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March 2008 Archives
March 31, 2008 - We're Number 1's! Top NCAA Seeds Advance to Final Four
March 31, 2008 8:33 AM
Last night's Davidson-Kansas game was a down-to-the-buzzer thriller, and I wish Davidson had won. As it is, though, Kansas' victory means that all four regional #1 seeds made it to the Final Four. That's unprecedented -- and it makes for the prospect of some more terrific television.
Outside of American Idol, television has a tough time these days drawing a crowd and generating interest. Certain scripted shows get big buzz -- Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey's Anatomy -- but after a season or so, the dust tends to settle a little. Reality and unscripted shows, too, tend to start big when they first hit, then find their own level. American Idol is an exceptional exception, thriving long past its anticipated expiration date.
The mass medium of television, though, still can generate lots of interest, when conditions are right, in the area of sports. This may be the one area, outside of breaking news, where TV still has outdo the Internet. When it's live, and exciting, it offers the immediacy of the web, but with the potential for much bigger and better images.
The Super Bowl is the biggest annual illustration of this, and the World Series, on a good year, gathers a very big crowd. The Olympics, this year, should generate lots of interest because of China as the host country, but the time difference may hurt things. Tiger Woods, with the streak he's enjoying currently, should make this month's Masters a major major -- perhaps setting records for audience levels.
And with all four #1 seeds -- Kansas, North Carolina, Memphis and UCLA -- making it to Saturday's Final Four, there's a week to promote the unprecedented meeting of all four top teams. And no matter who wins Saturday, the prospect of a championship college basketball game Monday between two #1 teams is absolutely, positively guaranteed.
March 28, 2008 - It's Show Time on Showtime: "Tudors" Returns, Tracey Ullman Debuts
March 28, 2008 7:03 AM
Last year was an image-changing year for the Showtime cable network in its battle to emerge from the shadow of HBO. Dexter, more brilliant than ever. Californication, audaciously enjoyable. Meadowlands, quirky and unpredictable. Weeds, always a delight, with its best guest-star list ever. The L Word, dark but strong. And, oh yes, The Tudors.
The first season of The Tudors got the king's share of the attention, but in my mind didn't deserve it. For every solid scene of court intrigue and political maneuvering, there were two that seemed ripped from the covers of Harlequin romance novels. And while both the court and the church were filled with ambitious alpha males, only the female characters had much resonance or made much impact. Maria Doyle Kennedy, as King Henry VIII's out-of-favor first wife, and Natalie Dormer as kingly obsession Anne Boleyn, outshone everyone else on screen including Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the King.
The sole exception was Sam Neill's Cardinal Wolsey, but his character died last season. Historically, Wolsey died in route from his exiled home to the palace. In The Tudors, he died by his own hand -- a rather outrageous stretch by series creator-writer Michael Hirst, who has shuffled the biographies of royal sisters and even the timing of papal reigns to suit his dramatic purposes. Some might say that having a Catholic cardinal commit suicide is a betrayal of that character's religious character. In fact, I just did.
Beginning Sunday night at 9 ET, The Tudors is back for season two, and I'm happy to report it's better than season one. The Reformation gives it a very strong plot focus, Anne Boleyn and the King both seem to get what they want (but only temporarily), and the addition of Peter O'Toole as newly appointed Pope Paul III, while he appears infrequently, adds both cachet and gravity. And again, in the four episodes previewed, both Dormer and Kennedy outshine and out-act anyone else with whom they share the screen.
But The Tudors, as written and staged, pales when compared to HBO's John Adams. The casual rewriting of history is too heavy-handed, the exposition too clumsy, the pace too uneven. Still, The Tudors is watchable, and its primary value may be its sumptuous production values. The show looks great in promos -- and getting attention, right now, is a big part of Showtime's game.
The same attention-getting benefit applies to Tracey Ullman's State of the Union, a new series (Sunday night at 10 p.m ET) in which the incomparably chameleonic comedienne plays dozens of roles -- some fictional, others caricatures of actual people, from Renee Zellweger and Andy Rooney to Tony Sirico and David Beckham. Ullman plays them all, and plays them all with a commitment and lack of inhibition that is something to see.
The series itself, however, is built around a framework so loose (a look at a single day in the life of the country, tied to a fact or theme and seen through the eyes of dozens of characters, all played by Ullman), it doesn't support itself. An SCTV-type device, giving her freedom to play anyone and anything across the TV dial, might have been stronger. But though the parts don't add up to a coherent whole, the parts -- as played by Ullman -- are entertaining anyway.
For Showtime, these two series get high marks for showmanship and ambition, but aren't quite up to the highest of standards that Showtime itself has set with such other efforts as Dexter. That's the bad news, perhaps. But for Showtime, in the long run, it's also the good news.
Showtime, in 2008, is competing not with HBO, but with itself.
March 27, 2008 - Exclusive!: NBC's "Friday Night Lights" Returning for Sure
March 27, 2008 6:45 AM
Here's an exclusive I'm very pleased to report: NBC's Friday Night Lights will, indeed, be returning for a third season, according to series star Kyle Chandler.
I recorded an interview with Chandler yesterday for an upcoming edition of NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and Chandler confirmed that a deal to spread costs and continue the series had been struck. All that was left, he said Wednesday, was to "dot the i's and cross the t's." He was scheduled, and planning, to report back to Austin in June, he said, to start filming season three on location.
