In which I try to be a television critic, and to give my personal view of the medium. As the man said, I don't know anything about art but I know what I like.
When I started the poll of the “Biggest Disappointments of the 2011-12 TV season” I originally didn’t have a shutdown date for the poll. I thought I might let it run until the Emmy Nominations came out and I’d then launch my famous Emmy Polls. More recently I was leaning towards July 1st because it seemed to me that most of the people who were going to vote had voted. I am now pulling the plug effective immediately….because there is news.
In one of the greatest turnouts in the history of the polls I’ve run, 30 votes were cast in this poll. The following options received no votes:
“Working It getting on the air”
“2 Broke Girls having stereotyped secondary characters”
“The Secret Circle being cancelled while lower rated CW shows were renewed”
“Missing being cancelled”
These options received one vote (3%) each:
“Ringer not being a better show”
“The X-Factor not delivering the audience that Simon Cowell (and various “experts”) expected”
“GCB not living up to the hype” got two votes (7%).
“NYC 22 not being as good as the people associated with it” and “Terra Nova delivering neither value or quality for the money spent on it” each received three votes (10%).
The big – overewhelming really – winner was “Unforgettable being cancelled despite the ratings” which picked up twenty (20!) votes or 67% of the votes cast. And just for the record, I don’t vote in my polls but if I had, I’d probably have been the 21st vote. Based on virtually every standard (except maybe the almighty demographic and even that wasn’t clear-cut) this was a show that shouldn’t have been dropped.
Which brings us to the news, and why I decided to pull the poll. On Friday CBS announced that they will give Unforgettable a second season. This preempts negotiations with the TNT and Lifetime cable channels to revive the show. Admittedly the circumstances aren’t the best. The renewal is for a 13 episode run, and the plan is that the show will air in the summer of 2013 but it’s a start, and I have a suspicion that we might be seeing this show sooner rather than later if some of the CBS line-up fails to perform as well as the network expects. After all Nina Tassler said that the big problem for Unforgettable wasn’t “what went wrong” with the show but rather “what went right with the new pilots.” If those pilots turn out not to have been so “right” after all, I hope that the network will be willing to swallow their pride and push the revival of unforgettable forward into the second half of the regular season. (I just wouldn’t bet the farm on it).
I had a couple of comments on the original poll so I might as well finish up with them. Todd Mason corrected me on the name of the creator of NYC 22 (Richard not Robert Price) and added this:
… NYC 22, which (as I've noted on my own blog) managed to be more feckless and lifeless than ROOKIE BLUE (which I hadn't noted never quite admits it's set in Toronto, so obvious is that fact...it's even more blatant than HILL STREET BLUES being set in Chicago).
Being blatant isn’t the same as outright stating the fact, and to the the best of my knowledge (not that I watch the show) Rookie Blue has never admitted that it’s set in Toronto. Then again neither has Flashpoint, though on Flashpoint the crowns and Canadian flags on the uniforms suggest it.
Sadly, TWO BROKE GIRLS was created by Michael Patrick King, the hack behind the hack that is Darren Star, and the comedian Whitney Cummings, who is clever but is willing to go for the easiest imaginable joke, particularly in a sitcom context (hence the quick exhaustion of her other sitcom, WHITNEY... where we had the unusual result that her performance, rather than the writing of a comedian's sitcom, was what saving grace there was).
The thing for me about 2 Broke Girls is that I basically like the show, and am only vaguely bothered by the supporting characters because I’m focused on the leads. Or maybe I’m just an old fart who doesn’t see the racism in most of this.
pattinasse (abbott) wrote:
I would add ALCATRAZ and AWAKE, which both seemed promising. ALCATRAZ was too wedded to its central idea and AWAKE, not enough.
I definitely should have added Alcatraz, probably replacing Working It. Alcatraz was a show I really loved and was ready to review…right up to the moment when I saw the ratings for either the first or second week and knew that it was doomed. Too bad, because it was a fun show, and I’m a sucker for just about anything that Sam Neill does. Awake was a show that intrigued me and I was going to watch it, but then I missed recording the second or third episode and then lost most of what I had when the PVR expander died. I guess I should have also made mention of another show I didn’t watch but which some people felt disappointed about losing: Harry’s Law. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
After last year’s abortive attempt to recap Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip as a summer project, I’ve decided on something lighter and more easily digested. A sorbet as it were rather than seven course meal as it were. And since I have a reputation – mostly undeserved – of loving any and all reality shows (not true; I like reality-competition series – which should be called competition shows so as not to sully them by associating them with crap like Toddlers and Tiaras – and even then I hate dating shows, singing shows, series about dancers who aren’t untrained celebrities, and knock-offs of original ideas) I decided that the “sorbet” should be my favourite competition series, The Amazing Race.
My original plan for this summer was to take on both the first season of The Amazing Race and the seventh season, to show how the series had changed thanks to lessons learned in the original run. Those two seasons were, until recently, the only ones released on DVD, and they are the only ones to be sold in stores; the other seasons that have been released are only available from Amazon.com (and not from Amazon.ca). I have both the first and seventh seasons, and am hoping to be able to order some of the others from Amazon.com in the near future.
It was early September 2001. Survivor had debuted the summer before and the second cycle of the series had kicked off after the Super Bowl in September 2001. The American version of Big Brother had aired in the Summer of 2000, and was revitalised in the summer of 2001 to make it more like Survivor and less like every other version of Big Brother in the world. There were a flood of competition series following Survivor and Big Brother, shows like Temptation Island, The Mole, and Boot Camp. In the summer of 2001 FOX’s latest reality series Murder In Small Town X was won by a young New York Fire Department paramedic named Ángel Juarbe Jr. Fall 2001 would feature several new competition shows, but two stood out. One was called Lost and was to air on NBC. It was produced by Conan O’Brian’s production company Conaco. The other was called The Amazing Race, and would debut on CBS.
Lost debuted on September 5th. It was a dismal production. The premise had three teams of two people who had never met before – along with a cameraman – deposited in the Mongolian desert with a small amount of money and instructions to get to the Statue of Liberty in New York, without resorting to contacting a US embassy. That was it, no tasks, no way to get money, no way to communicate with locals who didn’t speak English. One team eventually made it to New York, while another team decided to contact the US embassy and were disqualified. Lost was, in my opinion a dismal show. The contestants weren’t particularly attractive and they really didn’t have any quality that made you identify with them. The Gobi Desert setting was about all anyone saw of any country in the show was basically a featureless wasteland. But maybe the least attractive part of the show may have been that the contestants were essentially forced to beg for everything they got. The net result was, as I’ve said, dismal.
I mention Lost because its story is tied to The Amazing Race if only because Lost got it wrong while The Amazing Race got it right. Lost looked at every convention of the competition series – the competitions, the eliminations – and chose to ignore them. The Amazing Race looked at those same conventions and embraced them, but embracing them in a different sort of way.
The first episode ever of The Amazing Race opens with host Phil Keoghan standing atop a building with the New York skyline behind him. He explains that eleven teams are about to embark on a journey around the world. The teams are shown being driven in a bus into Manhattan and finally to Bathesda Fountain in Central Park. The teams are:
Frank & Margarita, a separated couple with a young child.
Paul & Amie, an engaged couple hoping to see how their relationship will handle the strain of The Race.
Leslie & Kim, a pair of Texas school teachers and roommates.
Lenny & Karyn, a dating couple; Lenny hopes to get the money he need to buy the ring that is appropriate for her.
Dave & Margharetta, retired grandparents who have been married for 40 years – he was a former fighter pilot.
Matt & Ana, a married couple who met in the US Army.
Joe & Bill, aka Team Guido (they named themselves after their Chihuahua dog) life partners who have been together for 14 years.
