to the number of snakes that were used. Once they had what they believed to be the correct number of snakes they had to find a box with the corresponding number written on it. Inside that box would be a set of instructions. If they picked the right box they’d find the finish line for the stage about five miles away. If they picked a box that was wrong, they’d be directed on a half hour trek that would lead to a sign telling them that they’d gone the wrong way, and that they’d have to go back to the original checkpoint and recount the snakes. There are eleven snakes in the act. Of the first four teams, Gysies, Fab 3, and Football Players all say eleven, but No Limits see only ten (and as Erik says he sees no snakes – and as a result he has to trust his teammates because he can’t contradict them). As a result Gypsies finish the stage in first place, with Fab 3 in second and the Football players in third. Meanwhile No Limits find themselves mired in the middle group, As for the back of the pack it is coming down to a race between Latin Persuasion, who left the checkpoint in twelfth place and Grandpa’s Army who are in thirteenth. Night had fallen by the time that the fourth place team, Team Kansas reached the finish line. The next seven teams come in in what appears to be short order. All that are left are Latin Persuasion and Grandpa’s Army, and in typical reality show fashion no indication is given as to their relative position to each other. We see two sets of headlamps moving down the mountain towards the finish line, and shots of the two teams trying to move down the path, but there is no indication of who is in the lead. In one of these shots it appears as though one of the women from Latin Persuasion is throwing up. Certainly they feel as if they are shutting down. Finally a team emerges from the darkness at the finish line. It’s Grandpa’s Warriors. Somewhere on the mountain they passed Latin Persuasion who come in in thirteenth place and are eliminated. It’s late when they arrive, too late for them to be taken out so they stay in the camp with the rest of the teams. Then, as the rest of the teams watch them go, they are flown out the next morning.

As I’ve said, I Iike this show. I don’t like it more than I like The Amazing Race but I do like it differently, because quite honestly they are different shows. I find it difficult to react to the claims that this is just an Amazing Race knock-off. Yes, there are elements that are taken from The Amazing Race – the various checkpoints and the tasks that the teams have to perform at each stage of the respective events. But those are hardly original aspects of either show. They operate much the same as a road rally in which there are stages to compete and in some rallies assigned tasks to complete during a stage. And I think that Expedition Impossible addresses some of the problems that some people have complained about during most seasons of The Amazing Race. At least so far there have been no “bottleneck” points where all teams are suddenly placed on an equal footing because something hasn’t opened when they get there and I don’t think there will be. Admittedly allowing teams to use the work of others at the water hole challenge had a similar effect since the leading teams had to spend much more time figuring out how to get the water and actually digging the holes than the trailing teams who found the holes dug and full of water. Another aspect of the Amazing Race that people have traditionally complained about is the influence of third parties in the race, whether it is getting assistance from locals to accomplish tasks or to serve as guides, or it’s cab drivers who have no idea where they’re going.

A huge difference between The Amazing Race and Expedition Impossible is the amount of endurance that a given stage requires. One of the football players stated that this race is harder than playing football because football players don’t train for endurance. This was jumped on by a number of commenters in the various TV related blogs who claim that football coaches do train for endurance, but I think that there’s a difference between the sort of endurance that a football coach requires of his players and what is required in this sort of event. It’s not absolutely clear how many hours this first day of Expedition Impossible lasted for the leading teams, but the final teams to arrive came in well after dark, so it is fair to say that they were out there for a significant period of time. And for all of that time they are doing hard physical tasks, most of the time in temperatures of 100 degrees F or higher with little protection from the heat. During the climb of the sand dune they showed the temperature on at least three occasions; it went up from 95 to 110 during the time it took for the final team to reach the top. I don’t think there are too many football teams that train that sort of endurance. In all honesty these are not the sort of tasks or conditions that you regularly see on The Amazing Race.

The fact that I basically like the show should not be taken to mean that I find it without flaws. There are plenty of those, starting with Dave Salmoni. The camels in the first episode had more personality than he exhibited here, and while I understand that he works with wild animals on his Animal Planet show I never get the feeling from him that he could do what is being asked of the teams on the show. You see Phil Keoghan doing these things all the time on The Amazing Race. There’s no real indication of the passage of time during the episode. We really don’t know how long it took them to run that stage of the event. Was it four hours? Six hours? Twelve hours? If they spent the entire day running that course it is a far more significant endurance contest than if they took four or five. Another issue is the position of teams relative to each other. Mostly what we had was Salmoni telling us that this group of teams was out if front, this group was in the middle and then there was the back group. And of course, inevitably, there was a significant difference in the amount of coverage that teams received. We spent a lot of time with the Gypsies, Fab 3, No Limits and Football Player teams and with Latin Expression (and to a lesser extent with Grandpa’s Warrior) and virtually no time with teams like The Cops, or the California Girls. I suspect that this is a problem that inevitably shows up in this sort of programming – there isn’t time to focus on all of the teams so you focus on the leaders, the last place teams and the ones with the most interesting stories. Still I think that this show has done a worse job of this than other shows of this type have done in the past, including Burnett’s shows Survivor and Eco-Challenge.

Although there are weaknesses to Expedition Impossible, I generally like the show. It looks spectacular in High Def of course but I think we’ve reached a point where that isn’t a consideration. I’m impressed by the endurance aspects of the competition and that Burnett has deliberately sought out people who are in this for the adventure rather than to get a lot of money or use the show as some career boost. I think that a lot of the complaints that others have voiced will be addressed in later episodes if the first episode was a relatively easy stage and subsequent stages involve more difficult challenges.

I think that the show has tremendous potential if renewed; the next season could be set in a different country with different terrain. There’s room for improvement but people who don’t remember the first season or two of The Amazing Race don’t realize how much that show has evolved since it debuted. Given time I think that Expedition Impossible could evolve, learning the lessons of the first season. I don’t anticipate this series becoming a mainstay of the regular season the way that The Amazing Race has (and was planned to be) but I think that it has some potential as a regular summer series. I liked it and recommend it, if not whole-heartedly then at least with fewer reservations than other people have expressed.Or maybe I'm just glad to have something to watch that's not another dating show or talent competition.

Studio 60 Remembered – The Pilot

2011-06-22T04:06:00.000-06:00

They say that hindsight is 20:20. A lot of critics looking back at Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – including several that I have tremendous respect for – have retroactively claimed that they were “suckered” by the show’s pilot. It should serve as a reminder to those who do reviews as a profession that they should keep their powder dry until they see what the next few episodes are like, or preface heir statements about how promising a show’s pilot looks by saying something like, “It’s really impossible to praise or condemn a show based on the pilot but…” Of course professional critics have an advantage in that often, before a show debuts, they get screeners that include not just the pilot but also a couple of subsequent episodes, which allows them to say that “While the pilot looks (great/good/poor/horrible) the episodes that follow are really (terrible/weak/acceptable/brilliant)…” It’s not that easy for someone like me who watches a show at the time that it airs and has no idea of what will follow. I can either judge the show on the pilot and risk the rest of the season being totally different from what I reviewed, or I could wait for another episode or two before reviewing and hope that a) the show isn’t cancelled before I can write a review (see – or rather don’t see – Lonestar) or b) the ratings don’t discourage me so much that I don’t write about the show because I know it won’t make a lick of difference and the show is doomed. The latter happens a lot incidentally, and may be why I didn’t write a lot of reviews in the past couple of years. But to the review.

