May 2009 Archives

Jay Leno Leaves "Tonight," "Pushing Daisies" Returns, and Alan Alda Drops a "M*A*S*H" Note

May 28, 2009 6:00 AM

Looking ahead to the weekend, and back to what may be the season's most obscure in-joke TV Extra: Between Jay Leno leaving The Tonight Show, Pushing Daisies returning to ABC and Alan Alda making a M*A*S*H joke on 30 Rock, there's a lot to cover.

So let's get right to it...

Tomorrow night's best bet, in terms of TV history, is Jay Leno's farewell performance on The Tonight Show. Even if you haven't watched the show in years, it's a part of a TV continuum that deserves to be witnessed, and saluted. Leno has been at the Tonight Show helm for 17 years --nine years longer than original hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar combined. (Johnny Carson logged an astounding 30.)

Conan O'Brien, who will take over the show Monday, will be on hand Friday as Leno's special guest. So this is just an advance-planning notice: Tune in NBC tomorrow night at 11:35 p.m. ET. A Tonight Show host is abdicating his crown -- a TV even occurring for only the fourth time in 55 years.

--

The writers' strike crippled Pushing Daisies by slowing its momentum, and ABC killed it from there. The program, the best new series on TV two seasons ago, will not be back in the fall.

But the final three episodes produced -- programs ABC never bothered to televised -- finally will be shown, beginning this Saturday night at 10 ET. If you've forgotten just how delightful Pushing Daisies is (was?), tuning in for these last three shows will remind you anew.

Could ABC bury these last few gems any deeper than by showing them on Saturday night, in the summer? Yes. In fact, ABC could, and is. It's preceding Daisies with same-week reruns of Wipeout and Here Come the Newlyweds, two competition reality shows with the combined IQ of a dead mole.

--

Finally, because I promised to write about this if no readers spotted it, here's my favorite Extra of the 2008-09 TV season.

It happened during the finale of NBC's 30 Rock, when Alan Alda, playing Jack's long-lost biological father Milton Green, wanders into the TV studio and overhears a heated conversation between Kenneth the page (Jack McBrayer) and loose-cannon show-within-a-show TV star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan).

The conversation is a convoluted one -- something about Kenneth getting to the bottom of Tracy's childhood trauma, and his excuse for dropping out of high school. Tracy's story is that a school drug dealer ordered him to carve up a baby, which he refused to do. The real story, with which Kenneth confronted Tracy, was that the man was a science teacher, not a drug dealer. That it was a frog he was asked to dissect, not a baby to slice. And that Tracy couldn't do it, and fled in embarrassment.

"It's true," Tracy tells Kenneth, sobbing loudly, as Alda's Milton Green walks in. "There WAS no baby! I was CHICKEN!"

Milton, witnessing this emotional outburst, says to them both, "A guy crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a COMEDY show."

And that was it.

Except -- except -- the highest-rated TV entertainment program of all time, the "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" finale of M*A*S*H, had a similar plot.

Alda's Hawkeye was traumatized by a blocked memory of sharing a bus with some Korean refugees when they passed through some very hostile North Korean territory. As Hawkeye remembered it, one woman refugee strangled a chicken she was cradling in order to keep its noisy clucks from attracting the enemy. When Hawkeye's memory was challenged, he finally remembered the woman was holding her baby, not a chicken -- and the sight of her killing it had traumatized him into a sort of selective amnesia.

A guy crying about a chicken and a baby? Yes indeed -- and that night in 1983, 77 percent of all TV viewers that night tuned in to watch.

In my book, that's a great Extra -- my term for TV's hidden in-jokes. For others, found by me and by you, check the TV WORTH WATCHING Extras + Feedback page HERE. If you've never checked it out before, enjoy -- and add under Feedback, if you like, your own first TV favorites and sex symbols.

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Conan's Proper Approach to NBC's "Tonight Show": Reverent Irreverence

May 27, 2009 9:01 AM

Conan O'Brien participated in a conference call with TV reporters, critics and bloggers yesterday, and one thing stood out above all else. He described talking to designers about the new Tonight Show set he envisioned when he takes over as host next week, and he distilled his concept down to one word: "Elegant."

That, right there, says NBC's Tonight Show is in good hands...