Pat & Brenda, two working mothers out for the adventure of their lifetime.
Rob & Brennan, best friends and lawyers.
Nancy & Emily, a conservative mother and her adventurous daughter.
Kevin & Drew, best friends and former fraternity brothers.
With the teams at the fountain and the introductions completed Phil arrives to explain some of what they need to know about The Race. There are eight elimination points along the race. Arrive at one of those last and you will be eliminated. Along the course of the Race are route markers where they have to pick up instructions. Along the way there are various tasks they have to accomplish; some are mental while others are physical. There first instructions are waiting at the top of the stair at the fountain. And with that he starts The Race.
The teams thunder up the steps…well with the exception of Kevin & Drew who sort of amble up the steps at a walking pace. And why not. After all, when the teams reach the top they discover that they have to fly to Johannesburg South Africa on one of three specific flights; an Alitalia flight, a SwissAir Flight, and a South African Airways flight. So the first task for most of the non-New York based teams is to figure out which airport to go to – Newark, La Guardia, or JFK (the correct answer is JFK) – and figure out how to get there. They’ve only been given $90 for this leg of The Race to cover everything except airline tickets, so some budget minded teams try to take the subway. Well actually there were only two teams that took the subway, Paul & Amie and Matt & Ana. (Apparently it was slower and more complicated to use the New York subway system to get to JFK than it is now with the introduction of the AirTrainJFK shuttle service which connects with the A, the E and the J subway lines.)
Team Guido arrive at the South African Airlines counter first ahead of Frank & Margarita, much to the consternation of Frank; Frank being upset at not being first even when being first doesn’t matter a bit will be a recurring theme not only in this episode but in the entire series. Then again so will Team Guido’s constant delight at being ahead of everyone…even when it doesn’t matter. What we didn’t see was the various other teams checking in at the airline counters, and while we did hear at least one team being surprised that the five sets of seats at South African went so quickly, we didn’t actually see it happen. The team’s flights were as follows: South African: Rob & Brennan, Joe & Bill, Frank & Margarita, Pat & Brenda, Lenny & Karyn SwissAir: Leslie & Kim, Dave & Margharetta Alitalia: Paul & Amie, Matt & Ana, Nancy & Emily, Kevin & Drew
Arriving in Johannesburg the teams pick up their next clue from a guy holding a Yellow and White flag in the airport, not unlike those flags sometimes carried by tour guides trying to get their flock together. They have to drive to another smaller airport in the Johannesburg area, Landseria Airport, and reserve places on one of four charter flights with Ryan-Lake air to an unknown destination. The resultant footage shows the various teams from the South African Airlines flight jockeying for position while driving to the other airport. Eventually Frank & Margarita arrive at the office of the airline seemingly in first place only to find…Team Guido finishing up their reservations. This is too much for Frank who lets out a scream after getting their reservations that seems to attract the attention of one of the airport employees. The final shot in this sequence is Bill and Joe heading for what seems to be a room rented for the teams by the show, looking incredibly smug…as they frequently do.
There are four charter flights to take the teams to the small airport at Livingstone Zambia. The show doesn’t make clear who is on each flight although it is clear that the first one carries Rob & Brennan, Joe & Bill and Frank & Margarita. Upon arriving there the teams need to pick an SUV and find the “smoke that thunders.” They have the choice of using a local driver who came with the vehicle or driving themselves (although I believe that the driver stays with each vehicle whether he drove or not). Rob & Brennan immediately ask the driver how much he’ll charge them and he tells them $50. They immediately decide to drive themselves without engaging in the ancient art of haggling to reduce the price (previously they had stiffed their cab driver in New York, demanding all of their change back). Most of the other teams had No matter whether the teams drive themselves or are driven by locals, they have to get directions to every location they need to go to from other people. The drivers have been instructed not to answer questions about where they have to go. Some of the teams are aware that the “smoke that thunders” refers to Victoria Falls, which is the principal tourist attraction in Livingstone Zambia.
Their destination is “the Knife’s Edge,” a scenic overlook of Victoria Falls that requires the racers to cross a small foot bridge that is drenched in the spray from the falls. There are clues at the overlook wrapped in plastic, but most of the people rip them open immediately. As a result the ink on most of the clues runs a bit. The clue tells teams to go to Abseil Zambia at Batoka Gorge. There is also a Fast Forward option available. Teams who get the Fast Forward are able to immediately go to the next Pit Stop where teams have to spend a mandatory 12 hour rest period. Rob & Brennan immediately decide to go for the Fast Forward even though a team can only use the Fast Forward once. In this case the Fast Forward requires them to find “The Boiling Pot,” a place below the falls where the current has carved a sort of pool that in high water features enormous swirls and boiling turbulence (according to Wikipedia, it is also where debris sometimes including animals and people that have been swept over the falls can be found). The way to the Boiling Pot is a steep footpath which Rob & Brennan are sure no other team will attempt. They’re wrong as Dave & Margharetta, the oldest people in the race, also make it down to the Boiling Pot, only to find the Fast Forward gone.
While Rob & Brennan go ahead to the Pit Stop at Songwe Village the other teams have to find Abseil Zambia. What followed can probably be described as a mix of a comedy of errors, a comedy of miscommunication and a case of two peoples separated by a common language. And the biggest thing is that it probably all could have been resolved if the Racers had done something as simple as picking up some local tourism pamphlets (assuming any were available). Of course at the time the viewers were at as much of a loss as the Racers, but ten years later a little Internet research shows the depth of the misunderstanding.
To fully understand what is going on, it is useful to refer to a map on the Abseil Zambia website. It shows some of the key tourist destinations and landmarks in the area, and while it isn’t a cartographically accurate map it does show most of what the teams need to know. The instructions say to go to Abseil Zambia at Batoka Gorge. The problem is that they are extremely vague directions because Batoka Gorge is essentially the canyon that the Zambezi River flows through once it passes over Victoria Falls. there are six gorges that come off the river on the Zambian side. They apparently represent the location where the Falls had been in the past. The First Gorge is where the Falls are today. The Second Gorge is the location of the Boiling Pot, where Rob & Brennan and Dave & Margharetta went for the Fast Forward clue. The Third Gorge is the location of a power plant on the Zambian side. Abseil Zambia is located at the Fifth Gorge. And Songwe Village, the Pit Stop for this leg is located at the Sixth or Songwe Gorge; called that because the little Songwe River flows through it into the Zambezi.
Maybe the best way to explain this is to imagine people who have never visited Manhattan and know nothing about New York. They get instructions to go to Pier 92 on at Hudson River. Not knowing anything about New York they ask locals for directions, but they decide that the important part of the instruction isn’t Pier 92, it’s Hudson River, so they ask for directions to Hudson River. So the New Yorkers give them directions to the Hudson River but not specifically to Pier 92. Some of them actually do give directions to Pier 92 and include a local landmark that everyone in New York knows. It might even be included on local tourist brochures. The trouble is that the name of the local landmark is so generic that it sounds as though it could be any of a number of places, even though the name that the New Yorker uses is the correct name for the landmark. The person looking for Pier 92 comes away thinking that New Yorkers are stupid and that they have to find Pier 92 on their own, thereby leading them to blunder around Manhattan, while the local people wonder why these tourists are so dense that they can’t follow simple instructions.