The series opened on the set of a variety show just before it’s about to go on. The show has been on the air for twenty years according to the man who is warming up the audience (who we’ll later learn is Simon Styles – played by D.L. Hughely). While he’s going through his well rehearsed routine he notices something going on off-stage. It is an argument between the show’s Executive Producer, Wes Mandel (Jud Hirsch in a special guest appearance), and a network official named Jerry. Jerry is demanding that Wes pull a sketch that did well at rehearsal, because it will offend religious people. Wes is adamant that the sketch go on, to the point where he wants to call Network Chairman Jack Rudolph, or new network executive Jordan McDeere, but both of them are at a party – actually a party for Jordan. Wes then asks Jerry what would happen if he just decided to go ahead with the sketch over Jerry’s objections. Jerry responds that Wes won’t do that and the reason why he knows is that, “if you still had the muscle to do it you wouldn't have asked.” Wes pulls the sketch, much to the irritation of the show’s director Cal (Timothy Busfield); not as much because the sketch was good – he says that it didn’t stand a chance – as with what is replacing it, a continuing piece called “Peripheral Vision Man” which is not only not funny but has never been funny. Down in the dressing rooms Wes is a beaten man. When guest host Felicity Huffman (playing herself) asks Wes why her monologue hasn’t been changed in spite of the fact that they had agreed it needed changing she notices that Wes doesn’t look alright. He tells her that he’s fine, and that her instincts about the material aren’t wrong – it isn’t funny – but that they didn’t get a chance to change it. As the show – which is done live – gets underway, Wes suddenly decides that he’s had enough. He stops the “cold open” sketch just after it starts and delivers a long and rambling rant (which I’ll reproduce below). In the control room all hell is breaking loose. Jerry is demanding that Cal take Wes off the air or at the very least mute his mike, but the best reason that Jerry can give for this is that, “he’s telling people to turn their televisions of!!!!” When appealing to “reason” doesn’t work Jerry resorts to threats, telling Cal that if he doesn’t take Wes off the air, not only will Cal be fired but he’ll never work in the industry again. Finally Wes goes a word to far and Cal is able to cut the cameras and sound.

At the party for Jordan Wilson White (Ed Asner), the Chairman of the Tunney Media Group which owns the Nation Broadcasting System has just finished a toast in which he notes all the high points of Jordan McDeere’s career (including four years at NBC where “where she saw to it that Jay Leno spanked David Letterman on a regular basis”) when a waiter brings Jordan (Amanda Peete) a note from her assistant that something has happened at Studio 60. She comments that it can’t be anything too bad, not on her first day. As she finishes saying that every cell phone in the room starts ringing. Jordan and Jack Rudolph (Steven Webber), along with most of the network executives at the party rush down to the studio, where Jerry gives his explanation of what happened: “I cut a sketch and he went crazy.” The executives take over the dressing room being used by the show’s musical guests, Three Six Mafia, to watch the video tape of the episode…when they can finally find a copy of the tape that will work on the commercial VCR in the room. Meanwhile Jordan slips away to find Wes and after introducing herself asks him what happens. Before he can answer Jack comes in and says “Wesley, you’re fired.” Wes’s response is “No kidding.”

Jack is determined to keep as much of a lid on the story as possible, but it’s already out there and every news story has a reference to Paddy Chayefsky’s movie Network. The company’s executives meet in their boardroom to figure out where they stand. They’re worried about possible fines or law suits from the FCC, and how the advertisers and the affiliates will react. Jordan laughs at the executives’ concerns which irritates Jack, but she points out that they’re worried about the wrong things. Nothing was said that would trigger FCC fines and any lawsuit would fail the “laugh test.” There’s no way that they can keep the cast quiet, particularly “the Big Three” (which prompts one of the executives – I think the one in charge of advertiser relations – to ask what Detroit has to do with this; Jack has to explain to him that in this case “the Big Three” refers to Simon Stiles, Tom Jeter, and Harriet Hayes, the leading members of the cast). Jordan points out that despite this they’re not over-reacting, they’re under-reacting because the real problem is that Wes’s tirade will be fodder for every cable show around with discussion on the state of television…unless they can defuse the problem by giving the media a better story. Jordan needs to talk to Jack privately on this. She wants to rehire Matt Albie and Danny Tripp who had been fired from the show five years ago…by Jack Rudolph. Jack is dubious but Jordan says that rehiring them will be seen as “a tacit admission of guilt and a quiet act of contrition,” and will make that the story, not Wes’s rant. Jack doesn’t think that Jordan will be able to get them but she knows something he doesn’t. She has to move fast on this, with an announcement on Monday morning. Jack tells her just one thing: screw this up and he’ll fire her faster than he did Wes Mandel.

At that moment Matt (Matthew Parry) and Danny (Bradley Whitford) are attending the Writers Guild Awards, where Matt is nominated for a movie that he wrote and Danny directed. Matt has had back surgery two days before and is one a mixture of Vicodin and Percoset and a steroid to deal with the pain, so he’s both talkative and a little out of it. The discussion soon turns to why Matt is at the ceremony alone. Matt had been involved with Harriet Hayes from Studio 60 but they broke up. He offered up a long and rambling explanation of why they broke up which had to do with her singing the National Anthem, but after telling the whole story he added, “but that’s not why we really broke up.” He continues talking even as his category is announced…and when the winner is announced. He’s so involved in his story (and the drugs aren’t helping) that even when Danny hugs him he doesn’t realise that he won. It takes Danny telling him that he’s won for it to sink in. As he goes to the stage an assistant comes up to Danny and whispers something to him. He responds by walking out and saying that he needs to see tape, so that when Matt cites him in his acceptance speech for always being there for him, Danny isn’t there.

We next see Harriett Hayes (Sarah Paulson) arriving at a club where the show’s wrap party is being held. The nature of the sketch that was cut had leaked out and she is mobbed by the press who are all asking two questions: as a Christian was she offended by the sketch, and what did Matt think of what happened. She doesn’t say anything to anybody. In the cub she takes a moment to talk to Cal who is sitting all by himself and looking depressed. She asks what happened in the control room and he tells her that he left Wes on the air for 53 seconds despite orders from the Standards and Practices representative on the set. According to Cal, “Guys I know who have done that feel lucky to get a job directing Good Morning El Paso.” Leaving Cal, she finds the rest of the cast and sits down with Simon Stiles and Tom Jeter (Nate Corddry). She tells her cast mates that she’s been asked whether the sketch offended her and what Matt had said (in that order) about fourteen times. So Tom naturally asks what “What did Matt say?” and gets a withering look from Harriett, who reminds him that they have broken up. She expects that Matt and Danny are laughing their asses off over what happened. Harriett then suggests that they go outside so she can watch Simon “smoke a cigarette.” As they’re leaving Dylan (Nate Torrence), the newest member of the cast (and who is thoroughly wasted) asks Harriett if she had prayed before this show as she usually does and if so why didn’t it work. Harriett quickly cuts him down to size: “You know what, rook? When you start making a contribution to this show, you can talk to me any way you want. But you had two lines tonight and you stepped on one of them. So until you either accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior or make somebody laugh, why don't you talk to somebody else?” Outside, Harriett answers the other question, about whether she was offended by the sketch; she wasn’t, she was offended that she wasn’t in the sketch because it was the best piece of writing that the show had seen in a long time. They all assume that Wes wrote it himself (and are surprised that he was capable of it) because it couldn’t possibly have come from Ricky and Ron. Almost immediately they are interrupted by an assistant from the show who tells them that they’ve all been call back to the studio immediately.