Thanks to Fresh Air executive producer Danny Miller for letting me share that breaking news in advance, making it the first official TV WORTH WATCHING exclusive. And thanks, Kyle, for a very intimate and honest interview. When it's got a scheduled air date (sometime in the first two weeks of April, most probably), I'll spread word.
The word that Friday Night Lights, one of TV's best dramas, will be back, though, was too good not to share.
March 26, 2008 - HBO's "In Treatment" Has Been Very Good Therapy
March 26, 2008 7:32 AM
When HBO's In Treatment began nine weeks ago, it established its unorthodox dramatic structure instantly: Gabriel Byrne would play a therapist, Paul, who each weekday would take part in a different scheduled session.
Laura, who had a crush on him, was Mondays. Alex, the arrogant military pilot, was Tuesdays. Sophie, the suicidal teen gymnast, was Wednesdays. Jake and Amy, the married couple with a baby on the way and with some friction between them, was Thursdays. And Paul, on Fridays, sought out his own therapist, Gina, to talk about his patients, and what was going on in his own life.
But this week, the ninth and final in this show's first-season run, there was no In Treatment on Monday, and no In Treatment on Tuesday. It returns tonight at 9:30 ET, with Paul meeting Sophie for her final session. With her, he's made real progress, and tonight she even confronts her father, played by guest star Peter Horton.
Elsewhere, though, Paul's record has been decidedly mixed.
There was no Monday show because, for Paul, there are no more Monday sessions: Laura, after she and Paul discussed their mutual attraction, stopped being a patient. Alex, the pilot, stopped being a patient, too -- because he died, in a pilot training exercise that, to Paul, seemed a lot like intentional suicide.
Thursday, there will be a session, but Jake and Amy the couple are now Jake and Amy, two individuals. She had a miscarriage, and it appears they're heading for divorce. And on Friday, Paul may be heading in a similar direction. He finally seeks out Laura, then goes to Gina to discuss the impact of that visit on his own marriage, professional ethics, and future.
In other words, In Treatment has been a tumultuous journey for all involved. The primary cast -- Melissa George as Laura, Blair Underwood as Alex, Mia Wasikowska as Sophie, Josh Charles and Embeth Davidtz as Jake and Amy, and Dianne Wiest as Gina -- has been fabulous, and Byrne, tackling a Herculean amount of screen time, has been remarkably subtle, credible and, despite all his character's flaws, likable. Also, the narrative has made room for other actors and roles, including Michelle Forbes as Kate, Paul's unfaithful and unhappy wife.
We've met Paul's children, Sophie's mother (and, tonight, her father), Alex's grieving father, and other friends and relatives -- all of whom shed light on the people we witness in Paul's short therapy sessions. In Treatment introduced a new way of unspooling a story, and it's been a very effective and addictive method.
I hope, in HBO's programming equivalents of therapy sessions, they're seriously discussing a second season.
March 25, 2008 - Great Documentaries Are Alive and Well -- Just Not on Broadcast TV
March 25, 2008 8:01 AM
PBS offers a fabulous documentary tonight, the conclusion of its thorough two-part Frontline examination of Bush's War. HBO offers a fabulous documentary tonight, too, an inspiring special called Autism: The Musical.
And what do the commercial broadcast networks show tonight in terms of nonfiction documentary programming? Only this: the latest entry in ABC's Primetime series called What Would You Do?, in which John Quinones sets up hidden cameras to see how people react to other people being bullied, or flirted with, or similar senseless stunts.
What's wrong with this picture?
Everything.
CBS, NBC and ABC haven't forgotten how to do quality prime-time documentaries, when they choose to. Diane Sawyer's programs devoted to inner-city children in Camden, NJ, have been eye-opening modern examinations in the spirit of Edward R. Murrow's classic Harvest of Shame.
When Dateline NBC isn't chasing predators, it does some fine work also, usually with producer Fred Rothenberg's name attached. (He's an old former colleague when we both were newspaper guys, but his body of high-quality TV work over the past decade stands for itself.)
And at CBS, 60 Minutes continues to be not only the most durable show on prime-time TV, but one of the most intelligent and watchable.
But for the most part, if you want to watch probing, worthwhile nonfiction TV, you have to look elsewhere. It's another genre that the broadcast networks, once the home of NBC's White Paper and CBS Reports, have all but abdicated to their competitors.
So tonight, instead, watch Bush's War at 9 p.m. ET, and learn, in crushing detail, of the rivalries and stupidities that led to every move of the war in Iraq -- not only step by step, but misstep by misstep.
Or, at 8 p.m ET (or later, with time-shift TV technology), watch Autism: The Musical, an uplifting yet unblinking documentary from Bunim/Murray Productions. That's the crew that gave us MTV's The Real World, but believe me -- this is the real world.
Tune in as Elaine, with her own autistic son Neal, sets out to mount a musical in which the kids sing of their own problems, hopes and dreams. Watch Henry slowly open up to eye contact. Watch Lexi take to the microphone in song, and soar. Watch Wyatt analyze his own inner world, Adam overcome a frantic tantrum, and Neal reach out to his mom thanks to some new technology.