Not all teams have trouble with directions. Bill & Joe seem to have no trouble at all finding Abseil Zambia for example, but for Kevin & Drew there is nothing but problems. Drew, the more affable of the pair – at least in this stage – buys a guide book which causes Kevin to to blow up at him (for spending money). Later Drew stops a bus to get directions and the driver tells them to turn left at “the big tree.” This sounds like nonsense to Kevin, and even worse was that Drew got out of the car to ask. And while the directions do sound vague, I would like to refer you to the map from Abseil Zambia which shows one of the major landmarks to be “Big Tree Lookout Post” (it’s apparently a large and ancient Baobab Tree). However the landmark isn’t of any use to them. Next they stop at a building where they try to get directions. Another team having troubles are Paul & Amy who go down one road and then apparently reverse course and think they see a sign (although the camera doesn’t show the sign that they apparently see). Matt & Ana stop to talk to a woman and ask her if this is “Batoka George” but she doesn’t give them much in the way of directions, or maybe she indicates that this whole area is part of Batoka Gorge – we’ll never really know because Ana almost immediately states that “she doesn’t know.” They pass a man walking down the road and they don’t even stop because they immediately assume that “he doesn’t know.” In an interview Matt said that “they might understand some words like ‘Gorge’ but they didn’t know nothing.” Well maybe (although English is the official language of Zambia), but at least they weren’t lost, and they weren’t asking very generic directions. In the car (before the interview) Ana is exasperated, wondering how people can live someplace and not know where anything is. As I’ve said this wasn’t a case of them not know where things are but of the Racers asking the wrong questions.
The first teams to reach the Abseil Zambia location are faced with a Detour, the choice of two tasks with different advantages and disadvantages. The choice here is “Air” or “Land.” In “Land” teams have to follow a path down to the bottom of the gorge to get their next clue. In “Air” teams first have to ride a zipline to the other side of the gorge and then use the “Gorge Swing” to get to the bottom of the gorge. While several of the teams call this a “Bungee Jump” it isn’t because the person making the jump isn’t dropping vertically they’re swinging like a pendulum. Bill & Joe are the first teams to make the jump, and Frank & Margarita see at least part of the action. Margarita isn’t sure that she can. It’s at this point that Frank sort of pushes her physically a few times, which would lead to controversy a day or two after the episode aired when Rosie O’Donnell (whose syndicated talk show was huge at the time) called him a “wife beater” for the way he treated Margarita. Viewed in context however it seems playful, and certainly not at the same level as at least one contestant in a later season, particularly given the way that he embraces her once she actually makes the jump. Other teams soon cross the zipline and then make the leap. Perhaps the most endearing are Dave & Margharetta; she thinks the zipline was “way cool” while Dave tells the man helping him to put on the harness that “that’s one heck of a woman over there,” with obvious love. On the other hand the dark haired Texas teacher (I never was able to tell Leslie and Kim apart) claimed to have trouble holding up the harness. She literally said “I’m not good at holding things.” Considering that she said at the beginning that her biggest fear on the Race was “dying” this didn’t bode well for her. Nancy & Emily enjoy the crossing, though they enjoy being ahead of Paul & Amie even more. Paul & Amie are perhaps the funniest people at this stage of the Race. Amie is determined to do Air no matter what Paul wants to do, while Paul is convinced that they’re in last and – not for the last time – thinks maybe they should just quit. Throughout this task, Amie is the intrepid one while Paul is the self-described “puss.” His expression after crossing the zipline and finding out that “that was just the warm-up” is only surpassed when he finds out what the real thing is. But perhaps the defining moment of the episode was when Kevin & Drew arrive (in last place at this point) and Drew jumps. Kevin shouts out to his friend “Swing you fat bastard, swing!”
Shortly after Frank & Margarita complete the detour – at least in the way the episode has been edited – Rob & Brennan arrive at Songwe Village, which despite the name isn’t an African village but rather a small resort on the edge of Songwe Gorge styled to look like an African village, but with many modern conveniences including what are described as the “best baths in Africa. (According to the link posted here, the resort was destroyed in 2008 and there were no plans to rebuild it, however other websites I’ve looked at indicate that it is still in operation; either the resort has been rebuilt – which is to be hoped for – or those sites haven’t been updated since before the fire.) The other teams obviously took longer, and again directions appear to have been a major problem for some teams although it wasn’t shown. Clearly though last place finishers Matt & Ana got horribly lost. The teams partied into the night but they were apparently all asleep by the time that Matt & Ana rolled into Songwe Village to be greeted by the local greeter, and host Phil Keoghan. They had the dubious honour of being the first team ever to be eliminated on The Amazing Race.
The order of finish was:
Rob & Brennan
Bill & Joe
Frank & Margarita
Lenny & Karyn
Pat & Brenda
Kim & Leslie
Dave & Margharetta
Paul & Amie
Kevin & Drew
Nancy & Emily
Matt & Ana (Eliminated)
The first episode of The Amazing Race came second in its time slot, losing to the season finale of Fear Factor on NBC. The Amazing Race had an 11.5/11 rating with 11.8 million viewers and a 5.1/14 rating in the 18-49 demographic. By comparison, Fear Factor had an 8.8/13 rating overall with 11.9 million viewers and 5.5/15 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Also for comparison, Lost finished first in its timeslot opposite Big Brother, with a 7.5/12 rating but lost to Big Brother in the 18-49 demographic with a 4.1/13 rating to Big Brother’s 4.6/14. Both shows were repeated later in the week; Lost on Saturday September 8th, where it had a 2.6/9 rating overall, and The Amazing Race on Sunday September 9th where it had a 5.9/10 rating and finished third in its timeslot to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and a Simpsons repeat.
There are several things viewers would notice from the this season of The Amazing Race as compared with almost every season since. There are no formal clue boxes and the flags indicating the locations of the clues are Yellow and White rather than the familiar Yellow with Red Stripes. There doesn’t seem to have been that much of an effort to indicate the position that the teams were in at most stages of the leg; Phil only mentions the team positions once during the episode, and the editing doesn’t give us a clear picture of where the teams are relative to each other. Indeed it sometimes appears that they are all bunched together. There are no prizes for finishing first in a leg; this was actually an innovation not seen until the fifth or sixth season as I recall. Finally Phil doesn’t greet any of the teams except the last team to finish – everyone else is met by the local greeter alone.
In watching the first episode of The Amazing Race I can’t help but thinking that it isn’t as polished as the show would become even as soon as the second season. Not knowing the actual positions of the teams at various stages of the episode made things more than a bit confusing, and in my opinion detracted from the story-telling component of the show. And yet there were a lot of good things to say about the episode and the show as a whole. For one thing, it was brighter and more adventurous than Lost. It seemed like a lot more fun than the NBC show. Unlike Big Brother and Survivor it wasn’t confined to a single location; the first episode featured three countries – the USA, South Africa, and Zambia. It didn’t just seem like something the average person might be able to do, it seemed like something they’d want to do, particularly when compared to the dismal conditions on Lost or the sometimes disgusting tasks on Fear Factor. And of course it had the most important commodity for any reality-competition series, great casting.
Season 1 of The Amazing Race is available on DVD. Someone has also posted full episodes of the series on YouTube. Here is episode 1.
CBS announced their new Fall lineup on Tuesday morning. The network, which is dominant in the overall ratings has offered up an interesting mix of new shows and the transfer of two major series to new nights and times. The new line-up manages to near impossible task of being both adventurous and conservative at the same time.