Jordan has arranged for Matt to be taken to Studio 60 by the network’s head of public relations Shelly Green (Wendy Phillips), but he refuses to go in, probably out of fear of running into Harriet. Meanwhile Jordan is meeting with Matt at the hotel where the Writers Guild Awards were being held. He’s just finishing watching the video of Wes’s meltdown. Jordan offers Danny the opportunity to take over the show. Danny immediately says no and adds that he’s uneasy even talking about this without Wes’s approval, which Jordan assures him that Wes is okay with this. Danny also informs Jordan that he and Matt are getting ready to do another movie, but Jordan knows differently. Thanks to an ex-boyfriend who works at a major insurance company and tells he things he shouldn’t in hopes of dropping the “ex” from “boyfriend” has let Jordan know that Danny has failed a drug test and can’t get a completion bond for the movie without 18 months of clean drug tests. Jordan needs him and Danny for two years, and is prepared to pay him more than he would make directing the movie…which he cant do for 18 months anyway. Danny wants to go see Matt before Jordan can tell him about the drug test, which he assumes is going to be her first move. She assures him that this information will stay between the two of them. Danny is doubtful. He tells Jordan, “I have no reason to trust you and every reason not to." When she asks why he says "You work in television."

Matt meets Danny outside of the studio and lets him know about the drug test and about Jordan’s offer. He wants Matt to do the movie without him, but Matt is determined to do it with Danny. He first suggests bonding Danny himself, except he’s basically broke. He suggests cutting corners, maybe shooting in Vancouver. Danny is adamant about that idea. According to him, "Vancouver doesn't look like anything. It doesn't even look like Vancouver. It looks like Boston California." Then Matt comes to the conclusion that the network is trying to blackmail Danny into taking the show. He runs into the building and finds Jordan, Jack and a number of other executives in Wes Mandel’s old office. Matt immediately accuses Jack of blackmailing Danny into taking the show. This is the first that Jack has heard of the drug test. Once that’s out of the way Jack asks Danny what he thought of Wes’s tirade. At first Danny gives a stock answer but Jack presses him about the content of what Wes said, and Danny says that it covered a lot of ground. Jack doesn’t take Danny’s answer very well and Danny storms out of the room.

Matt follows Danny, but stops outside where he gets a view of the stage. He goes back in and tell Jack that they’ll do it, and he’ll talk to Danny. Jack reminds Matt that he didn’t fire them, they quit. Matt says that it’s true but he knew which way the wind was blowing when the network slapped an American flag on the network bug, and suddenly his jokes weren’t so funny anymore. Jack responds that if he showed them the door it was their hero Wes who opened it. He then goes on to say that he trusts that Matt won’t say anything at the press conference on Monday that will embarrass the network. Matt responds angrily that it shouldn’t be too hard; if you pointed the camera at two people masturbating it would still be the least embarrassing thing on NBS.

Matt goes into the basement area of the theater where the dressing rooms are located. He’s looking for Danny but almost literally runs into Harriet, and we learn the real reason why they broke up. It wasn’t about her singing the anthem at the Dodger game, it was because while she was supportive while he was promoting his movie, he was absent when she was promoting her CD of spiritual songs. He responded that he was there for her right up to point where she put on a dress and sang for a bigot – that is she appeared on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. She insists that she wasn’t singing for Robertson she was singing for; she was singing for Robertson’s audience, people who often had little except their faith. In spite of this she stood by the sketch that got cut, and the name of that sketch was “Crazy Christians.” Matt and Harriet come to the conclusion that they aren’t going to recover from this argument but they can work together.

Matt finds Danny sitting in one of the show’s sets, the back half of a taxi cab. First he tells Danny that they’re taking the show, then he finally asks Danny what happened. According to Danny, nothing happened it just happened, meaning that there was no real trigger. After eleven years of sobriety he just slipped. More to the point he asked why Danny didn’t tell him; when Matt screws up Danny knows, and not just because he reads about it in the papers but because Matt tells him. He also tells Danny that now that their doing the show only one of them can screw up at a time and they both know that most of the time it will be him so Danny has to have the big shoulders.

Jordan interrupts them as they leave the cab. She tells them that while they don’t know it yet, she’s going to be their dream come true. She gives Matt the script for the sketch that got cut. She thinks it’s inspired but she wants an expert opinion. He doesn’t need to read the script - he wrote it, four years ago just before he apparently quit. She already knew that, and tells Matt and Danny to lead with it next week. Danny asks Jordan how much leeway they’ll have in staffing and she tells him that there are a few people they have to keep, like the current writers and co-Executive Producers Ricky and Ron. Matt says he doesn’t want “Beevis and Hackboy,” but they’ve got a two year deal and the network isn’t going to eat their $30,000 per episode salary. As Jordan departs Danny sees Cal. He tells Cal that there are procedures that you follow because it’s live TV - they practice this stuff often enough – so he thinks that Cal deliberately let Wes go on for 53 seconds. Cal admits that he did and that the guys need to do what they need to do and no hard feelings. Danny immediately tells Cal that they need him to stay on. Just before they go out to meet the cast and announce what is happening to them Danny tells Matt, “We live here now.”

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I want to mention three things in this episode, and I want to keep Wes’s meltdown for last. First is Jordan’s actions. As we find out in later episodes Jordan didn’t just put out the possibility that the guy from the insurance company would get back together with her, she slept with him. Now I’m not sure how much of this was due to Amanda Peet’s real life pregnancy and the need to provide an identity for the biological father (since clearly Jordan and Danny aren’t at that stage yet, though it seems apparent that the attraction was there from just about the start) but I’m not sure that that matters. What matters is that Jordan has basically prostituted herself to get the information on Danny, using her sexuality to acquire a reward. And that leads to the question of why she did this. Clearly she didn’t know that Wes was going to go into a 53 second tirade on the state of television – at least I don’t think she did. So essentially this woman has this information and it has a time limit to it; in 18 months (and probably a lot less) it loses any value. So she must have some reason for taking this rather extreme action, having sex with a man she really didn’t care about except as a source of information. Is it a question of having knowledge for knowledge’s sake? Does she have another show for them? I don’t really think so. What other project would be worth it for her or for them? No, what I think is that Jordan intended to ease Wes out of the show and replace him with Matt and Danny, sooner rather than later. Circumstances forced her hand but she’s too much of a player in this world not to have a reason for her actions.

The second thing – or rather person – I want to look at is Steven Weber who played Jack Rudolph. I always like it and am usually impressed when an actor that I associate primarily with comedy does drama and does it well. Most of my exposure to Steven Weber comes from seeing him in Wings, a show that I admittedly didn’t watch much. Watching Weber as Jack Rudolph is one of those great things, in much the same way that watching Matthew Perry in the handful of episodes he did on The West Wing was something of a revelation. Jack initially appears to be the show’s bad guy, the network executive that Matt and Danny and even Jordan are battling to revive Studio 60, but in later episodes it becomes increasingly clear that he’s not entirely the bad guy. He has to see the whole picture of which Studio 60 – our little corner of the network world – is just a small component. Arguably even Jordan’s part of network operations, the entertainment division, is a small component. Jack is someone who picks his fight. I can’t help but think of him as a “smiling cobra” type (the nickname given to James Aubrey who was the head of CBS TV in the early 1960s).