O'Brien not only is aware of the history of TV's longest-running late-night talk show, but respects it. Steve Allen. Jack Paar. Johnny Carson. And, for the last 17 years, Jay Leno.

Leno's final show is Friday (11:35 p.m. ET), and one of his guests on that final show is O'Brien, who says he doesn't expect to roast the host ("It's his night," O'Brien says simply). It's a peaceful, orderly changing of the guard, almost presidential in its formal embrace of succession. It's what might have happened when Carson left, had his favored pick to succeed him, David Letterman, been anointed by NBC instead of Leno.

So Leno, on Friday, will treat O'Brien the way Leno doubtlessly wished Carson would have treated him. And while Leno is popping up again in the fall, stealing a little thunder with a new prime-time talk show, Conan launches his version of The Tonight Show on Monday. His attitude, after months of waiting and planning, is an eager-to-burst-from-the-gate "Let's go do this."

O'Brien is 46 years old now, about a decade younger than The Tonight Show itself. He's about to be in a different time slot, on a different show, and both he and the TV universe are markedly different than when he inherited Late Night from David Letterman 16 years ago. Judging from yesterday's comments, though, he fully comprehends the new major factors at play.

One, The Tonight Show is bigger than he is, and deserves a bit of reverence. Two, Conan O'Brien can succeed only by being himself, which means a bit of irreverence. Mix in equal portions, and he and The Tonight Show should do just fine.

When O'Brien was introduced to TV critics 16 years ago at a press conference, his first question was about NBC's Late Night franchise being turned over to a relative unknown. O'Brien pretended to take umbrage at the question, and insisted, "I am a COMPLETE unknown." I liked him at that moment, was one of the few critics supporting him early, and have enjoyed him ever since.

So long as he feels the legacy of The Tonight Show deserves an aura of elegance -- but still can make room for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog -- Conan O'Brien ought to do just fine.

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Fox Gets Buoyant Head Start on Fall Schedule, with "Glee"

May 19, 2009 7:56 AM

More people will be watching tonight's performance final of American Idol than almost any TV offering shown this year. Here's hoping they keep their TV sets tuned to Fox immediately afterward, because tonight's advance taste of Glee, one of its new fall series, isn't just a sneak peek.

It's a sneak peak...

Presenting a preview of a new series after the year's penultimate American Idol is a shrewd move. Adam Lambert and Kris Allen will bring a Super Bowl-sized audience to the network, so why not use that platform the same way, as a high-profile launch pad? Crazy like a Fox, indeed.

Rarely, though, has a Super Bowl ever presented such a compatible program as dessert. American Idol, stripped of all the hype, celebrates the belief in and development of talent, the power of dreams, and the joy of music. Glee, a new series about a high-school glee club "show choir," celebrates exactly the same things -- but with enough irony and wit to avoid being syrupy.

"There is NOTHING ironic about show choir!" exclaims one proud student singer at one point in Glee (9 p.m. ET). She's wrong, of course, and the ironies and twists and comic exaggerations are part of what make this new series work. And it comes from Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy, so the twisted parts aren't surprising... but the heartfelt ones are, and they work just as well.

Matthew Morrison, the Tony-nominated young actor from The Light in the Piazza, stars as Will, a high-school Spanish teacher with a stagnant marriage (his wife is played by Nip/Tuck import Jessalyn Gilsig).

He also has an unexpected dream: When the glee-club teacher is fired, he applies for the job and sets out to shape its misfit volunteers into a star troupe. The other students are scornful, and most fellow teachers are skeptical to hateful, but where there's a Will, there's a way.

Approached too earnestly, this could be another High School Musical -- hugely popular among tweens, but without enough bite to draw and hold their parents. Glee, though, will please both. Like American Idol, it is that rarest of 21st-century TV programs: a show for the entire family.

I love this show for many reasons, and let me count the ways -- with advance warning that I'm saving the best, or at least the most personal, for last.

I love Morrison in the leading role. He's a new face to TV, and it's easy to see why both his students and at least one fellow teacher look at him with goo-goo eyes. He's got an easy comic manner, but his secret weapon is his voice. When, in a pensive moment, he grabs an acoustic guitar and sings "Leaving On a Jet Plane" to an empty theater, it's a vocal moment surpassing most of this year's performances on American Idol.