Cancelled:CSI: Miami, A Gifted Man, How To Be A Gentleman, NYC 22, Rob, Unforgettable
Moved:Two And A Half Men, CSI: New York, The Mentalist, 2 Broke Girls
Renewed:How I Met Your Mother, Mike & Molly, Hawaii Five-0, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Survivor, Criminal Minds, CSI, The Big Bang Theory, Person Of Interest, Blue Bloods, Amazing Race, The Good Wife
New:Partners, Vegas, Elementary, Made In New Jersey
Held Until Mid-Season:Golden Boy, Friend Me, Undercover Boss, The Job
Fate Unknown:Rules Of Engagement
Complete Schedule (all times are Eastern; New shows – except CSI and NCIS) in capitals
Monday
8:00-8:30 p.m.:How I Met Your Mother 8:30-9:00 p.m.:PARTNERS 9:00-9:30 p.m.:2 Broke Girls (New Time) 9:30-10:00 p.m.:Mike & Molly 10:00-11:00 p.m.:Hawaii Five-0
Tuesday
8:00-9:00 p.m.:NCIS 9:00-10:00 p.m.:NCIS: Los Angeles 10:00-11:00 p.m.:VEGAS
8:00-8:30 p.m.:The Big Bang Theory 8:30-9:00 p.m.:Two And A Half Men (New Day) 9:00-10:00 p.m.:Person Of Interest 10:00-11:00 p.m.:ELEMENTARY
Friday
8:00-9:00 p.m.:CSI: New York (New Time) 9:00-10:00 p.m.:MADE IN NEW JERSEY 10:00-11:00 p.m.:Blue Bloods
Sunday
7:00-8:00 p.m.:60 Minutes 8:00-9:00 p.m.:The Amazing Race 9:00-10:00 p.m.:The Good Wife 10:00-11:00 p.m.:The Mentalist (New Day)
Partners looks at two lifelong best friends and business partners whose relationship is on the verge of changing. Joe (David Krumholtz) is an accomplished architect who leads with his head not his heart. He’s newly engaged to Ali (Sophia Bush) a beautiful and talented jewelry designer. His partner Louis (Michael Urie) is gay, spontaneous, emotional and prone to exaggerating. Louis is dating Wyatt (Brandon Routh) a vegan nurse who Louis claims is just one promotion shy of being a doctor. The question is how Joe and Louis's business and personal relationship change with the inclusion of these two important new relationships.
CBS enters into period drama with their new series Vegas. A fictionalized version of the career of Ralph Lamb who was Clark County Sheriff from 1961-1979, a time when Las Vegas was experiencing tremendous growth. Lamb (Dennis Quaid) is a fourth generation rancher who just wants to be left alone to run his place. The problem is that the city is expanding and because the city was – at the time – the only place to gamble in the United States, corruption was becoming an issue. When a casino worker is murdered, the mayor of Las Vegas remembers that Lamb commanded a Military Police unit during World War II and appeals to his sense of duty to get him to look into the case. This brings him into conflict with Chicago mobster Vincent Savino (Michael Chiklis) who wants to make Las Vegas his own. Lamb is assisted by two deputies, his diplomatic, even-keeled brother Jack (Jason O’Mara) and his charming, impulsive son Dixon (Taylor Handley), as well as by ambitious Assistant District Attorney Katherine O’Connell (Carrie-Anne Moss) who grew up on a ranch next to the Lambs. (The real Ralph Lamb is still alive at age 85. In fact, when he learned that the show had been picked up he called a friend of his who was in Italy – Dennis Quaid.)
Elementary is an American take on modernizing the Sherlock Holmes character. The following is from the official CBS press release (although I am adding the actor names) simply because I’m afraid I might get satirical. “Following his fall from grace in London and a stint in rehab, eccentric Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) escapes to Manhattan where his wealthy father forces him to live with his worst nightmare – a sober companion, Dr. Watson (Lucy Liu). A successful surgeon until she lost a patient and her license three years ago, Watson views her current job as another opportunity to help people, as well as paying a penance. However, the restless Sherlock is nothing like her previous clients. He informs her that none of her expertise as an addiction specialist applies to him and he's devised his own post-rehab regimen – resuming his work as a police consultant in New York City. Watson has no choice but to accompany her irascible new charge on his jobs. But Sherlock finds her medical background helpful, and Watson realizes she has a knack for playing investigator. Sherlock's police contact, Capt. Tobias "Toby" Gregson (Aidan Quinn), knows from previous experience working with Scotland Yard that Sherlock is brilliant at closing cases, and welcomes him as part of the team. With the mischievous Sherlock Holmes now running free in New York solving crimes, it's simple deduction that he's going to need someone to keep him grounded, and it's elementary that it's a job for Watson.”
Janet Montgomery plays Martina Garretti in the new series Made In Jersey. Martina comes from a working class New Jersey family and at first glance wouldn’t seem to fit in with the Ivy League educated lawyers at the prestigious New York law firm where she works. However what she lacks in the prestige of her education she more than makes up for with her tenacity and blue collar insight. These qualities plus her ingenuity and resourcefulness get her noticed by the firm’s founder Donavon Stark (Kyle MacLachlin) as well as by her secretary Cyndi Vega (Toni Trucks). With the support of her family including her sister Bonnie (Erin Cummings) she’s able to maintain her New Jersey roots even in the intimidating environment of her New York law firm.
Golden Boy is the saga of the rise of an ambitious young cop to become the youngest Police Commissioner in New York history. While being interviewed about his rise to the top job Walter William Clark Jr. (Theo James) flashes back to his early days on the job. After just three years on the job Clark is able to be promoted to Detective on the Homicide Squad. He’s disappointed to be teamed with veteran Detective Don Owen (Chi McBride) who is just two years shy of retirement. He’d rather be teamed with the “alpha dog” on the squad, Detective First Grade Christian Arroyo (Kevin Alejandro), a cop who is just as ambitious as Walter but without a moral center. Also on the squad are Arroyo’s partner Detective Deborah McKenzie (Bonnie Somerville) a third generation cop who is also the only woman on the squad, and Detective Joe Diacco (Holt McCallany) who is well-connected with tremendous resources. Walter is determined to succeed as quickly as possible and bases his career decisions on that need. In fact the only distraction from this goal is his role as the sole caregiver and support of his sister Agnes (Stella Maeve), a teenager exhibiting increasingly dangerous behaviour.
Friend Me looks at friendship in the age of instant communications. Rob (Nicholas Braun) and Evan (Christopher Mintz-Plass) are two twenty-something guys from Indiana who move to Los Angeles to start cool new jobs. Evan is content to stay at home, web chatting and playing poker online, with his Indiana friends Mike (Darveesh Cheena), Sully (Tim Robinson), and Farhad (Dan Ahdoot) just a mouse click away. Rob however wants to meet people who aren’t just staring down at their smart phones and laptops and so, despite Evan’s warnings that nothing good can come of it, puts up a flyer seeking new friends at a local coffee shop. Some of the replies have potential while others are just disturbing. Suddenly Rob and the reluctant Evan are embarking on a series of the most epic adventures and disasters of their lives.
The Job is the latest reality series from Mark Burnett. Each week new candidates are chosen from across the country for the chance to win their dream job at one of America’s leading company. Lisa Ling hosts and leads the prospects through a number of challenges, from a spot quiz to assess their knowledge of the company to deadline driven tasks while they spend time on the job. In addition there is a rival company waiting to steal any of the contenders with a job offer. When that happens the contender must decide immediately whether or not to take the offer from the rival company or to stay on and try for their once in a lifetime job.
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CBS is in the amazing position where there are few shows that they really needed to cancel. The biggest example of this was probably Unforgettable. If that series had been on any of the three major networks it would still be on the air. After all it won its timeslot handily most weeks. On CBS it was expendable, along with a long-in-the-tooth series with a sometime problem star (CSI: Miami and David Caruso) and a couple of legitimate failures (A Gifted Man, How To Be A Gentleman). They can afford to move not one but two of their biggest shows to shore up weak spots.