The way that Weber plays Jack is interesting to me and feels about right. He maintains a certain air of arrogance and is all business. It’s in the words of course but it’s also in the little things. When he and Jordan leave the boardroom and Jordan tells him that she doesn’t know where her office is his reaction is just a quick sucking sound through his teeth. It is the absolute perfect reaction, it says in an instant what you couldn’t say in ten seconds of dialog and it says it all about Jack. Jack almost never lets his vulnerability show. He owns any room that he’s in. Where it becomes scary/interesting is when he’s placed in a circumstance where he’s out of his environment as we see in the two Nevada Day episodes. When he’s facing John Goodman as the judge in Pahrump he yells and blusters and it’s at least in part because he’s in a situation where not only is he not the most important man in the room but he’s really powerless to affect the situation in any way.

So now we have to turn to Wes’s burnout moment. Here’s his speech, as taken from one of the TV sites (I’m cutting the stage direction – you’ll know where they fit):

It's not going to be a very good show tonight…. I think you should change the channel, change the channel right now or better yet turn off the TV, ok? No, no, I know it seems like this is supposed to be funny, but, uh, tomorrow, tomorrow you're gonna find out that it wasn't and by that time I'll have been fired…. No, this is not a sketch. This show used to be cutting edge political and social satire, but it's gotten lobotomized by a candy ass broadcast network, hellbent on doing absolutely nothing that might just challenge their audience. We're about to do a sketch that you've seen already about 500 times. Yeah, yeah, no one's gonna confuse George Bush and George Plimpton, now we get it. We're all being lobotomized by this country's most influential industry. It's just thrown in the towel on any endeavor to do anything that doesn't include the courting of 12 year-old boys. Not even the smart 12 year-olds, the stupid ones, the idiots. Which there are plenty thanks in no small measure to this network. So why don't you just, change the channel? Turn off the TVs do it right now…. The struggle between art and commerce. Well, there's always been a struggle between art and commerce and now I'm telling you art is getting it's ass kicked and it's making us mean and it's making us bitchy. It's making us cheap punks. That's not who we are! People are having contests to see how much they can be like Donald Trump…. We're eating worms for money. "Who wants to screw my sister?" Guys are getting killed in a war that's got theme music and a logo. That remote in your hand is a crack pipe. Oh yeah every once in a while we pretend to be appalled …. Pornographers! It's not even good pornography. They're just this side of snuff films, and friends that's what's next because that's all that's left. And the two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott. These are the people they're afraid of. This prissy, feckless, off-the-charts, greed-filled, whorehouse of a network. And you're watching this thoroughly unpatriotic mother-

The rant reads well, but when delivered by Judd Hirsch it really sings to the point that as the show went on, people (smartasses commenting on various blogs really) were harkening back to when the show was good… when Wes was on. It’s a really stupid statement of course. Wes Mandel was a beaten man. He was the reason why the fictional Studio 60 had slid the way that it did. He compromised years before when Matt and Danny were forced out and from there on it was nothing but compromises – letting Ricky and Ron pretty much write the show despite their obvious lack of ability on that front, giving in to Standards and Practices without a real fight. Jerry had it right when he said that if he had the muscle left to put the sketch on he wouldn’t have asked. Wes had lost the war and his rant was a final kamikaze attack aimed at exposing all the problems with network TV. As to what it accomplished, well that’s harder to figure out beyond accelerating Jordan’s plan.

But of course this isn’t a real ad libbed rant delivered on the spur of the moment by someone who has finally reached his breaking point. It is the very least a plot device to create dramatic interest and to create the situation where these people who were insiders and are now outsiders are brought in. In comic book terms, this whole episode is an origin story and in a good origin story you need a reason why the hero or heroes gain their powers – in this case the power to run the show. That being said I think that Sorkin used Wes’s meltdown as a way to express his own disgust at the direction that TV is going down, and on the whole I think he’s absolutely right. Network television – and I think to that you can add a many of the basic cable networks – has largely given up on the new and innovative. They’re playing it safe to gain and hold the largest portion of the 18-49 demographic. They don’t innovative shows that challenge the established norm because they feel it won’t attract that mass audience. Even if you don’t consider the protests by organizations like the Parents Television Council (“every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott”) a show like that first season of NYPD Blue wouldn’t be made today – with or without the nudity – and neither would the original Defenders or a St. Elsewhere. And when you add in organizations like the PTC that demands that every show – not every show in the mythological “Family Hour” or in the first two hours of Prime Time, but every show – has to be fit for the children and the dumb children at that (dumbness being defined as the kids who do and say everything that they see and hear on TV; where the influence of the parents is less than the influence of a box of electronics) well then Mandel, and that really means Sorkin who put the words in Wes’s mouth, was right about things being lobotomized.

Of course I could be wrong about all of this.

My Summer Project – Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip

2011-06-13T13:29:00.000-06:00

One of the things that I promised myself that I would do to try to get back in the swing of writing again was a summer recap project. I want to recap a single season of a show that I’m particularly fond of, and it would help if the show ran a single season, and that I had the boxed DVD set. Well actually there are a couple of series that I would have broken one of those rules for. I was tempted to do the first season of Life even though I don’t have the second season (I’m too cheap to buy it at the local HMV and I haven’t seen it anywhere else), and I would love to do the seventh season of The Amazing Race, and would have except that I’ve lost two of the DVDs (I do have the complete first season, and maybe next year I’ll write it up).

Realistically though the only show that I really wanted to do was Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. There are several reasons why I want to write about the show, besides the fact that I didn’t at the time and regret it. First up, I know that it has gotten a bad reputation in the years since it left the air and I don’t think that it is entirely deserved. It is a poor effort by Aaron Sorkin, but the fact that people usually won’t acknowledge is that a poor show by Sorkin is generally better than most of the stuff that’s on TV today, and I think that’s true of Studio 60. Some people regard the show as a ratings bomb, and to a degree that’s true, but if you look at the NBC ratings for dramas in that time slot (or indeed any time on Mondays) since the show left the air, most have not performed as well as Studio 60. Certainly the show did well with DVR users, with the highest gain in viewership on the “live plus seven” ratings of any network show. According to the Nielsen ratings at the time, “Studio 60 adds nearly 11%, or almost a million viewers, to its total every week as a result of these ‘live plus seven’ viewers.” But ratings at the time only included those who watched the show as it aired. Today, ratings are based on “Live plus Same Day” viewing figures. And this is despite the fact that I think that the network reached a point where it treated the show worse than what you’d scrape off your shoe after a run through a dog park.

Two other reasons why I wanted to revisit Studio 60 are that I think that a lot of the criticism of the show that I can remember was more about what people wanted the show to be than about what it was, and that it provided more than a bit of insight into the big picture of TV. Those are tied together, and I think they’re more than a bit important. The critics, or maybe just those who wanted to watch a show about a show like Saturday Night Live wanted to see the comedy and when they did they found it wanting. and to a degree they’re right, but a lot of the show isn’t about the comedy, it’s about the making of the comedy and about the bigger picture of network politics and control. The show talked about issues that are coming to the fore today: “incidental indecency,” product placement, and the bi-coastal nature of the medium just to name three (there are more). It maybe “inside Baseball” to a lot of people but it’s the sort of stuff that I find interesting.

So let’s start looking at Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.

James Arness - 1923-2011

2011-06-10T04:09:00.000-06:00

He was a big man. He stood 6’7” tall…on his left leg. His right leg was 5/8ths of an inch shorter, a result of his military service in Italy a few days after the landings at Anzio. He wore a lift in his right shoe to balance him out. James Arness was a big man, and the role he played in the early days of television was fittingly a big part.