Most of all, watch the musical climax, where director-cinematographer Tricia Regan captures not only the performances on stage, but the chokingly grateful reactions of their loved ones in the audience. Those reaction shots, alone, are stunningly unforgettable, but so is the entire program.
As for ABC's What Would You Do? -- what I'd do, and recommend you do, is watch Autism: The Musical and Bush's War instead.
March 24, 2008 - Sit Me Baby One More Time: Britney Goes the Sitcom Route
March 23, 2008 3:25 PM
As the first step in her career reclamation attempt, troubled pop star Britney Spears goes the sitcom route.
She appears tonight (8:30 p.m. ET) in a guest spot on the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother, playing a doctor's office receptionist who attracts the attention of both and Ted and Barney. It's not the first time she's appeared on a sitcom, but circumstances couldn't be more different from the last time.
The last time was only two years ago. But two years ago, in the life of Britney Spears, was a completely different universe.
She had yet to file for divorce or shave her head when she appeared on NBC's Will & Grace, playing against type as a conservative TV talk host paired as co-host with Sean Hayes' Jack. In 2006, Britney was giving a big positive publicity boost to Will & Grace. In 2008, How I Met Your Mother is giving at least as big a boost to her.
In recent years, one of the best places to find pop stars and celebrities stretching themselves a bit by guest-starring on a TV show, playing someone other than themselves, was on the NBC period drama American Dreams. That series, recreating performances on American Bandstand as part of its 1960s narrative, made room for dozens of notable guest appearances.
Among them: Kelly Clarkson as Brenda Lee (singing "Sweet Nothing"), Hilary and Haylie Duff as two of the Shangri-Las ("Leader of the Pack"), and Jennifer Love Hewitt as Nancy Sinatra ("These Boots Are Made for Walking"). Even Nicole Richie did well, singing "Tell Him" as the lead singer of The Exciters.
Richie's former BFF, Paris Hilton, appeared on American Dreams also, as Barbara Eden, and made guest appearances, playing other characters, on Las Vegas, The O.C., Veronica Mars and even the sitcom George Lopez.
The idea of pop stars generating more publicity by appearing on sitcoms is by no means a new phenomenon. In the 1960s, it was commonplace for stars such as Peter & Gordon to appear on Batman, where Lesley Gore even played an apprentice bad kitty to Julie Newmar's Catwoman. The Monkees, of course, owed their very existence to the TV sitcom genre, and Monkee Davy Jones played himself on an iconic Brady Bunch episode in 1971.
Recently, though, sitcom crossovers by pop stars have been more rare. Jessica Simpson guest starred as blonde beach bunny Annette in three episodes of That 70's Show in 2003, but that was just before she exploded as the dim-witted star of the MTV reality series Newlyweds. Mandy Moore guest starred as Zach Braff's love interest on two episodes of NBC's Scrubs in 2006, but that was when they were involved in real life.
A much better example of singer-to-sitcom movement is when Moore, last year, intentionally played against type by portraying a tough-talking, tattooed, sexually aggressive bar-hopper in an episode of a CBS sitcom. Which one? How I Met Your Mother -- the same one pointing the spotlight at Spears tonight.
Spears did appear on a TV comedy last week, by the way: The latest episode of Comedy Central's South Park. It was a typically audacious plot, in which Cartman and his pals crashed Britney Spears' hotel room to try and get a picture.
They upset her so much, as the last straw in a crushing barrage of intrusive unwanted attention, that she grabbed a shotgun, pointed it at her mouth and pulled the trigger.
Brutal? Shockingly so. But as it played out on South Park, it shocked and haunted the young boys as well, who felt totally guilt-ridden by what they'd done.
This being South Park, though, there was a lot more story to go. Britney, for starters, didn't die, and the boys visited her in the hospital, where she made gurgling sounds with what little was left of her throat (and face, and skull)... then, forced by her ruthless management, resumed her recording career.
The end of the episode warned of the next object of smothering teen idolatry and media overkill: Miley Cyrus, who rose to stardom on Hannah Montana.
Which, remember, is a TV sitcom.
March 21, 2008 - "American Idol" Beatles Nights Didn't Please Please Me
March 20, 2008 10:41 AM
After six seasons, American Idol finally got rights to the John Lennon-Paul McCartney catalog and did a theme night, then returned a week later with George Harrison's songs added to the mix as well. Given such an amazingly deep and rich resource, how could the contestants and the show fail?
Yet they did. Big time.
As part of the individual competitions, 12 songs were sung in last week's show, and another 11 this week. That's 23 songs -- and out of those 23 performances, six were good, none was great, and many were awful. The singing and arangements, for the most part, ranged from uninspired to unendurable, and the choice of songs, given the entirety of the Beatles catalog, was mystifyingly ill-advised.
In the Lennon-McCartney show, Chikezie enlived things with a sped-up "She's a Woman," David Cook and Michael Johns did strong versions of "Eleanor Rigby" and "Across the Universe," respectively, and Brooke White played piano and delivered a passionate "Let It Be." But the next week, only Cook, with a forceful vocal on "Day Tripper," delivered a passable performance two weeks running. Brooke went all sunny-yellow and happy-goofy with "Here Comes the Sun," and the others reached too far straining to duplicate the successful elements of previous week's performances.
The only other second-week singer to do well was David Archuleta, whose lovely version of "The Long and Winding Road" made up for his butchering the lyrics of "We Can Work It Out" the week before. (He should have taken heed, especially, of the line "Think of what I'm saying.")