For me the new CBS series are a bit of a mixed bag. I think Partners is right in the network’s wheelhouse when it comes to comedies, and should slide in between How I Met Your Mother and 2 Broke Girls like it was built for the timeslot. Similarly I like how when they decided to do a period series it wasn’t about an airline in 1963 or a nightclub with an iconic name, it is a procedural. Vegas is another show that fits what the network has been doing for years. My only quibble is whether it should be on Tuesday night or should have been saved for Thursdays. Finally Made In Jersey fits the CBS approach to Friday like a glove. They have always gone for at least one show that has the potential to draw a female audience. A Gifted Man may have failed but it follows in a line that included Ghost Whisperer, Joan of Arcadia, Close To Home and Moonlight (a show that wouldn’t have been cancelled if anyone at CBS had foreseen the “Vampire” fad that has emerged in the past few years, but that’s irrelevant now).
Not that I think it’s all perfect at CBS. I have great concerns over Sherlock. Admittedly I’m a bit of a “Holmes purist,” but the description from the network gives me the willies…and not in a good way. It seems too “flip” and irreverent. I want to be wrong, but in this case I’m not sure if viewers are going to buy into this in the long run.I’m afraid that in audience terms it might turn out to be more like a previous occupant of the third hour on Thursday nights, The Eleventh Hour, a show that I really liked personally but which didn’t take off with the mass audience. I also have some concerns, although not as grave, about the mid-season show Golden Boy. It will probably work, but the description comes off a bit like a standard procedural wrapped with the gimmick from How I Met Your Mother; a weir mix to say the least.
This is exactly the sort of line-up I expect from CBS. They’re building on their strengths, and when they take chances the chances they take aren’t too radical. And of course this is because they don’t have to take radical chances. As the man said, it is good to be king.
Yeah, I’m back… sort of. I think that in the past two months I’ve started three or four different articles but so far nothing has germinated into being good enough to post.I’m not second guessing myself, I have just been quite busy and as a result quite tired. And besides, I bought one of the cheap Kindles, and I’m reading quite a bit.
Still I’ve been wanting to get back in harness and putting something together on “forgotten” TV shows on a weekly basis – well an approximately weekly basis – seems like a direction to take. After all my blogging buddy Bill Crider features postings about “Forgotten Films” or “Forgotten Books” on an almost daily basis in his blog Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine, and frequent commenter her and elsewhere Todd Mason regularly collects links about overlooked film and other A/V material in his blog Sweet Freedom, so I figured I might as well join the trend. After all, if you`re going to steal an idea, steal a good one. And since my blogging buddy Ivan G. Shreve Jr. is just ending a contest to give away a box set of Radio Spirits’ Life Of Riley CDs (the program guide for which was coincidentally(?) written by that distinguished radio historian Ivan G. Shreve Jr.) at HIS blog Thrilling Days Of Yesterday, well the choice for the first show to profiled is pretty obvious.
Title:The Life Of Riley Dates: October 4, 1949 to March 28, 1950 (26 episodes) Starring: Jackie Gleason, Rosemary DeCamp, Lanny Rees, Gloria Winters, Sidney Tomack, John Brown. Surprising Fact: The show won an Emmy in 1950 as “Best Film Made for and Viewed on Television in 1949,” the first situation comedy to win an Emmy (it beat out The Lone Ranger and Silver Theater). Why Forgotten?: Several reasons: First the star: Jackie Gleason (in his first TV series) instead of William Bendix who played the part on radio and in a movie that debuted the same year that the TV series did. Second, the show lasted less than a full season.Third, it was 1949. Fourth, both the show and the star went on to better things.
Now let’s go into the situation in depth. The Life Of Riley began as a radio show in January 1944 on the NBC Blue Network which was in the process of becoming ABC. It shifted to NBC in September 1945. The radio show starred William Bendix as Chester A. Riley, Paula Winslowe as his wife Peg, and John Brown as both Riley’s best friend Jim Gillis and most famously as Digby “Digger” O’Dell “the friendly undertaker” (he also played a third character named Waldo Binny) The told the story of Riley, a Brooklyn born riveter at a California aircraft plant, his wife two kids and their friends. Riley is a sentimental guy whose attempts at taking a tough line or do something he thinks is right – usually on advice from Gillis – he ends up getting into trouble. With some good advice from Digger and a lot of help from the level-headed Peg he manages to survive the situations he finds himself in. As an interesting side note, one of the developers of the radio series was theatrical Milton Marx – known to Marx Brothers fans as Gummo, the brother who never appeared in the movies.
In 1949 a Life of Riley movie was made starring Bendix, Rosemary DeCamp as Peg, Meg Randall and Lanny Rees as Riley’s kids, Babs and Junior, Brown as “Digger” O’Dell and James Gleason as Gillis. With TV beginning to gain ground and the movie further building awareness of the visual possibilities of the show, It seemed like a great idea to put The Life of Riley on TV, with Bendix recreating his radio role. The problem was that Bendix was under contract to RKO Radio Pictures as a movie actor, and like a lot of movie stars his contract prevented him from doing TV. So, the role of Riley had to be recast. Sometime movie actor and nightclub comedian Jackie Gleason was tapped for the role. Rosemary Decamp and Lanny Rees came over from the movie as did Brown. Gloria Winters – who is much more famous for her later role on Sky King as his niece – played Babs. Gillis, who was played by John Brown on the radio show, was played by Sid Tomack. The problem was of course that the radio show was still on the air and would stay on the air until 1951. There were obvious comparisons between the TV Riley and the radio version – who had also been seen in the movie – and Gleason, with his popping eyes didn’t fit people’s vision of Riley. Plus, Gleason was 33 when he got the role as Riley, a man with a teenaged daughter and a son who either was a teenager or was about to become one.
And yet, it does not appear that the show was cancelled for poor ratings. The show ran for 26 episodes which today seems like a full season or even more than a full season at a time when the typical series runs between 22 and 24 episodes. However in 1949-50 the typical season was 39 episodes. So what happened? Apparently the show’s producer Irving Brecher, got into a dispute with the show’s sponsor Pabst Brewing over extending the show to a full 39 episode season. In those days shows were effectively controlled by sponsors and their advertising agencies, with the networks having far less power.
Another reason why the show is largely forgotten today is that it was being made in 1949. There were only about 125 TV stations in the entire country. Many TV shows, and most comedies were shot and broadcast live from New York for much of the country. Stations in the Pacific and Mountain time zones were provided with kinescopes; the episodes were filmed off of the TV monitor which were then flown to California to air on NBC regional network based there. Kinescopes were inevitably poorer quality than would be seen either when the shows aired live or once the three camera set-up became the standard for producing TV series. The net result is that while a considerable amount of Gleason’s version of The Life Of Riley apparently survives, not many people saw it at the time, and the whole idea of syndicating reruns wouldn’t really be thought of until I Love Lucy came on the scene a few years later.
Maybe the biggest reason why the show qualifies as “forgotten” is that both the show and its star went on to bigger and better things. Gleason would get his own variety show, The Cavalcade of Stars, on the Dumont Network in 1951. The show was a hit for Dumont, and so was promptly poached by CBS which could promise the advertisers a much bigger audience than Dumont could deliver. The show then became The Jackie Gleason Show which spawned a number of character driven sketches including The Honeymooners, which ran as a stand-alone series in the 1955-56 season. Gleason himself would continue to work with CBS on a number of series until 1970. The Gleason show for much of he 1960s – initially known as American Scene Magazine and later as The Jackie Gleason Show would feature Honeymooner episodes, many in colour.