James Arness was born James Aurness in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1923. Never a good student – he often skipped classes – he managed to graduate from high school in 1942. Rejected by the Army Air Force – he had wanted to be a fighter pilot but was five inches too tall – he worked at various menial jobs until being drafted in 1943 as an infantryman. Serving with the 3rd Infantry Division he was the first man off his landing craft during the Anzio landings because of his height; his commander thought that how high the water came on him would be a good gauge of the depth for the rest of the men – it came up to Arness’s waist. A few days later he was shot while serving as point man on a night patrol. He spent over a year in Army hospitals and was honorably discharged in January 1945. At the suggestion of his brother Peter (who would later act under the name Peter Graves) he enrolled in a radio announcing school and got a job as a disc jockey at a Minneapolis radio station. A few months later he quit that job and joined a friend on a trip to California.

In California, Arness made a variety of show business contacts and decided to use his GI Bill benefits to study acting at the Bliss-Hayden Theater’s little theater school. His first screen role was in the Lorretta Young film The Farmer’s Daughter as one of Young’s brothers. Other small film roles followed in such films as Battleground (directed by William Wellman and starring Van Johnson) and Wagon Master (directed by John Ford and starring Ward Bond, Harry Carey Jr. and Ben Johnson). He also appeared as the title character in The Thing From Another World, and as an FBI agent in Them. His big break came when he signed with John Wayne’s production company Batjac. They developed a close friendship and Arness co-starred with Wayne in four films – Big Jim McLain, Hondo, Island In The Sky, and The Sea Chase. And it was through John Wayne that Arness got the role that made him a legend – Matt Dillon.

While there is apparently no truth to the story that Wayne was approached to play the role of Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, he was a vocal advocate for his protégé James Arness to get the part. Initially Arness was uncertain about taking the role. Like many actors of the time he worried that doing television would stall his film career. Nevertheless he took the part, and after getting an enthusiastic endorsement from Wayne, who filmed an introduction to the first episode of the show, he stayed with the show for twenty years, as well as five made for TV movies. Including the movies, he played the character of Matt Dillon in five decades; the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s for the series, and the 1980s and ‘90s for the movies. After Gunsmoke was cancelled in 1975 Arness appeared as Zeb Macahan on the ABC series How The West Was Won from 1976-78. His last series was McClain’s Law. The drama was something of a departure for Arness in that he was playing a modern role rather than appearing in a period piece. The series ran on NBC for sixteen episodes and was criticized for its violent content.

James Arness didn’t create the character of Matt Dillon. Beyond the shows creators, the elements of Mister Dillion’s character were really put into place by William Conrad who played the part on the radio show. Conrad had a tremendous voice that fit our collective image of the Western lawman. If you ever have the chance to hear Conrad playing Dillon on one of the radio episodes – and heaven knows there are a ton of podcasts that play episodes of the radio Gunsmoke on a regular or occasional basis – do it, setting aside what you know of how Conrad and Arness looked, and you’ll understand how perfect Conrad was for the part…on radio. The trouble is that Conrad, who had been a fighter pilot during World War II, was a big man who got bigger over the years. Although my good friend Ivan Shreve points out that Conrad looked a lot like real western lawmen of the period looked, his body type was not what we the audience expected out western heroes to look like. We wanted John Wayne in Stagecoach or Fort Apache rather than John Wayne as he would appear in True Grit. We wanted someone big and powerful who radiated power and masculinity. In other words we wanted James Arness. Arness created the visual image of Matt Dillon and in so doing created a visual template for the way that Western lawmen should appear, at least if they were the lead character in their shows.

And because Arness played the role of Matt Dillon for so long, he had the opportunity to get better with age in terms of fitting the role. It used to be a feminist talking point the while women got wrinkles, men got “character,” but in James Arness’s case it was true. As James Arness grew older he face grew craggier and became more interesting. He increasingly became the wind-blown and dried plainsman, tough as rawhide but with a kindly side that you saw in his eyes. I suppose that if anyone remembered the radio shows with Conrad’s voice they might say that as he aged, Arness looked more and more like Conrad sounded.

By most accounts Arness was a generous actor in terms of letting his co-stars carry episodes from time to time. While Gunsmoke had a very strong primary supporting cast for Arness – including Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Dennis Weaver, and Ken Curtis, as well as Burt Reynolds and Buck Taylor for shorter terms – the show could hardly be described as an ensemble show. Marshal Dillon was very much the most important character on the show, and there were indeed episodes where the supporting characters were seen only in cameo appearances. For Arness to allow himself to be put himself into that sort of situation, particularly early in the show’s existence, shows something about the man’s self-confidence and his willingness to let others have their time in the sun. Later these absences had a practical aspect to them. As he got older Arness’s war wounds were becoming increasingly stressed by the physical aspects of playing Marshal Dillon. By the end of the series Arness was having considerable difficulty mounting a horse, which is a definite liability when doing a Western series. Thus you had episodes that focused almost entirely on characters like Festus, Doc Adams, Miss Kitty or even Newly O’Brien (Buck Taylor), where Dillon would only appear sitting at table having a cup of coffee with other characters on the show.

In the wake of James Arness’s death there have been numerous comments in various blogs and in response to newspaper articles that spoke quite glowingly about him, and Gunsmoke, particularly the early seasons of the show which in the opinion of most commenters were the show’s best seasons. I won’t dispute that. I would however point out that Gunsmoke was a show that lasted twenty years on network television at a time when network TV was the only game in town and there were only three networks playing the game. It survived that long by adapting to the changing trends in the medium, and by responding to actions like the protests about violence in the media. The show evolved over time. But Matt Dillon didn’t evolve; he didn’t have to. The ideals that he stood for, upholding the law and making sure that the the weak were defended from the strong were valid throughout the show’s run. They may have been black & white concepts that wouldn’t necessarily be in keeping with the whole notion that things have to be looked at in a nearly infinite number of shades of grey, but for this show and this character they were the right ideals. In the end James Arness’s portrayal of Matt Dillon embodied these ideals.

In the end, James Arness and Matt Dillon were lucky to have found each other. It is impossible to imagine anyone else – including John Wayne – being able to fit into the role of Matt Dillon, and it is just as had to imagine Arness having the success that he did without being Matt Dillon. It was the perfect confluence of actor and part. James Arness was meant to be Matt Dillon and Matt Dillon wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t been played by James Arness.

I’m including two clips of opening sequences from Gunsmoke here. The first is from 1964 (based on the clip for the next episode), and the second is from the period after the show was cancelled in 1967. The first title sequence is the classic “the bad guy shot first but Matt shot best” opening, while the second version is the only one that I could find of the “Matt racing his horse across the prairie” opening that turns into the insets of the actors along the Main Street of Dodge City. The riding sequence was reportedly shot on the day that the cast found out that the show had been cancelled. Reportedly they were shooting a scene where Matt was riding across the prairie and he just let go in and rode his horse hard as a sort of catharsis and the director decided to keep the cameras rolling.

Upfronts 2011 – Video Trailers

2011-05-24T03:30:00.000-06:00

I usually try to put up trailers for the season’s new shows every year so that you can see what’s going to be on next season. I was unsure about doing one of these this year after what happened last time, when none of the American networks was willing to make their clips available outside of the United States. When I did find a non-American source for the clips they were shut down within a few days. It wasn’t worth the hassle. If the situation didn’t change this year, well I wasn’t going to push the issue.

This year three networks took the trouble to make their clips available internationally. One of them was NBC. That network has, in the past couple of years, made a real effort to reach out to me and to other Bloggers. They have dedicated a lot to new media strategies and it shows. Both FOX and The CW also have clips on YouTube that are available to international viewers. The latter is particularly interesting since The CW is at least partially owned by CBS which is the network which I, as a Canadian blogging about TV, have had the most trouble with.