What was sung, for the most part, wasn't good, and the song choices were worse. Simon Cowell's dislike of "Blackbird" as a song choice was a rare display of musical ignorance, but so many selections, in this competition, truly were just dumb. "I Saw Her Standing There"? David Hernandez deserved to be booted off, and was. Kristy Lee Cook, somehow, survived two weeks' worth of poor performances of poorer song choices: "Eight Days a Week" one show, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" the next.
What could have been sung instead? If Kristy Lee wanted to inject a country flavor into a Beatles song, "Run for Your Life" would have been a much stronger choice. Amanda Overmyer, who just missed the Top 10 Wednesday when her "Back in the U.S.S.R." was considered the week's weakest link, should have sung the powerful, showy "Oh! Darling" instead. Certainly, somebody should have sung that song, a perfect American Idol show-stopper.
Other Beatles songs that would have worked well on Idol? "I Will" would have been a perfect choice for a ballad, and, as rockers, "Drive My Car," "Help!" and "You Can't Do That" would have been great places to start.
Maybe, next season, Idol should have another show or two devoted to the solo years of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Ringo Starr, and give the contestants of 2009 a chance to honor these musicians' legacies properly.
On the other hand, maybe I should be speaking words of wisdom... Let it be.
March 20, 2008 - Nights of the Round(ball) Table: TV Coverage to Please Lance a Lot
March 19, 2008 2:47 PM
If March Madness is an annual illness, TV, satellite and computer technology have combined to make it a pop-culture pandemic. There are 64 games in the NCAA men's basketball brackets -- and if you subscribe to the right cable or satellite system, purchase the right package, or have signed up for a free VIP pass to watch streaming video on your computer at home or (gasp!) at work, it's all available.
On some systems, you can watch four games at the same time, split into quadrants so you don't get upset by missing an upset. (You can listen to only one game at a time, but, hey, that's show biz.)
And if your local CBS affiliate isn't showing the regional game you want to see -- in the first round today and tomorrow, up to four games are played simultaneously) -- you can switch to your cable or satellite sports package, or head straight to ncaasports.com and watch the game on your computer. There's a name for this service, MMOD, which stands for March Madness On Demand.
It may as well be called WNSB. As in, Who Needs Sports Bars?
My daughter, Kristin, has a boyfriend -- let's call him Lance, because that's his name -- whose default TV setting is ESPN, and who lives for the kind of concentrated, unpredictable sports event that is March Madness.
Lance probably knows, for example, that Xavier has a 27-6 record, and is heavily favored to beat Georgia (17-16) when the two teams square off in one of today's four simultaneous opening contests. Me, I just know that Xavier was the full name of Professor X, who ran the X-Men. And that's from the original 12-cent comic book, not the recent movies.
But I love watching March Madness, just as I enjoy watching the Olympics -- although, the rest of the year, I ignore college basketball just as fervently as I ignore televised skating and skiing. Curling, that's another matter... but I digress.
March Madness, for me, is all about the upsets, about watching a Villanova turn into a Cinderella. Today, for example, two of the bottom-seeded teams, ranked No. 16 in their divisions, face No. 1 teams. Portland State, with a 23-9 record, goes up against top-ranked Kansas (21-3) at 12:25 p.m. ET. Later, in prime time, the 16th-ranked Mississippi Valley State players (17-15) have to face No. 1 UCLA (31-3) at 9:55 p.m. ET. Both games should be routs, but there's always the chance they won't be... and that's why they're my favorite games to watch.
I have 12 TVs in my basement office, hooked up to enough different satellite, cable and over-the-air broadcast sources that I usually can find most games I want to catch. Lance, a few years ago, I'm guessing, would have planted himself in a sports bar. But now, thanks to technology, all he needs is a broadband cable hookup, and to have paid the cable bill, and he's set.
Technology marches on... and, in this case, March Madness is on.
March 19 - Changes Are Coming to This Site... Glacially, but Surely
March 18, 2008 12:23 PM
I'm so grateful, truly, for every single one of you who takes the time to visit this site, that I want to apologize for the delays in making TV WORTH WATCHING every bit as dynamic and interactive as originally envisioned. But we're getting there... or, at least, getting closer.
The general comments you've been sending -- "Why not make your blog searchable?" and "Do you have a RSS feed for your site?," for example -- are both welcome and smart. Both a search device and an RSS feed are pretty high up on the triage list, along with making the comments on the new FEEDBACK and TV JUKEBOX pages (which I'm very proud of, by the way) readable as part of the entries, as they are on the BLOG pages.
Once these things are done, DVD and book reviews will be updated regularly again, and the INTERVIEW page -- occupied, since the site's launch, by the same George Lucas Q&A -- will be replaced by a new feature.
Some good news: I've gotten approval from the New York Daily News, my former employer, to continue asking for and publishing EXTRAS -- hidden in-jokes in TV shows -- on TV WORTH WATCHING. Once we get the FEEDBACK stuff working right, that'll be the next addition. Also, it's quite possible we may add a new critical voice or two soon... and, beginning in June, we'll have our first official advertiser. More on that later.