I love the way the misfit students are introduced, through their audition musical selections. All you need to know about these kids, and their self-images and ambitions, you can glean from a few bars of what they sing to try out for the club. Mercedes (Amber Riley), black and hefty, sings "R-E-S-P-E-C-T." Kurt (Chris Colfer), shy and vulnerable, sings "Mr. Cellophane." Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz), aggressive and punkish, sings "I Kissed a Girl."

And Rachel (Lea Michele), the diva in waiting -- the social outcast who uploads a new video of her singing nightly on her MySpace page, and has definite dreams of becoming a Broadway baby -- sings "On My Own" from Les Miserables.

I love, in fact, the way music is used throughout the show. When Will coerces Finn (Cory Monteith), the high school football star, to join the performing arts group in an attempt to make it a more popular school activity, Rachel latches onto Finn immediately, with a rousing rehearsal of "You're the One That I Want" from Grease.

And while some of the musical choices are best enjoyed as surprises, one is too good not to mention -- and already has been featured in countless promos anyway. When Will takes his ragtag group to a rival school's recital to scope out the competition, what they see is a wildly choreographed, wickedly inappropriate performance of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab." (See photo at top.) Funny as that idea sounds, the music itself sounds even funnier.

Also, I love that Glee connects certain scenes by having a cappella singers provide background music. It's like a glee-club version of the weird musical snippets that help bridge scenes on Seinfeld -- and, like so much about this series, it makes me smile.

Nothing, though, makes me smile quite so much as Jane Lynch, who plays Sue, the hard-driven, tough-talking coach of the high-profile, high-talent cheerleading squad, the Cheery-Os. She runs her squad like a different kind of drill sergeant, and uses her bullhorn to bark out memorable instructions. My favorite: "I want the agony out of your eyes!"

Jane Lynch, veteran of many wonderful comedy films -- Best in Show, The 40 Year Old Virgin, For Your Consideration -- comes on like an unstoppable, always quotable dynamo. From her very first scene, she is to Glee what Alec Baldwin is to 30 Rock: an irresistible comic dynamo.

Finally, a shared factor of Glee. Will, the protagonist of this series, finally explains that he wants to coach performing arts because he took it himself as a student, and "loved what I was doing." Ryan Murphy's creation of, and devotion to, this series is easier to understand once you learn he had a similar experience.

And, as a student at Nova High School's Performing Arts program in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, so did I. I was on stage as a singer only once (maybe that's why I became a critic, because I had the gift to hear instantly how bad I was) -- but as lighting designer, a stage manager, and member of a tightly bonded stage crew, I had some of the best times, and made some of the best friends, of my life.

Many of those friends, I still have. Some of them did go on to star on Broadway, or sing the lead in Disney animated musicals, or star on TV. Others went about their lives, pursuing different careers. Some did both. But all of us, for that brief moment of youthful time, dreamed big, worked hard, and, most important, worked together.

All of that is captured, and reflected, in Glee. Which is why, watching it and even thinking about it, I can't help but smile. Watch it tonight, then watch it come back big in the fall. This is one Super Bowl-type launch that will make it into orbit.

The 2009-10 TV season already has a hit.. and it's Glee.

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Great News for Quality TV: "Dollhouse," Others Get Fall Renewals

May 18, 2009 5:36 AM

The broadcast networks unveil their 2009-10 TV schedules officially this week, but word already is leaking out about some of the survivors and casualties. The most pleasant surprise of all: Fox has renewed Joss Whedon's Dollhouse for a second season.

Adding to the good news: Most of the best broadcast series from the just-ending season, whether freshmen entries or veterans, apparently will live to fight, and delight, another day...

At CBS, the best new show of the season has been The Mentalist, which also happens to be the most popular new show of the season. Its renewal was guaranteed long ago, but it's still nice to know that quality TV can thrive as well as survive.

That isn't always the case, of course. At NBC, Life never got the support it deserved, and that wonderful cop series isn't likely to stay on Life support any longer. On the other hand, NBC found a way to extend its deal with DirecTV, which in turn extends the life of Friday Night Lights -- a drama so good, its survival is a victory for all TV Worth Watching enthusiasts.

That show, like many borderline shows jockeying for survival, ended their seasons with a cliffhanger that tantalized with hints of things to come. On Friday Night Lights, Coach Taylor was forced out of his job teaching the Panthers, and ended the TV year taking wife Tami on a tour of his new football field at a much lower-rent high-school facility. Can't wait to see the new team, the new challenges, and the new dynamics.