As for The Life of Riley, in January 1953 William Bendix – apparently freed from the restrictions of his RKO contract – appeared in a revival of The Life of Riley. Marjorie Reynolds played Peg, Wesley Morgan was Junior, Lugene Sanders played Babs and Tom d’Andrea was Jim Gillis. Joan Blondell’s sister Gloria Blondell appeared as Gillis’s wife Honeybee for most of the show’s six seasons, and Groucho Marx had a writer’s credit for “story”. The show ran until 1958 with various neighbours coming and going. Even the Riley kids eventually left the show; Babs got married and Junior went off to college. They would however make frequent appearances on the show. One character who did not make the transition from the radio version – and the first TV version – of the show was Digger O’Dell. John Brown, who played Digger was blacklisted as a result of accusations made in the pamphlet Red Channels. Although Brown lived until 1957, dying a few weeks after his 53rd birthday, he career ended in 1952. For whatever reason however it was decided not to try to find someone else to play the O’Dell character. The show did fine without him, spending four of its six seasons in the top 30 in the ratings and entering syndication after production on the 217 episodes was completed.
The 1949 version of The Life Of Riley is apparently in public domain. Several releases of the Gleason version of the show are available. Depending on the version these can be expensive. Some episodes are also on YouTube. What follows is the complete second episode of the show. Note that there is no laughter, and that the theme is whistled. The former is because the show was filmed and before the three camera system was developed that meant that there wasn't a studio audience to react to the jokes. The latter is because the musicians union was on strike when the show was being made.
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.)
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.
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.”
CBS announced their new fall schedule at their upfront presentation on Wednesday. Seven shows were cancelled or had been cancelled earlier in the year, while three new hour long dramas and two half hour comedies were announced to debut in the Fall. In additions a fourth drama has been announced for mid-season. Three shows were moved, and one show – Undercover Boss – was held over until the mid-season.
Cancelled:Chaos, Criminal Minds Suspect Behavior, The Defenders, Medium, Live To Dance, Mad Love, $#*! My Dad Says.
Moved:CSI, The Good Wife, Rules Of Engagement.
Renewed: Two And A Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, Mike & Molly, Hawaii Five-0, NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, Survivor, Criminal Minds, The Big Bang Theory, The Mentalist, CSI: New York, Blue Bloods, The Amazing Race, CSI: Miami.
New Shows: Dramas – Unforgettable, Person Of Interest, A Gifted Man Comedys – 2 Broke Girls, How To Be A Gentleman
In addition the network has announced that returning series Undercover Boss, and new series The 2-2 will be available for mid-season.
Complete Schedule (All Times Eastern; new shows in Capitals, except NCIS and CSI)
Monday 8:00-8:30 p.m. How I Met Your Mother 8:30-9:00 p.m. 2 BROKE GIRLS 9:00-9:30 p.m. Two And A Half Men 9:30-10:00 p.m. Mike & Molly 10:00-11:00 p.m. Hawaii Five-0
Tuesday 8:00-9:00 p.m. NCIS 9:00-10:00 p.m. NCIS Los Angeles 10:00-11:00 p.m. UNFORGETTABLE
Wednesday 8:00-9:00 p.m. Survivor 9:00-10:00 p.m. Criminal Minds 10:00-11:00 p.m. CSI (new day and time)
Thursday 8:00-8:30 p.m. Big Bang Theory 8:30-9:00 p.m. HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN 9:00-10:00 p.m. PERSON OF INTEREST 10:00-11:00 p.m. The Mentalist
Friday 8:00-9:00 p.m. A GIFTED MAN 9:00-10:00 p.m. CSI: New York 10:00-11:00 p.m. Blue Bloods
Saturday 8:00-8:30 p.m. Rules Of Engagement (new day and time) 8:30-9:00 p.m. Comedy Encores 9:00-10:00 p.m. Drama Encores 10:00-11:00 p.m. 48 Hours Mystery
Sunday 7:00-8:00 p.m. 60 Minutes 8:00-9:00 p.m. The Amazing Race 9:00-10:00 p.m. The Good Wife (new day and time) 10:00-11:00 p.m. CSI: Miami
2 Broke Girls is a new comedy from Executive Producers Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cummings (who is starring in the new NBC comedy Whitney) about two waitresses with a dream. Max is working two jobs just to get by while Caroline is a “trust fund princess” who is having a run of bad luck. Max initially sees Caroline as the latest in a line of inept servers that she’s had to cover while working the night shift at the retro-hip Williamsburg Diner. Caroline surprises her though by having as much substance as style. And when Caroline finds out how good the cupcakes that Max makes are she sees the potential for a lucrative business. All they need is the money. Also stars Garrett Morris as Earl, the 75 year-old cool cat cashier; Jonathon Kite as Oleg, the overly flirtations cook, and Matthew Moy as the new, eager to please owner of the diner.
Unforgettable stars Poppy Montgomery as Claire Wells as a former police detective who is quite literally incapable of forgetting anything. In fact the only things that she can’t remember are the details that could help solve her sister’s murder. One thing that she does remember are her conflicted feelings toward her former partner and ex-boyfriend, Detective Al Burns (Dylan Walsh). When she consults on a case with Al and his team, it somehow feels right. She decides to go back to work solving homicides, including her sister’s murder… if she can remember the details that her mind made her forget. Also stars Michael Gaston, Kevin Rankin, and Daya Vaidya as the members of Al’s team.
How To Be A Gentleman, from the book of the same name, is a comedy about two very different friends. Andrew Carlson (David Hornsby) writes an etiquette column who is devoted to ideals from a more civilised time. This leads him to live a life detached from modern society. When his editor Jerry (Dave Foley) tells him to make his column more modern and sexy or be fired, Andrew seeks out someone from his past. Andrew get Bert Lansing (Kevin Dillon) to be his life coach. Bert is a reformed bad boy who inherited a gym but can still be rude sloppy and loud. Andrew hopes that with Bert’s help he can become less a gentleman and more of a “real” man. Nancy Lennhan plays Andrew’s mother, Mary Lynn Raskjub plays his bossy sister, and Rhys Darby plays his brother-in-law.
Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson star in Person Of Interest a new drama from J.J. Abrams. Caviezel plays Reese, a former CIA operative who is presumed dead. while Michael Emerson plays billionaire software developer Finch, who has come up with software that will allow him to detect people who are about to become involved in a violent crime. Reese and Finch team up to use state of the art surveillance equipment and satellite technology to stop crimes before they happen. Reese comes to the attention of Detectives Carter and Fusco (Taraji P Henderson and Kevin Chapman) who he is able to use to his advantage.
In A Gifted Man Patrick Wilson plays Dr. Michael Holt, a doctor who is living a life of luxury as a result of wealthy patients and his obsession with work. The love of Michael’s life was his ex-wife Anna (Jennifer Ehle) who has died sometime before the series begins. Thus it is something of a shock when she appears to him and asks him to help keep the free clinic that she started operating. Needless to say this surprises a lot of people. Michael’s sister Christina (Julie Benz) is happy that Anna is back in her brother’s life – even as an illusion – because he was always a better person when she was with him. At the clinic Michael meets Autumn (Afton Williams) a volunteer who is trying to carry on Anna’s work. Michael finds himself touched by the patients at the clinic and his attitude towards serving the rich and poor is turned upside down, and he begins to see that there’s room in his life for everyone. Margo Martindale plays Rita, Michael’s efficient assistant at his practice, while Liam Aiken plays Christina’s son Milo.
The 2-2, which will debut at mid-season, is a new police drama from Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal that follows a group of six rookie cops as they patrol the streets of upper Manhattan. The rookies are a diverse group: Jennifer “White House” Perry (Leelee Sobieski) a former college volleyball star and Marine MP in Iraq, Ray “Lazarus” Harper (Adam Goldberg) a former police news reporter with better sources than many seasoned cops, Tonya Sanchez (Judy Marte) whose family has a criminal history and who has very personal connection within the force, Ahmad “Kiterunner” Kahn (Tom Reed) an Afghan native who fought his way to freedom, Kenny McClaren (Stark Sands) a fourth generation cop with qualms about joining the force, and Jason Toney (Harold House Moore) a former basketball prodigy who squandered his chance in the NBA. Daniel “Yoda” Dean (Terry Kinney) is their Field Training Officer, a case hardened unsentimental veteran who emphasizes the basics and holds each rookie accountable for their actions.