But for now, let me thank, once again, Eric Gould and Chris Spurgeon, who respectively designed and implemented the site since its launch, and now Rich Baniewicz, who is my new website guru and overly patient collaborator. He's the one stuck with implementing all the ideas... and what I've learned, since launching this site in November, is that ideas are easy. Computer programming is hard.
This is a mom and pop operation right now, but with no mom, and pop is pooped. Please bear with me... I've survived the death flu, so updating TV WORTH WATCHING, and getting better about sending blast emails and stuff, is next on the agenda. Thanks for your patience, and your presence.
March 18, 2008 -- When Good Shows Happen to Bad People
March 17, 2008 9:40 PM
The FX drama series The Riches, about husband-and-wife con-artist gypsies who steal the identities of a well-to-do dead couple, returns for its second season tonight at 10 ET. It's a wonderful series, but it made me wonder: When, exactly, did we start rooting for the gypsies, tramps and thieves in our weekly TV dramas?
While you ponder that for a minute, allow me to make this quick point. The Riches, starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver, is a delightful show -- cacklingly funny one minute, frighteningly and realistically violent and scary the next. For a fuller review of why I love this show, listen to today's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
And now, back to the question of the day.
What the Malloys are doing in this series -- hiding some dead bodies and assuming their identities -- is clearly wrong. When Pete, an old friend of the real Riches, comes to town and threatens to expose the impostors, Pete actually is the good guy. Yet we're rooting for Wayne... a.k.a. the new Doug Rich... to find a way out.
Similarly, on Breaking Bad, we rooted for the terminally ill Walter White, even though he had decided to set up his wife and son by making and selling crystal meth. Walter's brother-in-law, a cop, is closing in on him, but it's Walt we want to emerge victoriously. And on Dexter, who among us isn't on the side of this serial killer, just because he kills even more despicable serial killers?
The obvious lineage is James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano on The Sopranos, which began in 1999. He's a mob boss who had our sympathies, until he did something so heinous we recoiled at the sight. But then, like a battered spouse, we absorbed the blows and stayed put for more, even offering more love.
But before Tony, there was Adrian Pasdar's creepy Jim Profit in 1996's Profit. Before Profit, there was Gary Cole's demonic Sheriff Lucas Buck in 1995's American Gothic. Before Lucas, there was Kyle Secor's Tim Bayliss, the hero turned murderer on 1993's Homicide: Life on the Street. Before Bayliss, there was Terence Knox's Peter White, the doctor turned rapist on 1982's St. Elsewhere. And before White, there was that rascally oilman, Larry Hagman's J.R. Ewing, in 1978's Dallas.
J.R. may have been the original bad boy of weekly TV dramas -- the guy you loved to watch, and even root for, even though you knew his sense of morality was hopelessly skewed. But there may have been others, and I've addressed only the male half of the equation. Certainly, Joan Collins in Dynasty did her share of villainous damage in the 1980s -- but who, male or female, gets credit as the very first significant bad boy, or bad girl, of weekly prime-time series TV?
The floor is yours.
March 17, 2008 - It's Some Laughing Matter: The First Post-Strike Sitcoms Are Back
March 16, 2008 4:51 PM
When the writers' strike ended and production resumed on TV shows that had been stalled by the work stoppage, the rollout of new episodes was expected to occur in several stages: fully staffed talk shows and Saturday Night Live first, then sitcoms, then the dramas. Tonight, with the return of the full CBS comedy lineup, we finally enter phase two.
The Big Bang Theory is up first, followed by a new How I Met Your Mother (which, because of short post-strike deadlines, was able to peg its plot to today's St. Patrick's Day) and Two and a Half Men. The New Adventures of Old Christine is a first-run episode, too, but it's actually an old New Adventure, because CBS has been stockpiling this sitcom.
But it's good to have the comedies back. It's good to have any scripted prime-time shows back, since we've been so inundated with tacky unscripted reality shows. And yes, I know I'm saying this on the night that Dancing with the Stars also returns on ABC.
While it's nice to embrace the imagination of TV writers, it's a lot tougher to support the network writers of the ad campaigns letting viewers know the cycle of reruns is over. At CBS, they corral the comedies in a promo featuring a lot of animated animals -- gnus, to be precise. These promos advise viewers that the programs are "All gnu!" and ask viewers to "Start spreading the gnus."
Really? Five months to plan, and this is the best CBS could do?
Sorry, but in this case, no gnus would have been good news.
And at NBC, they're using the John Sebastian theme from "Welcome Back, Kotter" to "Welcome back" the network's Thursday lineup, which is resuming with new episodes soon. It's a little annoying to have the networks welcome us back when we weren't the ones who went anywhere. The programs went away because of the strike, and because the networks forced that issue by walking away from the negotiating table.
So let's be grateful for the next phase of the resumption of regular programming, but please, networks, don't insult our intelligence with your promos. You're already doing it with too much of your programming.
March 14, 2008 - HBO's "John Adams" Makes It Three for Three for Tom Hanks
March 13, 2008 4:47 PM
Tom Hanks is a movie star now, and has starred in some great ones. But he started in TV (with the sitcom Bosom Buddies), and, as an executive producer, understands it better than most. He knows, for example, that the miniseries is one of the medium's most important genres - and knows what to do with it.