Fringe, on Fox, joins The Mentalist and Dollhouse as one of the three best new shows of the season. Fringe, too, is coming back, as is, according to reports, Lie to Me. The only Fox vanishing act is that of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, despite the tie-in possibilities with the imminent theatrical Terminator reboot.

Fringe ended with its season with a dual stunner: Olivia coming face to face with William Bell (played by guest star Leonard Nimoy), who was very much not dead, and Olivia realizing the office in which they were meeting was on one of the top floors of the still-standing World Trade Center. Welcome to an alternate reality -- but how? Where? Why?

Finally, there's Dollhouse, the Fox season finale of which (not counting the missing episode held back from telecast) made my jaw drop. Among the gasp-worthy revelations: Amy Acker's Dr. Saunders, who administers to the blank-slate dolls in the Dollhouse, was shown in flashbacks to be a reprogrammable doll herself: Whiskey, seen in this case adopting the identity of a murderous vixen named Crystal. (Photo at top.)

I desperately wanted to see more. Now, thanks to Fox, I can.

ABC, for its part, is said to be dumping The Unusuals, but bringing back newcomers Better Off Ted and Castle, both of which are fun.

And in more surprising good news, the veteran, never-say-die comedy series Scrubs, which moved from NBC to ABC this season, will be back for one more year -- though in what form, and with which cast members, has yet to be determined.

Start the week with a smile. Scrubs, Dollhouse and Friday Night Lights are coming back, and Fringe and The Mentalist aren't going anywhere at all. I'll miss Life, a lot. And I hope Whedon grabs his old Firefly cast member Summer Glau, now that she's freed from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and slips her into Dollhouse.

But with this high a battling average for quality TV, I have no complaints. Most seasons, a good TV year is defined as much by the good old shows that survive as it is by the good new shows that premiere. Next season looks to be a good year already, for the old returnees -- and this week, as the networks roll out their new schedules, we'll see what brand new quality programs may be joining them.

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The Day After: Already, I'm Lost without "Lost"

May 14, 2009 8:10 AM

I had the same reaction last year. The second ABC's Lost ended, with a jaw-dropping cliffhanger, I did the math, perused the TV horizon, and sighed a sigh of mournful resignation.

Already, I'm lost without Lost.

Face it. By the time this week is over, and certainly after Fox's 24 and American Idol end their annual marathons next week, broadcast TV will begin to smell. The summer will reek of, and from, tacky reality and competition shows. Wednesdays on ABC, instead of Lost, we'll have Wipeout.

Check, please.

And at this point on the calendar, the next fresh episode of Lost is some eight months away. No wonder viewers flee to cable during the summer. It's not only the pursuit of quality. It's self-defense.

But Lost, last night, ended not with a whimper -- but with a very big bang...

(IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LOST SEASON FINALE YET, STOP HERE, AND COME BACK ONCE YOU HAVE.)

I won't go into much detail here, but there are certain things about the season finale that exemplified precisely why I love this show.

It fleshed out some mysteries -- literally, in at least two cases, by introducing us to the complete oceanside statue (previously seen only in ankle-high ruins), and to Jacob, the elusive island master. It also introduced a new adversary, still unidentified, who succeeded in finding a "loophole" aimed at killing Jacob. And what a loophole... the spitting image of Locke.

It provided a long-overdue showdown between Sawyer and Jack, as Jack sought to complete Daniel's mission of detonating a nuclear bomb near the electromagnetic rift in order to prevent "the incident" that brought them all to the island. It also, in a delicious moment of doubt-seeding, had Miles ask a frightening but eminently logical hypothetical: What if Jack's detonation of the bomb WERE the incident?

It built everything up to the climax of the bomb being dropped, then deviously delivered an anti-climax instead. Nothing exploded. Nothing happened. Not until the last minute of the season finale, when we learned that Juliet, who had fallen into the collapsing drill site containing the unexploded bomb, had just enough life left in her to bang the device with a rock and detonate it. The screen filled instantly with white, and the episode, and the season, ended.

It was the Lost version of The Sopranos' cut to black, only this was a cut to white -- the show's White Album, a blank canvas on which next year's final episodes will be painted.