Naturally this brings me to a Rant. Neither ABC nor CBS have made their show trailers available to people outside of the United States. In the case of ABC, it is possible to see clips from their new shows if you go onto the new show webpage on their site. The clips are presented in a very small window on the page but you can expand them to full screen. In no way shape or form is this as convenient as having the clips available freely on YouTube or some other video site, if for no other reason than you cant embed these clips. Oh, they have the clips on YouTube, but as a Canadian I can’t see them and that makes them useless to me.

As for CBS, they give me nothing that I can use, either to present to my readers or to just watch and develop my own views on the shows. It’s totally useless, and it bothers me because I really can’t understand the reasoning behind this. It’s not as if, as Leo Laporte would put it, I am about to download all these clips and peddle them to the public from a blanket on my lawn. There’s not enough material from the shows in question to make this worthwhile. I suppose there’s a question about international licensing and copyright but again, the clips are so small that I don’t see them being that much of a threat to the broadcaster’s position. I think in fact that the benefits of having them available internationally probably outweigh not having them available. One of the big things about “New Media” and “Social Media” is that it is without borders. If the Analytics for this Blog are correct, most of the visits to this blog come not from Canada but from the United States by a ratio of about five to one. More visits to this Blog come from California and New York combined than come from all of Canada. That strikes me as a promotional opportunity that is being missed because of fear of, well I’m not exactly sure what.

Anyway, here are he clips that I have from the networks. As much as possible I have tried to organize the clips by day, followed shows that will be debuting at mid-season

NBC

FOX

The CW

CBS

To see trailers from CBS, please click here.

ABC

To see trailers from ABC, please click here. I you are from outside the United States you can see trailers from the new series at the ABC website (I hope).

In addition you can search for the individual CBS and ABC show names on YouTube and (at least for now) be able to find copies of the trailers that have been posted by third parties without regional restrictions. How long this will last is anyone’s guess but from experience it likely won’t be long.

The 2011-12 Season–Night By Night

2011-05-22T05:04:00.000-06:00

It's time now to take a look at the Fall 2010-11 TV schedule on a day to day basis. What I'm trying to do her is to handicap each night's programming and to attempt – sight unseen, not even a trailer (maybe a couple of commercials but that's all) – to pick the winners and losers from each night. It's an inexact science that verges on Voodoo, and I'm not much of a practitioner.

Last year’s predictions weren’t as good as I had hoped. I hit some things right on the nose – Lonestar was one where I was right on unfortunately – but others I got very very wrong. I didn’t foresee Law & Order: Los Angeles collapsing the way that it did for example. In a lot of cases I was a lot more optimistic than I probably should have been. Even expressing the possibility that Chase had even the slightest chance of survival was wildly hopeful. We’ll have to see how I do this time around.

I want to do things slightly differently this time around. I’ll still give a prediction about the various new shows but in addition I’ll give a “Battle of the Night” which will be the time slot which I think has either the most interesting confrontation between two shows or where it could be a make or break battle for all of the networks on the night. I will also name a “Show to keep an eye on”; a show that interests me or that I think will either go big quickly or go away quickly. And I’ll give predictions abut the new shows.

Monday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	Dancing with the Stars	How I Met Your Mother	TERRA NOVA	The Sing-Off	Gossip Girl
8:30-9:00	Dancing with the Stars	2 BROKE GIRLS	TERRA NOVA	The Sing-Off	Gossip Girl
9:00-9:30	Dancing with the Stars	Two and a Half Men	House	The Sing-Off	HART OF DIXIE
9:30-10:00	Dancing with the Stars	Mike & Molly	House	The Sing-Off	HART OF DIXIE
10:00-11:00	Castle	Hawaii Five-0	Local	THE PLAYBOY CLUB	Local

Battle of the Night:
8:00-10:00 p.m. Dancing With The Stars vs. The Sing-Off

Show to keep an eye on: The Playboy Club

CBS and ABC have owned the night in the 2010-11 season and that’s reflected in the stability on the night. The two networks have only added one new show, and I think that show, 2 Broke Girls fits well enough between the two existing shows that it should be safe for the full season. There’s a question about whether the change from Charlie Sheen to Ashton Kutcher is going to work on Two And A Half Men but the shouldn’t have too much trouble on the night. Moving to FOX sight unseen I have a big problem with Terra Nova. It’s a genre show, and it’s a show that I’m not entirely sure will be embraced by “science geeks” because of the whole “temporal paradox” aspect. You have to ask yourself whether FOX would have bought the show if the name Steven Spielberg wasn’t associated with it. Unless Spielberg has some sort of deal with FOX to give the show a full season, I expect this show will go quickly. Maybe the most interesting show for me is The Playboy Club, which is why I put it as the show to keep an eye on. Because NBC has Smash set to appear at mid-season, I’m not sure if this is a place holder with a beginning middle and end or if the network has hopes that it will survive on a different day and time.

Tuesday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	LAST MAN STANDING	NCIS	Glee	The Biggest Loser	90210
8:30-9:00	MAN UP	NCIS	Glee	The Biggest Loser	90210
9:00-9:30	Dancing with the Stars	NCIS: Los Angeles	NEW GIRL	The Biggest Loser	RINGER
9:30-10:00	Dancing with the Stars	NCIS: Los Angeles	Raising Hope	The Biggest Loser	RINGER
10:00-11:00	Body Of Proof	UNFORGET-TABLE	Local	Parenthood	Local

Battle Of The Night
10:00-11:00 p.m. Unforgettable vs Body Of Proof vs Parenthood

Show to keep an eye on: Ringer

Tough night to pick a battle of the night for. My initial instinct was to say Last Man Standing and Man Up against everything else in the time slot but quite frankly I don’t hold out too much hope for the two ABC comedies. On the other hand the 10-11 p.m. time slot looks like a pretty substantial battle between three shows that have a very different feel to them. Body of Proof is a show with fairly light feel like Monday’s Castle, and Parenthood is a family drama which I am still convinced is at least an hour too late in the night. From what I’ve heard about the show, Unforgettable sounds like it will be heavier than Body Of Proof. I think it will be interesting to see how the audience will break down for these three shows and whether they might all still be where they started at the end of the season. Unforgettable was going to be my “Show to keep an eye on” for Tuesday but after a bit of thought I decided that a lot of interested has been piled onto Ringer, since it stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and it was originally intended for CBS. It will be interesting to see, with that pedigree, what sort of ratings it can draw for The CW.