After starring in Apollo 13 in 1995, Hanks took his continued fascination with the space race to produce his From the Earth to the Moon miniseries for HBO three years later. Then, three years after starring in Saving Private Ryan in 1998, Hanks channeled his passion about WWII into another HBO miniseries, Band of Brothers, in 2001.
For John Adams, which begins Sunday night at 8 ET on HBO, there's no big-screen acting-vehicle predecessor, just Hanks' enthusiasm for the David McCullough Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the second President of the United States. (Sorry if that's a spoiler.)
Hanks, though, has made enough spectacular historical miniseries of his own to recognize a great subject when he sees one. And Adams, with his stubborn principles, his nation-shaping arguments and his adoring, outspoken, opinionated wife Abigail, is a great subject.
I've raved elsewhere about this miniseries, and the performances by Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney as John and Abigail Adams. In fact, I'm scheduled to provide a review for today's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, so listen for it there.
But because I love the miniseries form so much, and hate to see how the broadcast networks have let it die on the vine, I'll use the rest of this space to say I'm especially grateful to Tom Hanks for championing the form. This is a guy who can find other work - but he knows that the long-form drama can tell stories in a way that not even a three-hour movie can approach.
John Adams is something to enjoy, to treasure, to look forward to watching. Television needs more of that - and the fact that HBO is providing it, and the broadcast networks aren't, says something very meaningful about them both.
March 13, 2008 - ABC's "Lost" Is Great, But Its "Enhanced Lost" Is Grating
March 12, 2008 4:04 PM
The writers' strike may explain it, but doesn't excuse it. The "enhanced" hour of Lost that precedes tonight's new hour of Lost is even worse than a week-old rerun.
It's a week-old rerun that doesn't add to the viewing experience. It detracts from it.
Let's be clear about this. A fresh episode of Lost, such as the one shown tonight at 9 ET, is one of broadcast TV's crown jewels. It's one of the best-written, most ambitious dramatic series on television, and a new episode is a highlight of any discerning viewer's week. So I love Lost. Make no mistake about that.
But for a month now, ABC has been leading into each week's new Lost by repeating last week's episode. Not just repeating it, but peppering it with subtitled notes, as if it were a episode of Pop-Up Videos.
Some of the things it points out are laughably, irritatingly obvious. Others are astoundingly, irritatingly arcane and obtuse - the sort of references not even Dennis Miller would get, much less craft a joke around.
But here's the thing. Lost is so visually dense already, it doesn't need the footnote equivalent of a news crawl to keep viewers from being bored. Calling the bottom-third messages an "enhanced" episode of Lost is a heinous misuse of language.
It's more like a "defaced" episode - and it's a waste of an hour on ABC.
These days, though, that's not so unusual an occurrence.
March 12, 2008 - Lewis Black Doesn't Triumph Over "Evil"
March 11, 2008 2:48 PM
Lewis Black is a very funny fellow. His caustic comic approach wears well, and his outrage normally is aimed at precisely the right targets. Like Sam Kinison before him, Black gets angry for all of us, and says things few of us dare to say out loud.
As a Daily Show correspondent, and the star of his own standup comedy specials, Black has been reliably entertaining. But Lewis Black's Root of All Evil, which premieres tonight at 10:30 ET on Comedy Central, isn't nearly as funny as it should be.
It's not Black enough.
Even though Lewis Black's name is in the title, and he presides over the proceedings like a short-tempered eccentric judge from Boston Legal, he doesn't have nearly enough to do here. Yes, he holds the gavel, but doesn't go gavel-to-gavel. Instead, he's shown reacting, like Drew Carey at the judge's table in Whose Line Is It Anyway?, while other comics duel for laughs, and the arbitrary approval of their host.
Each show pits two "roots of all evil" against each other. Tonight's opener, for example, is "Oprah vs. Catholic Church." Taking the opposing sides, like standup comedy equivalents of a Celebrity Deathmatch bout, are comics Paul F. Tompkins, who argues the supreme evilness of Oprah Winfrey, and Greg Giraldo, who does the same for the Catholic Church.
These guys make some good points, but they aren't all that funny. "You know who's on the cover of Oprah magazine every month?" Tompkins asks. "Oprah."
He continues, "Really, Oprah? Nobody else? Ever?"
Giraldo shows pictures of Inquisition-era torture devices to buttress his argument - but again, not very funny, which is supposed to be the point. And even at the end, when Black gets to cross-examine the comics and their arguments, all he does is set them up with straight lines.
There's not enough comedy - funny comedy, that is - and nowhere near enough Lewis Black. That may not be the root of all evil - but it's the root of the problem with Root of All Evil.
March 11, 2008 - Digging Deeply Into HBO's "In Treatment"
March 10, 2008 8:38 PM
The HBO series In Treatment, which launched in January, will conclude its first season at the end of the month - and once again, TV has found a novel way to tell a story. Novel, as in more like a novel than anything else.
The nine-week, five-nights-a-week story has unfolded layer by layer, as the world of therapist Paul (Gabriel Byrne), his patients and his own therapist has been revealed, slowly but very surely. What began as a series of independent therapy sessions has turned into something much more complicated, interlaced and unpredictable.
With Paul, we've met his wife, Kate (Michelle Forbes), who's had an affair, and last night we saw Paul interacting, in turn, with his two eldest children. All of this lends great insight into how and why he relates to his young patient Sophie, and his troubled married couple, Jake and Amy. And why he's tempted by his smitten patient Laura, and, at the other extreme, why his own therapist, Gina, is probing him so deeply when it comes to both Laura and Kate.