The teaser promo said it all, without saying anything but the barest facts. The show's title. When it will return. The finality, and theme, of its return.

And finally, at the end, one teasing image: the extreme close-up of an eyeball. Presumably, but not necessarily, the eye belongs to Jack.

That's the image with which Lost began five years ago -- a closeup of Jack's eye, widening to show his face, then his body, as he awakened in the jungle, completely disoriented, before stumbling to the beach and seeing the plane wreckage.

At the start of the finale, Jacob and his unnamed nemesis were debating about the nature of the island, and the evil that men do. The unidentified man complained that Jacob kept bringing people to the island, but that it always ended the same way: badly, with violence and death.

"It only ends once," Jacob says with zen-like calmness. "Anything that happens before that is just progress."

Lost, too, will end only once. I can't wait.

And right now, the day after, I'm sad that I have to. Shows this good, this powerful and this original are rare -- and the broadcast networks aren't exactly doing well at replacing them as they leave.

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CW's "Everybody Hates Chris" Deserves Reprieve for its "Sopranos" Cliffhanger

May 13, 2009 9:07 AM

Several shows are "on the bubble" this season, still unsure of their fates as the broadcast networks finalize their fall schedules for next week's upfront presentations to advertisers. All they can do is sit and wait -- and present the best season finales possible, in hopes of earning a reprieve by inspiring confidence that the best may be yet to come.

In that regard, last Friday's season finale of CW's Everybody Hates Chris, which ended with a fabulous nod to the finale of The Sopranos, did everything you could ask of a clever comedy. On CW, or on sister network CBS, Chris should be granted a pardon based on the last few minutes alone...

Young Chris Rock, played by Tyler James Williams, had been threatened with having to repeat the tenth grade. He took the GEDs as a Plan B, and waited at a neighborhood diner for the rest of his family, and his test results, to arrive.

The first one there, he claimed a booth, flipped through the pages of the tabletop jukebox, and settled on Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer." He dropped a quarter into the slot, and the music began playing, offering a prominent soundtrack to the rest of the scene.

It was the same way, of course, that Tony Soprano had begun the infamous final scene of HBO's Sopranos, except that the song, in that case, was Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." But Chris' choice was equally apropos, because his GED results, like the sitcom's chances for renewal, are unknown, scary quantities. Livin' on a prayer, indeed.

Series creators Chris Rock (the real, grown-up one) and Ali LeRoi didn't stop there. Other Sopranos touches abounded. A menacing guy sat at the counter, looking over at their table. Chris' dad Julius (Terry Crews) had trouble parking his newspaper truck outside, just as Meadow had a problem with her parallel parking on The Sopranos.

And the whole family snacked prominently, almost reverently, on fried food, just as on HBO. Finally, Julius joined the rest of the family, slipping into the booth and delivering an envelope with Chris' GED results. He may as well have been delivering The News from the CW executives.

"What's it say?" Chris demands, as his mother opens the envelope and looks at the sheet of paper. Chris looks plaintively across the table, his expression a poignant mixture of hope and fear. And then, and then... the screen cuts to black.

If that ends up being the series finale, it's brilliant. But it's so smart, and so funny, either CW or CBS should reward Everybody Hates Chris by throwing it a lifeline. Next season, young Chris will be at the right age in this loose autobiography to begin his standup career.

And while the Sopranos salute was a fitting, funny comic "ending," having the series end with Rock's Saturday Night Live audition and introduction, where his life really changed, would be the best ending of all.

This series has been so good for so long, it deserves to go out that way, on its own terms.

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"Star Trek" TVWW Contest Prizes Boldly Go To Two Different Winners

May 12, 2009 10:31 AM

Okay, I'm proud of myself on this one. Before throwing it open to guesses from readers, I estimated the opening-weekend box office for the new Star Trek movie at $80 million. The final tally? $79.2 million.

But close, under my own rules, means guessing closest without going over. That means one of you won instead. And, since the final numbers included a Thursday-night showing as well, I figured it would only be fair to subtract that Thursday figure and also present an award to the reader closest to THAT figure.

Hey... when the prizes are this tacky and tiny, I can afford to be generous...

Closest to the overall $79.2 million figure, which includes the Thursday tally, was Danny, who guessed $79 million. GREAT guess!