Comments Maybe as interesting as the new shows (and in my view more interesting than some of them) is the shows that are moving to new time slots. The most puzzling move is probably the decision to put Rules Of Engagement on Saturdays. It has been a long time since any network except FOX had scheduled new episodes of shows on Saturdays when they weren’t trying to burn off the episodes that they’ve paid for. I basically have two theories on this: first, the network is trying to get enough episodes of the show in the can so that they can sell it for a syndication deal and since they’re paying for them they want to get all they can from them; and second the network wants the show available in its traditional role as a utility player, filling in for a comedy that dies quickly (and personally I have a choice for that “honour”) but wants the show to have a full run of episodes in case it isn’t needed.
The other big moves are taking The Good Wife to Sundays and CSI to Wednesday. I think that the network programmers putting The Good Wife up against the declining Desperate Housewives as an alternative for women who don’t watch football is about as good as it gets. That makes it a two-way race with a critical hit getting a chance in a time slot that could benefit it going up against an aging veteran whose ratings have slid in the past couple of years.
The CSI move is a puzzler to me. I know that while the show still draws well in the Thursday time slot it does do as well as it has done in the recent past. And I know that at least some people on the Internet, like Marc Berman, have spoken of moving it. However the time slot they suggested wasn’t the third hour of Wednesday night but either swapping the show with The Mentalist on Thursday night or cancelling CSI: New York and returning CSI to Friday, the day (and time) where it debuted. The Wednesday move makes some sense, giving it a very strong lead-in with with Criminal Minds but also involves some risk by putting it in competition with the still popular Law & Order SVU. I don’t know about this one yet.
Turning to the new comedies, I really like 2 Broke Girls as a concept and I think it’s likely to fit nicely into the Monday time slot between How I Met Your Mother and Two And A Half Men. The show I have no confidence in is How To Be A Gentleman. It just strikes me as one of the dumbest concepts for a comedy ever, and based on the commercial that I saw for it (since CBS has blocked YouTube videos of upfront clips for non-Americans) I just can’t see this show gaining an audience let alone holding it, even with Big Bang Theory as a lead-in. Think of it this way: what if Leonard and Sheldon’s neighbour wasn’t Penny, but some body-builder type who undertook the task of turning them into “real men.” Would you hve watched that series? I wouldn’t.
Turning to the dramas, it’s a mixed bag in terms of what I’d watch: the Good, the Bad, and the “I’ll have to see it.” The Good is most definitely Unforgettable. I really like Poppy Montgomery and the concept is quite intriguing. The Bad in my books is A Gifted Man. The idea has a lot in common with something like Joan Of Arcadia or maybe even a version of the movie Ghost. Of course I think that others (women) are going to see it differently. Certainly it is the sort of show that CBS has had success with in this time slot before, but I guess I’d just like to see something with a different sort of appeal. As far as “I’ll have to see it” goes, that would be Person of Interest. The whole idea sounds a lot like that Tom Cruise movie Minority Report. The description has a bit of a Big Brother (and not the reality show) feel to it and I’m not sure people are going to buy into it. But I really need to see it before I make a final decision. The mid-season show The 2-2 quite frankly sounds like something I’d be more likely to watch.
Looking at the CBS line-up the obvious thing you can say about it is that it represents a great deal of stability. There have been strategic moves and most of the shows that have been added aren’t exactly pushing the envelope. There was one choice that I clearly didn’t like and a couple of shows that I’m dubious about but these are things that you can try when your the network that’s at the top of the ratings. It isn’t as good as the ABC line-up, but nowhere near the level that the NBC or FOX line-ups managed. It’ll work.
So CBS and Warner Brothers have fired Charlie Sheen from Two And A Half Men. HOORAY!!!
Now what?
Look, I’m as happy as anyone that Sheen and his absurd activities will be disappearing from the medium in short order. And I certainly get why the show’s creator Chuck Lorre, Warner Brothers and CBS are fed up with him. But it seems to me that this firing leaves the network, the production company and the show with a large, Charlie-sized hole. A hole in the network’s line-up or a hole in the show depending on what the network decides to do. None of the options that the network has before them is particularly palatable.
What are the options?
1. End the show
Maybe the best or at least the easiest solution, but this is a potential earthquake across the CBS line-up. One problem here is that Jon Cryer, Angus Jones and the rest of the cast are signed for another season, but for the most part this could be dealt with. The network has a bigger problem though. Two And A Half Men is one of their biggest shows, the anchor of their Monday line-up. If you drop the show you need something to replace it that has the same sort of drawing power for their Monday line-up. The obvious answer would be to bring The Big Bang Theory back to Monday nights from its current time slot on Thursday, but then what do you do on Thursdays? Do you keep comedies in the first hour and if so what anchors the night? How I Met Your Mother? Mike and Molly? Rules of Engagement or $#*! My Dad Says (the two shows that have held down the second half hour on Thursday following The Big Bang Theory)? Probably not that last option since neither of those series has shown any particular strength on the night.
Or do you decide that the whole experiment was a bad idea and move Survivor back to Thursday night? Or do you keep Survivor on Wednesday night and replace the comedies with a drama? If you do go with a drama is it a new show that you might have put elsewhere or do you move an established show to the time slot?
2. Kill off the Charlie character – or otherwise take him off the show – and just not replace him
This is really a non-starter. Oh sure, NBC initially did that with Valerie Harper’s character on Valerie when NBC and Paramount fired here from that series (for reasons that were far far less disruptive than what we’ve seen from Sheen). The problem is that this totally violates the premise of the show. At its heart Two And A Half Men is The Odd Couple with Jake as the equivalent of Murray the Cop, or something like that. Take away Charlie without some sort of replacement and what you get is One And A Half Men, and the show becomes a father dealing with a teenaged son. That’s a quick death for this show.
Still I like the idea of killing Charlie off…preferably in a messy and totally absurd way, like having a boulder drop on him. A piano would be good too.
3. Kill Off Charlie – or otherwise dispose of him – and replace him
This is probably what they’re going to do if they continue on with the show. It’s what they eventually did with Valerie Harper, and what happened when John Ritter died in real life. There are a couple of options they could use in this situation.
a) Bring in an older relative
They did this when John Ritter died. James Garner became the adult male lead on Eight Simple Rules, along with David Spade. Maybe Charlie and Alan’s father didn’t die of food poisoning but rather escaped from Evelyn. Maybe some other older male relative shows up after Charlie gets turned into a bloody splat in the road. The point is that whoever this relative is he has to be as thoroughly debauched as Charlie was, and just as good looking in spite of it. Too bad they killed off Robert Wagner’s character a few years ago.
b) Alan and Charlie’s long-lost and never before mentioned half brother of roughly the same age as Charlie
This was after all the way that they finally replaced Valerie Harper on what became Valerie’s Family (and later The Hogan Family) – Valerie’s sister-in-law, played by Sandy Duncan – came to live with the family after her death. And with Evelyn’s history why wouldn’t there be a forgotten brother or half-brother or “something” vaguely unsavoury, running around. You could even bring on Charlie’s previously unsuspected bastard son – and let’s face it, there’s plenty of potential for many such unsuspected mistakes to show up and take up residence.