But at this point, we've also met Sophie's mother, and are about to meet her father. And another character's father, but that's more of a surprise. We've seen Laura alone with Alex, another of Paul's patients, and the next few weeks will see more people outside the confines of therapy - and many different conflicts actually come to a head.
I've seen the rest of In Treatment, and it ends up being addictively compelling. By the end, it feels like you're watching real people fight through real issues, not actors working skillfully through subtly written scripts.
I'd like to support, and watch, another season of this series - but if one measure of the success of therapy is how much progress is made during intimate conversations, In Treatment could just as well call it a day and hang up its shingle. It's done its job - very, very well.
March 10, 2008 - When Is It Fair, and Unfair, to Reveal TV Secrets?: Two Case Studies
March 10, 2008 7:02 AM
I've written plenty about the final episode of The Wire, the excellent David Simon drama that concluded last night - but was careful not to reveal any secrets or discuss the ending. Now that it's been televised, is it fair game? Or is there still a "I've recorded it, but haven't seen it" faction in play?
And what's the point of honoring secrets anyway, if the networks don't?
Start with The Wire. Here's my position on "spoilers": A well-written preview shouldn't reveal anything that would detract from the audience's enjoyment. Once the program is televised, though, all analysis and details are fair game. If you're a Wire fan, and still have the finale put aside somewhere to watch, then put the rest of this column in the same "futures" pile. I refuse to wait.
My favorite elements of the finale? Mayor Carcetti, all but popping a blood vessel when he learns of the serial-killer scam. Drug-dealer Marlo, so disheartened by going "straight" that he heads straight from the penthouse to the street to confront, and survive, some armed punks. Gus, flashing one last knowing semi-smile from the depths of the copy desk.
And most of all, Bubbles, the heart and soul of the show, finally being allowed to ascend the basement stairs of his sister's home and join them at the kitchen table. At least the newspaper, by profiling Bubbles and changing his sister's opinion of him, did one thing right.
Saddest element? The duplicitous reporter winning the Pulitzer, and the traffic and skyline shots showing the distancing speed and disheartening disparity of city life. The Wire didn't end up offering many solutions. Salute it, though, for shining white-hot spotlights on the endemic, complicated problems.
Now for the flip side of my "fair game" argument. I had forgotten to record The Celebrity Apprentice on NBC Thursday, so I caught a rerun on CNBC a few days later. It was the episode culminating in a terrific, heated showdown between Piers Morgan and Omarosa - and before we found out her fate on the program, it was revealed on a commercial-break promo for the following week's NBC episode.
There was Omarosa with a red circle and slash across her face, and the promise that the next Apprentice would be "Omarosa-free." And now, back to our program. Guess who gets fired?
According to my own "spoiler" position, I guess I can't get too incensed about this. NBC, after all, televised the episode already. But if the only reason to rerun the episode on CNBC is to pick up viewers who didn't watch on NBC, shouldn't that climax-revealing promo have been delayed until the end of the episode, as I'm sure it was on NBC?
Why should critics play fair, if the networks won't?
March 07, 2008 - Saying Goodbye to "The Wire"
March 6, 2008 11:15 PM
David Simon's tantalizingly multilayered HBO drama series ends Sunday night at 9 with an expanded final episode - one that starts with the major learning of the duplicity of his own police force, and ends with one of the series' end-of-season trademark musical montages.
For details, you'll have to watch. I'm not about to spoil the fun of those who have stuck with The Wire to the bittersweet end sprinkling spoilers throughout a farewell preview.
Some points, though, can be made without ruining any of the fun. And ought to be made, because a series this good doesn't come around very often.
First, Simon's choice for the song to be used in the final montage is not only perfect, but, in its way, inevitable.
Second, watch that montage very, very carefully. In a few frames, without any accompanying audio, we get bits of closure regarding one story line after another. Some seem maddeningly arbitrary or unfair. At least one brings a smile to the heart, and provides a happy grace note amid so much desperation, depression and disintegration.
In between those two poles - the discovery that McNulty (Dominic West) has faked the serial killings, and the end of the episode - The Wire does its best to service both its stories and its characters, leaving you with reverberating memories of both.
I'll continue to miss characters who didn't make it all the way to Sunday's finale - and once Sunday gets here, I'll miss this whole series, just as I still wonder what's happening to the residents of Deadwood. At least The Wire got to end its story the way it wanted, on its own terms and timetable.
Fans of this show won't expect a happy ending. But if there is a true happy ending in store for The Wire, it'd be for the show, and some of its players and contributors, to be remembered, rather than egregiously ignored, come Emmy nomination time.
March 06, 2008 - When Good Ads Happen to Bad TV Shows
March 5, 2008 11:18 PM
What do you do when an ad for a TV show is clever enough to applaud, but the show it's promoting isn't worth watching? In the case of Comedy Central's Lil' Bush, the only thing to do is be a Lil' Creative: Dismiss the series, but support the ad.
The series Lil' Bush, which returns for its second Comedy Central season a week from tonight, is an Internet outgrowth that isn't worth the expanded effort. Crude animation is one thing, and, as South Park has proven for a decade, can even be an asset. But South Park is caustic, cutting-edge comedy brilliance. Lil' Bush is so dumb, it doesn't even put its apostrophe in the right place.