Excluding the Thursday screenings, the opening-weekend Star Trek total box-office was $75.2 million. Poor Lance R, at $75.8 million, just barely overshot. So the winner, according to my Price Is Right rules, is Neil, who offered up a guess of $71 million, the nearest amount that didn't go over. And he was the last of 41 readers to chime in, so, in his case, it paid to wait.

But it didn't pay much -- a note pad here, a key chain there. I'll contact both of you privately to get your home addresses and which prize you're claiming. In case you both want the same thing, Danny gets first pick. My game. My rules. No fighting. I'll pull this website over if I have to.

Thanks to everyone who participated -- this contest drew the highest entries of any of my other TV-to-movie guess-the-gross games. And for the record, here's how I stand on all the predictions to date. (If I could remove The X-Files from the mix, I'd be impressed with myself.)

MADE-FROM-TV MOVIE
MY PREDICTION / ACTUAL OPENING-WEEKEND GROSS

Sex and the City, 2008
$55 million / $56.8 million

Get Smart, 2008
$40 million / $38.7 million

X-Files: I Want to Believe, 2008
$50 million / $10.2 million (whoops)

Star Trek, 2009
$80 million / $79.2 million

So three out of four, I did great.

As for the fourth -- would you believe? Missed it by THAT much.

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BREAKING NEWS: Was the Fix In On NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice"? Take Your Own Smell Test

May 11, 2009 3:05 PM

I've already written one column today about why I thought Annie Duke, rather than Joan Rivers, should have won the just-concluded edition of NBC's Celebrity Apprentice. But now, the day after that finale, comes some news about Rivers and her next TV project, the timing of which smells awfully fishy...

TV Land announced today that, beginning August 12, Rivers will host a new series for that network called How'd You Get So Rich?, in which she will interview millionaires about their good fortune, and how they got it.

Nothing suspicious there. But read to the bottom of the press release, and it turns out How'd You Get So Rich? is co-produced by Mark Burnett Productions, with Burnett himself listed as one of the show's co-executive producers.

Mark Burnett Productions also happens to be the production company, and Burnett one of the prime creative forces, behind Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice. So, unless this TV Land deal was hammered out of whole cloth in the hours since Rivers won last night at 11 ET, Burnett had the star of his next TV series competing to take the trophy as the winner of his current one.

Earlier today, I referred to Annie Duke's chances in the finale as feeling like a stacked deck. Now I know why. Even if the current Rivers win and future Rivers series are wholly coincidental, they also smell -- reek, in fact -- of implied conflict of interest. Did Rivers, with a victory, increase her value as host of a show on TV Land?

You be the judge.

In this instance, you may be the only judge impartial enough to make the call.

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"Amazing Race," "Celebrity Apprentice" Finales: Very Emotional, For Very Different Reasons

May 11, 2009 10:08 AM

Both NBC's Celebrity Apprentice and CBS's Amazing Race ended their latest cycles yesterday, with endings that were full of emotion, yet not as satisfying as they could or should have been.

In neither show did the best competitors win. Annie Duke was facing a stacked deck in her final challenge against Joan Rivers, while the mother-son team on Race, which had the lead going into the final task, ended up coming in third. Yet by doing so, Margie and her deaf son, Luke, got to end the show, signing and hugging and concluding Race with as much warmth as the end of Apprentice was lacking...

What went wrong with the final lap of Celebrity Apprentice? Several criteria used in previous seasons to judge tasks, and measure levels of success, were ignored this time.

Even Jim Cramer's pre-showdown breakdown pointed out some obvious differences between Annie's overall record and that of Joan. Annie was undefeated as project manager, while Joan batted .500. Annie's team had a higher overall average of successful tasks, and Annie raised more money for charity, by far, than any other contestant. In that category, Joan wasn't even close.

Nor did Annie get to argue why Joan's mistreatment of the designer assigned by Trump to outfit both of their event spaces led to him quitting, and leaving both of them to scramble for a Plan B. Every time Annie brought this up, whether in the taped boardroom session or on Sunday's live finale, Joan interrupted her, shouted her down, and successfully changed the subject.

Why? Because, had Annie been given the chance to make her case successfully, Donald Trump might have had no choice but to agree that Joan's rudeness -- evidenced in nearly every episode -- had penalized not only her, but her competitor, in tasks that were part of the final judging criterion. Pull that in almost any other reality competition show, including The Amazing Race, and you'll be penalized for it.