Wednesday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	The Middle	Survivor	X-FACTOR PERFORM-ANCE	UP ALL NIGHT	H8TR
8:30-9:00	SUBURGA-TORY	Survivor	X-FACTOR PERFORM-ANCE	FREE AGENTS	H8TR
9:00-9:30	Modern Family	Criminal Minds	X-FACTOR PERFORM-ANCE	Harry's Law	America's Next Top Model
9:30-10:00	Happy Endings	Criminal Minds	I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER	Harry's Law	America's Next Top Model
10:00-11:00	REVENGE	CSI	Local	Law & Order: SVU	Local

Battle of the Night
10:00-11:00 p.m. CSI vs Law & Order: SVU

Show to keep an eye on: X-Factor

X-Factor is the elephant in the room on Wednesday nights, which is why I think it’s the “Show to keep an eye on.” The 2011-12 season will see four and a half hours a week, every week, devoted to singing reality-competition shows, between The Sing-Off, The Voice, American Idol and The X-Factor. And that doesn’t include the summer series America’s Got Talent which every year features a lot of singers. I desperately want to believe that we are at or near the saturation point when it comes to this sort of singing shows. It’s not that I want this series to fail (though I wouldn’t shed a tear if it did) but I really think that one of these shows on any network is enough, particularly since – with minor changes in format and judging, they really are the same show.It worries me when a show like this, which is touted by many as destined to be a huge hit is in a position to take better or more interesting shows off the air (and yes I do include Survivor in that number). As for the battle of the night, CSI vs. Law & Order: SVU has all the makings of a classic confrontation between two aging heavyweights. With Mariska Hargitay apparently wanting to reduce her episode commitment on the show and Jennifer Love Hewitt looking as if she’ll be the replacement on the episodes Hargitay doesn’t do, I think the one surviving Law & Order series could be vulnerable. However CSI has been showing erosion in its audience since William Petersen left and Laurence Fishburne came in. Of the new comedies on the night, I think Suburgatory should be a reasonable fit into the ABC set of family sitcoms and should do nicely between The Middle and Modern Families. I’m dubious about the NBC comedies; I think Free Agents would probably be better in the Thursday night line-up than partnered with a family style sitcom like Up All Night.

Thursday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	CHARLIE'S ANGELS	The Big Bang Theory	X-FACTOR RESULTS	Community	Vampire Diaries
8:30-9:00	CHARLIE'S ANGELS	HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN	X-FACTOR RESULTS	Parks And Recreation	Vampire Diaries
9:00-9:30	Grey's Anatomy	PERSON OF INTEREST	Bones	The Office	SECRET CIRCLE
9:30-10:00	Grey's Anatomy	PERSON OF INTEREST	Bones	WHITNEY	SECRET CIRCLE
10:00-11:00	Private Practice	The Mentalist	Local	PRIME SUSPECT	Local

Battle of the Night

10:00-11:00 p.m. Prime Suspect vs Private Practice

Show to keep an eye on: Prime Suspect

With NBC back in the business of dramas on Thursday night, after two years of dailing comedies like The Jay Leno Show and whatever they had there in the 2010-11 season, the 10-11 p.m. hour suddenly comes into play more than it has. The Mentalist is the top show in the hour, and I don’t think that will change this season at least. However I think that the lesser of Shonda Rhimes’s two Thursday night shows is Private Practice. If Prime Suspect shows any strength at all it might be enough to take the time slot. Even without that situation though, Prime Suspect is a show to keep an eye on if only to see if NBC can mess up yet another adaptation of a British series and how badly. Turning to the other new series, Secret Circle should mesh better with Vampire Diaries than Nikita did. On the other hand I don’t think that Whitney will work as well out of The Office, as the Free Agents would have, NBC might want to consider swapping those two series before the start of the season. Charlie’s Angels is nice light fluff that should probably do well enough between 8 and 9, although that seems to be a time period where all of the networks have high profile shows. That could be a real dog fight with no obvious winners emerging, at least early on. Purely from the commercials that have aired on CBS – because as usual CBS has blocked the YouTube clips to everyone outside the United States – I’m concerned that How To Be A Gentleman will work. I’m assured that the cast is excellent but somehow the concept just doesn’t work for me.

Friday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-9:00	Extreme Makeover Home Edition	A GIFTED MAN	Kitchen Nightmares	Chuck	Nikita
9:00-10:00	Shark Tank	CSI: New York	Fringe	GRIMM	Supernatural
10:00-11:00	20/20	Blue Bloods	Local	Dateline NBC	Local

Battle of the Night
I’m not really sure. Maybe 8-10 with all the scripted shows going up against the three reality series.

Show to keep an eye on: Grimm.

This one was hard. No one, with the possible exception of CBS and maybe The CW expects much from Fridays, so if you’re a network that isn’t CBS you schedule reality shows like Kitchen Nightmares, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and Shark Tank, or you put on shows that you think are going to draw genre or “geek” audiences like Fringe, Chuck, and Grimm that either have a track record or which you expect will have limited audiences. What I would like to see is those genre shows getting even halfway decent ratings and at least one of them bucking the trend and and getting a higher rating than Extreme Makeover Home Edition (a show that I have come to loathe) or Shark Tank (I rather like Kitchen Nightmares so I won’t mention it in the same context). Think that a sufficiently large audience for a scripted show other than one of the CBS shows might persuade the networks to stay in the business of doing original scripted shows on Fridays. That’s why I think you should keep an eye on Grimm, particularly when someone like Marc Berman says outright that he thinks it will be the first show to be cancelled and Dateline NBC will be expanded to two hours…again. It’s probably too much to hope for, but I can dream, can’t I?

Sunday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
7:00-7:30	America's Funniest Home Videos	60 Minutes	The O/T	Football Night In America	Local
7:30-8:00	America's Funniest Home Videos	60 Minutes	The Cleveland Show	Football Night In America	Local
8:00-8:30	ONCE UPON A TIME	The Amazing Race	The Simpsons	Football Night In America	Local
8:30-9:00	ONCE UPON A TIME	The Amazing Race	ALLEN GREGORY	Sunday Night Football	Local
9:00-9:30	Desperate Housewives	The Good Wife	Family Guy	Sunday Night Football	Local
9:30-10:00	Desperate Housewives	The Good Wife	American Dad	Sunday Night Football	Local
10:00-11:00	PAN AM	CSI: Miami	Local	Sunday Night Football	Local

Battle of the Night
9:00-10:00 p.m. The Good Wife vs Desperate Housewives

Show to keep and eye on: Pan Am

Ignoring FOX, whose Animation Domination shows are (a) likely to go on forever, and (b) directed at a teen and young adult audience (and (c) – in my opinion at least – a lazy way out of programming the night) the night is all about people who don’t watch football. And traditionally the big audience for that is women. I know that sounds sexist but I’m also pretty sure that there are statistics to prove that. The battle between The Good Wife and Desperate Housewives looks like it could be a big one. The Good Wife won an Emmy for Archie Panjabi in it’s first season as well as a huge number of nominations, while Desperate Housewives won Emmys in it’s early seasons but hasn’t won anything lately. That makes The Good Wife the up and comer while Desperate Housewives the aged veteran seeking one last ratings triumph. I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think that The Good Wife, which struggled in it’s original Tuesday night slot could find an audience here, even with periodic Football Overruns on CBS delaying the show. The show I think we should keep an eye on is not Allen Gregory. I’ve already read comments on Cartoon Brew the mildest of which which described the lead character as “the most UNlikeable character ever placed in a prime time show.” That doesn’t bode well for any interest in the show. Pan Am on the other hand at least has the advantages of being an interesting premise and trying something different. It may not succeed, but at least you’ve got a network trying something totally outside the box.

The CW’s 2011-12 Season

2011-05-20T05:14:00.000-06:00

The CW, the network that some has described as “the cable of broadcast television,” has announced its 2011-12 line-up. Four new hour long series will be debuting in the Fall with two new series and one returning series debuting at mid-season. In addition three series will be changing either their time or their night.

Cancelled: Hellcats, Shedding For The Wedding, Life Unexpected, Smallville (planned ending).

Moved: Gossip Girl, 90210, Nikita.

Renewed: America’s Next Top Model, Vampire Diaries, Supernatural

New Series: Dramas – Hart of Dixie, Ringer, Secret Circle
Reality – H8R

The CW also has two reality series – Remodeled and The Frame – for mid-season. As well returning series One Tree Hill will be returning at mid-season for thirteen episodes to bring the show to its conclusion.