4. Replace Sheen, keep Harper
This is the classic soap opera solution to this sort of situation, and what they did when Dick Sargent replaced Dick York. If you need an explanation (as often as not soap operas didn’t offer an explanation; they’d just say that the role of so-and-so is no being played by a different actor; Bewitched didn’t even do that) say that after a fire – probably related to his drinking – Charlie had to go through reconstructive surgery and now looks like John Stamos instead of Charlie Sheen. Sure, it’s a hokey solution but there are some reasons why it can work. Not only does this provide a smooth transition, it lets the writers just keep writing the same character as they have been from the beginning. The face changes but the attitude and the character traits remain the same. The question is whether the public would accept that Charlie Harper as played by John Stamos? Or should they just cast Ted “Show Killer” McGinley in the part and admit defeat.
Personally I think that CBS should bite the bullet and end the show. Maybe they can get Chuck Lorre to come up with something new. After all he seems to be the current CBS “King of Comedy.” Do I think that they’ll pull the trigger though? Probably not. I think that the network will go with the “non-nuclear option” and keep the show on the air for all or part of another season to clear the actor’s contracts and give Lorre or someone else time to create something outstanding to replace it. No matter what the network decides to do, I would be very much surprised to see Two And A Half Men on the 2012-13 line-up, which is not something I would have been sure of before this whole mess with Sheen blew up.
I would be even more surprised to see Sheen acting in just about anything in the next few years. I think his recent behaviour has made him box office and TV screen poison, and if it is possible for him to recover his reputation it will take a long stretch of good behaviour to manage it. I wish him the best in all of the recovery that he needs to do, but I think I’ss stick with the smart money when it comes to his future employment prospects.
The upcoming season of Survivor – Survivor: Redemption Island – will feature two familiar faces for fans of the show, “Boston Rob” Mariano, making his fourth appearance on the show (in addition to two season of The Amazing Race) and Russell Hantz making his third appearance. This is in addition to sixteen other contestants who have never appeared on the show before.
On the surface at least the result seems preordained: the new players will vote out the two returning players fairly early in the proceedings. Maybe. Survivor tends to be filled with surprises and there does seem to be a pecking order in the way that people are eliminated. In the “Team Phase” the initial impulse is to keep the team strong by voting out the weakest players. It is only as the “Team Phase” is winding down and the merge is approaching that attention is redirected towards the strongest players. In addition, this season adds a quite deliberate twist in that a player who is voted out isn’t immediately eliminated. Instead they go to "a new area – called Redemption Island – where they subsist in exactly the same sort of circumstances that the players who are still in the game are surviving in. As each new player is eliminated they are sent to Redemption Island where they compete against the person who is already there. Whoever wins stays on the island alone and waits for the next person to be eliminated. Eventually the player who survives on Redemption Island returns to the main game and is eligible for the main prize. So even if Rob or Russell is voted off they aren’t actually out of the game until they’re beaten by someone on Redemption Island.
Mostly though this is a personal battle between Rob and Russell. They went head to head in Survivor: Heroes vs Villains where they were on the same team, and while Rob quickly saw Russell for what he was – a backstabbing conniver who would be your best friend at one Tribal Council and be working to get rid of you the next (or even the same day, as in the case of Tyson) – Rob was unable to develop a truly united front, mainly because of Russell’s ability to persuade people to vote against their own best interests. The animosity between the two was palpable from the beginning – at one point Russell told the confessional that he wanted to burn Rob’s trademark Red Sox cap – and boiled over at the Heroes vs Villains reunion show where Rob told Russell that, “given the opportunity, I’d gladly go back and kick your ass all over the island.” In this particular season the other sixteen is just a side show – the real battle is between Rob & Russell.
Here’s the tale of the tape: Rob Mariano Age: 35 Nickname: Boston Rob Trademark: Red Sox Cap Previous Seasons (Finish): Survivor: Marquesas (10), Survivor: All Stars (2), Survivor: Heroes vs Villains (13) Little known fact: He went to Xavierian Brothers High School with Matt Hasselback, the brother-in-law of Elizabeth (Filarski) Hasselback who appeared on Survivor: Australia with Rob`s wife Amber Brkich. Strengths: Since his first appearance on the show he has constantly improved his game. In his first season he was seen as part of the group on his tribe who “didn’t work.” In later seasons his work ethic improved. His survival skills are quite strong; he was the first cast member to ever start a fire by rubbing two sticks together (which other people on his team felt would never work). His social game has definitely improved over the years. Strong in team competitions, particularly in challenges involving puzzles. In working with members of his own tribe he’s been increasingly smooth. A sound strategist he tends to develop core alliances and work outward from there. Has a strong ability to “read” opponents like a poker player. He picked up on Russell being untrustworthy and his biggest opposition on his team practically from the moment that he met him. Weaknesses: Limited experience with individual challenges. he only really faced those in his All Star season. Has very limited experience with the Hidden Immunity Idol. His only exposure to that was in the Heroes vs Villains season and initially at least he was quite disdainful of it. His high public profile might also be a problem when playing against new players. He may be one of the two or three best known of all Survivor contestants because of his multiple TV appearances, both on Survivor and on other TV shows, often as a reality TV contestant. This may put a target on his back from the moment he begins.
Russell Hantz Age: 38 Nickname: Demented Hobbit; Immunity Idol Magnet Trademark: Grey Trilby style hat, bald head and beard. Previous Seasons (Finish): Survivor: Samoa (2), Survivor: Heroes vs Villains (3) Little known fact: Although he lists his profession as being in the oil well services business, he also owns a bar in Lafayette Louisiana. He was arrested for misdemeanour assault and battery there after an altercation in the bar. Strengths: Very physical player, sometimes to his own detriment. He tends to turn his work ethic on and off as necessary. He thinks a lot about his game and plans out scenarios. He seems to regard alliances as transitory, to be set aside or renewed as needed. His only enduring alliance during the Heroes vs Villains season was with eventual second place winner Parvati Shallow. His greatest strength in both seasons in which he played was his ability to find Hidden Immunity Idols, sometimes without any clues, and to use them effectively to blackmail those around him into doing his bidding. Weaknesses: Russell has several major weaknesses. He has a tremendous ego which has been boosted by twice being voted the Player of the Season by viewers of the show. His social game is virtually non-existent, and he has in previous two seasons seemed incapable of understanding the importance of the social game. At least some of his former tribe mates have described being with him in the game as being similar to an abusive relationship. Russell also had something of an advantage in his Heroes vs Villains season in that he went straight from Survivor: Samoa to that season so that the people he was playing against had no idea of what he was capable of while the he knew a lot about many of the people he was playing against so that he could work them. Coming into Redemption Island the roles are reversed; the players that he’ll be up against will know all there is to know about him while the only person he’ll know anything about is Rob. It may be that a smart player would want to take him as far as he can knowing that a jury won’t vote for Russell, but it may also be that he’ll be regarded as too dangerous and annoying and voted out quickly.
What Probst says: Jeff Probst has literally seen them all come and go. Here’s part of what he told Entertainment Weekly about the two:
I do not think Russell or Rob will be the first person voted out of this game. Because I think they bring too much experience — 156 days between the two of them. When you’re playing a game, there’s a lot to be learned….Rob may have an easier time initially, but Rob’s gong to have a tougher time long term because Rob could win. Rob is likable enough. He could win. Russell’s not going to win. Russell doesn’t get that. He’s not gonna win. Even if he was nice this season, the payoff for past seasons won’t let him win. Rob is going to have a tough time if he makes it to the merge.
So what do you think? I want to know, so I’m starting a poll (as soon as Blogger will let me) which will run until just before Survivor: Redemption Island debuts. The question is simple enough: Who will last longest in the coming season of Survivor: Boston Rob Mariano or Russell Hantz? Don’t forget that I would also like to read your comments on this so feel free to post them here or wherever.