Finally, one of the ways Trump uses his discretion when deciding whom to hire, in most cases, is to gauge how a project manager works with his or her teammates. On this particular final task, Annie was infinitely more impressive a leader.

Working well with Brande Roderick was a given, but she also got the pouty Tom Green to edit a video effectively, and even reined in the returning loose-cannon Dennis Rodman, who was a big hit, and a useful team member, as a party-event photo opportunity, decked out in drag.

By contrast, Joan had the self-starting Herschel Walker and her own daughter, Melissa, with whom she's worked side by side for 15 years. Clint Black, her other team member, was so disconnected from the others and the task, he spent much of his time making phone calls and answering his personal email.

Despite all this, and despite the glaring fact that Annie raised several times more money at her silent auction than did Joan, the latter was declared the victor. It seemed, and felt, pre-ordained, all rational evidence to the contrary.

Poker players know better than anyone when the card count isn't in their favor -- but even though Annie couldn't surmount the odds in this case, she came off very well on Celebrity Apprentice. Neither Joan nor Melissa Rivers, despite what they may delude themselves into thinking, can say the same.

Oh, well, at least Cara and Jaime, the Amazing Race bad-behavior equivalent of Joan and Melissa, didn't win on their show last night. The sibling team of Tammy and Victor surged at the end -- and if Margie and Luke couldn't win, I'm glad Tammy and Victor did.

But the final, loving moment belonged to Margie and Luke, and it was wonderful to see.

It was wonderful to hear, too -- though I'm guessing that, if you couldn't hear it, it was the most wonderful and inspirational TV moment of all.

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"Star Trek" TVWW Contest Is Officially Closed -- Winner Announced Tuesday

May 10, 2009 8:57 AM

As of 9 a.m. ET Sunday, May 10, the TV WORTH WATCHING Star Trek guess-the-grosses contest is closed. Thanks for playing -- and I hope, at least, you walk away with a copy of the home game.

The final opening-weekend tally, and thus the winner, will be announced Tuesday. Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who commented. Your entries made for a VERY entertaining read. (Some, in fact, were pure poetry. As new contributor Tom Brinkmoeller emailed me, "You have a very interested and loyal following. Congratulations."

For now, Happy Mother's Day. Even if you're not a mother, you came from one.

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TV WORTH WATCHING Contest: On Opening Weekend, How High Will "Star Trek" Boldly Go?

May 8, 2009 9:09 AM

Okay, gang. We've done this before here at TV WORTH WATCHING -- predicted the opening-weekend box-office gross of a movie based on a TV show, and asked readers to do the same. This weekend's subject: the new Star Trek film.

The difference is, if I get close (as, ahem, I did, with both Get Smart and Sex and the City), I get only the satisfaction of guessing correctly. If you win, you get your choice of a few selected pieces of TV stuff that's piling up on my office floor.

Read on to get the rules, and register your prediction...

The new Star Trek film, with J.J. Abrams at the helm, I'm guessing will do very, very well. I'll start the predicting at a cool $80 million.

With Imax screens in play and so many franchise reboots doing well lately, my bet is that it will attract lots of fans, young and old, from the start. So that guess -- $80 million -- is taken.

Now, what's YOUR guess?

Here are the rules, skimpy as they are:

1) Predictions must be received by 9 a.m. ET Sunday, May 10.

2) In case of identical predictions, the one posted earlier wins. So it pays to peruse all previous guesses before making your own.

3) In true The Price Is Right fashion, the winner of the contest is the person who gets nearest to the actual tally without going over.

4) The amount used for the opening-weekend tally will be the adjusted total, announced Tuesday morning. The winner will be announced on this site then, or shortly thereafter.

5) One guess per reader. This is an honor-system sandbox in which we're playing, and the bad karma of cheating isn't worth the tacky prizes I'm offering.

Which reminds me. The prizes.

The winner will be able to select his or her choice from the following fun TV freebies:

1) A tiny Fringe note pad, with a 3-D image-shifting cover.

2) A Blue's Clues 10th anniversary note pad, shaped like a sparkly gold chair.

3) An orange headband, with purple writing, saying So You Think You Can Dance.

4) A Bart Simpson zombie keychain from The Simpsons.

Clearly, this is just for fun. So take your best shot, and add a sentence explaining your logic -- if there is any. Good luck.