Complete Schedule (All times Eastern, new shows in Capitals)

Monday
8:00-9:00 p.m. Gossip Girl (New Time)
9:00-10:00 p.m. HART OF DIXIE

Tuesday
8:00-9:00 p.m. 90210 (New Day)
9:00-10:00 p.m. RINGERS

Wednesday
8:00-9:00 p.m. H8R
9:00-10:00 p.m. America’s Next Top Model

Thursday
8:00-9:00 p.m. Vampire Diaries
9:00-10:00 p.m. SECRET CIRCLE

Friday
8:00-9:00 p.m. Supernatural
9:00-10:00 p.m. Nikita (New Day)

In Hart of Dixie, Rachel Bilson plays Dr. Zoe Hart, a new doctor who expects to follow in her father’s footsteps as a cardio-thoracic surgeon. That is she does until her dreams fall apart and she receives an offer from a stranger, Dr. Harley Wilkes to work in his rural Alabama practice. When she gets to the Gulf Coast town of Bluebell Alabama to join the practice she discovers that Dr. Wilkes has died and left the practice to her. The problem is that at least some of the locals aren’t displaying the legendary Southern hospitality, notably Dr. Brick Brick Breeland the other doctor in town, and his daughter Lemon (Jaime King) on the other hand she does have a few allies: the towns may Lavon Hayes (Cress Williams), her bad-boy neighbour Wade Kinsella (Wilson Bethel), and lawyer George Tucker (Scott Porter) who just happens to be Lemon’s fiancee. While Rachel’s initial instinct is to go back to New York, a visit from her snobby mother leads Rachel to change her mind and discover both small town life and a side of herself she never knew existed.

H8TR is a new reality show hsted by Mario Lopez that brings celebrities face to face with the ordinary peple who hate them, in an attempt to win them over.

Ringer marks the return of Sarah Michelle Gellar to series television in a dual role. Gellar plays Bridget Cafferty and her identical twin sister Siobhan Marx. After recovering addict Bridget witnesses a professional hit. Despite the assurances of her FBI protection agent Victor Machado (Nestor Carbonell) she decides to flee New York and go to her sister. Bridget and her sister Siobhan have been estranged for some time to the point where no one in Siobhan’s wealthy and pampered life knows of Bridgett’s existence, including her husband Andrew Marx (Ioan Gruffedd), The sisters seem to be on the road to mending their relationship when Siobhan suddenly disappears. Bridgett decides to take on her identity. As Siobhan she discovers shocking secrets about her sister'’s life and marriage and about Siobhan’s best friend Gemma (Tara Summers) and her husband Henry (Kristopher Polaha).

Secret Circle is the new series from the creators of The Vampire Diaries. After Cassie Blake (Britt Robertson) loses her mother in a seemingly accidental fire the teenage girl goes to live with her Grandmother Jane (Ashley Crow) in Chance Harbor Washington. As Cassie gets to know her new classmates – sweet-natured Diana (Shelley Hennig), her boyfriend Adam (Thomas Dekker), brooding loner Nick (Louis Hunter), mean girl Faye (Phoebe Tonkin) and her sidekick Melissa (Jessica Parker Kennedy) – strange things start to happen. Cassie doesn’t believe them when they inform her that they are descendants of powerful witches, and that they have been waiting for her to join them to complete a new generation of the Secret Circle. However when she finds a a message from her mother in an old book of spells in her mother’s childhood bedroom she comes to understand her true and dangerous destiny. None of the teens are aware of the darker powers at play in the town that may be linked to the adults in town, including Diana’s father (Gale Harold) and Faye’s mother (Natasha Henstridge).

In mid-season reality series Re-Modeled modelling industry veteran Paul Fisher attempts to bring together small modelling agencies from around the country into a single organization known s The Network. The objective of the Network is to keep the small town agencies rom getting screwed and to empower models to take control of their careers and lead healthier lives.

The Frame is a concept that I’m not sure I can do justice to because I don’t fully understand it myself so I’ll leave it to the network press release about the show: “Ten teams of two, chosen for their dynamic personalities and their existing deep-rooted relationships, are selected to compete in this wild social experiment. These teams will each live in one Frame - a stripped down version of their home living space - for up to 8 weeks, with the entire world watching their inter-personal soap operas play out atop a highly formatted game. Couples cannot physically see one another, but each "frame" is rigged with plasma screens & communication devices that allow for visual and verbal interaction. The teams will face outrageous challenges, punishments, head-to-head competitions, and eliminations, all while isolated from the outside world. With 24/7 web cams streaming content live, and a bi-weekly television show, audiences will vote for - and have control over - many elements of the show, from rewards to punishments to eliminations. The last couple standing will be America's favorite pair, and walk away with a cash prize.”

Comments

The CW is always a difficult network to evaluate because what defines success and failure for them is usually quite different than it is for other networks. Few CW shows, even the ones that have been on since the network began, have ever earned the sort of ratings that would see the shows from being cancelled after the second episode. The person who called The CW “the cable of broadcast television” isn’t far wrong if you define “cable” in this context as catering to a niche audience. The CW has largely defined its niche as a teen and young adult female audience, hence shows like Gossip Girl, 90210, One Tree Hill, America’s Next Top Model, and Vampire Diaries. Shows that don’t entirely fit into this model do exist – I’m thinking specifically of Supernatural and to a lesser extent Nikita – but they tend to be aberrations. Clearly, of course, I am not a member of the core group that the network is trying to reach, which makes evaluating their shows difficult for me.

Nevertheless there are a couple of things that can talk about. Clearly the big story for the network is Ringer. The show was originally intended for CBS (which owns 50% of The CW Network and is the “C” in CW), but it seems that while programming executives at the network liked the show, they didn’t seem to think it would work on CBS. They did however think that it was an ideal fit for The CW. It is also probably the only CW show that I am likely to make a serious effort to watch. I would certainly have watched it if it had in fact made it into the CBS lineup, or any of the big broadcast networks.

I’ve seen at least one commenter in a forum state that the series summation for Hart Of Dixie made it sound a lot like Everwood and I’m not entirely sure that they’re wrong about that. Admittedly the principal of the show fits the CW’s preferred demographic more than Everwood did – a young single woman doctor rather than a middle-aged widowed male doctor – but so many of the details are the reminiscent of the older show. As to Secret Circle, this show is undoubtedly going to get a good run. It’s a good fit following The Vampire Diaries but quite frankly it is a show that is so far outside my wheelhouse that there’s not much I can say about it.

Turning briefly to the network’s reality shows, I can’t wrap my admittedly aged (by CW standards, and even by network demographics standards) brain cells around why any network would want to touch H8R with a ten foot pole, and Re-Modelled just sounds boring. The one reality series that the network has that sounds even borderline interesting is The Frame. I don’t entirely get it, but I get the impression that it’s a lot like Big Brother the way the British do it… so of course my impression will be entirely wrong. Given the “success” of The CW’s attempts at reality shows (including the apparent decline in ratings for America’s Nest Top Model) maybe The CW should abandon that type of programming the way they dropped sitcoms.

I think that, while I cannot claim to totally understand some of the decisions the executives at The CW have made, this is a relatively good schedule for them. It isn’t going to set the world on fire, but how often has anything that has come from The CW really set the world on fire. When I’m able to say that there is one show that I am likely to watch more than one episode of on the network it’s a good thing. I haven’t honestly been able to say that about any show that has debuted on The CW – most of the shows that I have watched on that network were brought over from the old WB. It’s not a standard that I’d hold other networks to, but for me, having that one show that I want to see more than once means that the network’s new schedule is a success.