A cartoon series about a sawed-off George W. Bush, especially with cartoon caricartures of Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice and others in the mix, ought to be funny almost by default. But this series isn't. Not last season, and not with the preview samples for this season.
But the Comedy Central ad for the show - that's another matter.
Distributed to the press yesterday, it's a takeoff on the famous "Obama Girl" video, which on YouTube has generated nearly 7 million views, several of its own parodies, and an invitation for the real "Obama Girl" to play herself in a cameo on Saturday Night Live. The original "Obama Girl" video, just for the record, is available HERE.
And here, with appropriate warnings that the content is Comedy Central-level risque, is the "Lil' Bush Girl" ad.
If you like the ad, rest assured, it's better than the program. If you don't like it, rest even more assured, the program is worse.
March 05, 2008 - Republicans Solidify, Democrats Liquefy
March 5, 2008 8:40 AM
The news for Republicans last night came clearly and quickly: John McCain gathered enough delegates to make him his party's presumptive nominee, and his remaining competitor, Mike Huckabee, appeared in the midst of prime time to deliver a gracious and supportive concession speech.
On the Democratic side, things were much messier. Bad weather and ballot shortages pushed some Ohio precinct closings back a few hours, slowing reportage of results statewide. And while Barack Obama got Vermont at the start, and Hillary Clinton was awarded Rhode Island, the states of Ohio and Texas were such widespread and complex races that analysts everywhere embraced "Too close to call" as a mantra.
At Fox News, at CNN, at MSNBC, anchors and analysts warned of a long night ahead, and the likelihood that, at the end, nothing would be settled, except for moving the goal posts and prolonging the Democratic interparty rivalry.
At 10 p.m. ET, after McCain delivered his presumptive victory speech ("The contest begins tonight!"), more results came in. The results: Too close to call.
Fasten your seat belts, political junkies. It's going to be a bumpy flight.
March 04, 2008 - For TV, It's Super-Super-Duper Tuesday
March 4, 2008 6:52 AM
No matter what happens this evening - whether Hillary Clinton sweeps Texas and Ohio, whether Barack Obama denies her that bragging right and momentum shift, and whether simple victory has anything to do with the number of delegates won - it's a night to watch politics on TV.
I've outlined tomorrow's evening entertainment options in BEST BETS, but Super-Super-Duper Tuesday is a night to check in all over the dial... and to hop around, time-shift or multitask like a fiercely fickle viewer.
Try this on for size:
During the dinner hour in the East, sample all three bradcast network evening newscasts, just for fun, and take their temperatures. They won't make predictions, but they'll throw a few hints - and, as they've proven already in this election process, they can be very wrong. That's part of the fun.
Next, see how The Jim Lehrer NewsHour covers things on PBS, while popping over to the folks at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC to see how the political wonks there are painting the picture of Texas and Ohio, whose results now become a crucial part of deciding the Democratic nominee for president.
Once prime time begins, you have the polar political opposites, Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, butting heads, and CNN doing its roundtable, high-tech thing. Broadcast networks will start doing newsbreaks, and ABC will devote Nightline to whatever happened - but not before Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart weighs in.
It's worth reflecting that this is an awful lot of TV devoted to the same, important subject - and we should be happy about that.
It's also worth reflecting that if representatives of the state of Florida, in their sub-baked wisdom, had not moved their primary earlier in the season to make more of a political impact (thus sacrificing its delegates this year in the process, supposedly), Florida would be a huge part of this Obama-Clinton endgame. Florida's primaries, in recent elections, used to be held the second week of March.
Had Florida stayed put, it could have decided the whole ball of wax. Good move, Sunshine State...
March 03, 2008 - Here's Something Rare: Praise for What ISN'T On TV
March 3, 2008 6:41 AM
Many months ago, when the networks were concocting their first replacement plans if the strike persisted, one of the projects announced by Fox was a new reality series called When Women Rule the World. It was supposed to premiere tonight, but it's nowhere to be found.
Hooray for Fox?
Not exactly. Turns out the network has delayed the premiere of the new series, which has men ruled completely by women (and eliminated weekly) in a remote location, until the May ratings sweeps. So rather than being embarrassed by the show, which comes from the folks who gave us both Joe Millionaire and Married By America, Fox is smelling a hit.
I'm smelling something, too - but I'll reserve final judgment until after I've seen the series. Which, the way these previews of these shows are not usually sent in advance, will be the same time America does.
Another show not on Monday TV right now? The Baby Borrowers, which NBC announced would premiere two weeks ago. The tacky My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad showed up instead, and Baby Borrowers, a reality show in which young couples were given tag-team responsibilities of babies, teens and old folks, is nowhere to be found.
Hooray for NBC?
No chance. That show's coming, just at a later date. And while NBC's patience with a show such as Quarterlife lasts only a single episode, it's clear the network is placing chips all over the board, hoping to get lucky quick in the network game of instant-hit roulette.
So bestowing praise for bad programs that don't show up, it turns out, is an exercise is wishful thinking. Sooner or later, they'll get here.
I'm still waiting for the premiere of the CBS reality remake of The Beverly Hillbillies...
It's an idea so bad, its time should come. Eventually. Unfortunately.