Live long -- even if, in this contest, you don't prosper.

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STUDENT BLOG #2: A Younger Perspective on Fox's Endangered "Dollhouse"

May 7, 2009 9:21 AM

Bianculli here: In addition to presenting the viewpoints of veteran TV reporter-critic professionals analyzing television on this site, I want, on occasion, to present the other end of the spectrum, and hear what young, opinionated "amateurs" have to say. So today, I asked one of my TV History students, Rich Greenhalgh, to present his thoughts on a show we both like: Fox's Dollhouse (Friday at 9 p.m. ET), about a secret organization that offers the services of humans imprinted with any desired personality, memory and skill set. Rich, in his first writing effort here, has noticed things more in tune with his generation -- including the way a videogame-playing character holds her controller.

Read on for his full commentary, and to give him feedback.

Strength in Numbers: More Dolls Are Better Than One

By Rich Greenhalgh

The main reason to watch Fox's Dollhouse (Friday at 8 p.m. ET), and pray for its second season, is because the ensemble cast has really flourished, despite this being billed as an Eliza Dushku star vehicle. If the show get cancelled, I will blame Dushku and Whedon.

Personally, I was anxious to see if Whedon had learned the lesson of not having his personal 'pets' hijack the entire story line (anyone who hated season six or seven of Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer knows what I mean). Sorry, but it's obvious Eliza can not carry this series the same way Jennifer Garner did with Alias, or Kristen Bell did with Veronica Mars.

Dushku has three speeds: "vengeful bitch," "scared victim," and "cocky brat." She never really closes the deal -- it always looks like Dushku to me. She's easy to look at, and fun in an ensemble, but she's not the reason I would watch Dollhouse.

The supporting cast is what saves this show, and keeps me tuned in every week. I didn't like all of them at first, but by the fifth episode, you start to see the ensemble on an equal footing with Dushku's character doll character of Echo.

The character that really piggybacks Echo is the doll character named Sierra, played freshly each episode by Dichen Lachman (whose picture is shown above, and whose heritage, Australian and Tibetan, is quite unusual for TV). Graceful and attractive, she surprises me with each transformation. In one episode, Lachman's Sierra was even imprinted with the same personality and skills as Dushku's imprinted character (a sassy safecracker named "Taffy") after Echo's imprint malfunctions.

Sierra, in this safecracking "role," had the same dialogue, mannerisms, and personality as Dushku's Echo, but sold it 100 times better. In other episodes, Lachman's Sierra also has been an Alias-style spy, a virus expert -- and, in one of the most recent episodes, was imprinted to be the ultimate 'female gaming nerd' as a temporary playmate for the genius technician Topher (Fran Kranz), who lords over 'The Chair,' where the dolls' memories are downloaded and erased).

In this incarnation, Sierra's speech, swagger and posture were all authentic to an elite gaming nerd (or, in Japan, otaku gamer), even down to how she held a game controller. Leonard and Sheldon from CBS's The Big Bang Theory would be trounced by this particular Sierra in any nerd-on-nerd competition. The alter egos Sierra inhabits are so persuasive, Lachman clearly is the breakout discovery of this show.

There are a number of dolls in Dollhouse, but so far only one major male character has been developed: Victor, played by Enver Gjokaj. He's another pleasant surprise. At first, I thought he was a creepy Russian informant, but in a few episodes, it was revealed he was a doll. I had been so sold on his Russian character, that particular twist never occurred to me.

That's an example of the type of trick Joss Whedon is playing with this show. The layers unpeel slowly. You think it's one thing, then the show shifts or reboots, and you find out even more, and have to rethink everything. Another plus: the humor and satire are still there, Whedon-style -- as when top technician Topher tries to explain his computer or sci-fi references to Adelle (Olivia Williams), the overtly stuffy supervising director of the Dollhouse. It's awkward comedy gold.

Ultimately, I think this series deserves a second look and a second season, for all the potential shown by its cast and premise. has going for it. However, I will admit I originally wanted it to fail (gasp!). Why? Because of the slow way the series revealed itself. It wasn't until the seventh episode that Whedon gave the other characters more screen time -- and only then did I become excited about the show's direction and possibilities.

Joss Whedon has skills, and he's a master of wit, dark humor and satirical speech, but sometimes I worry that he makes stories for himself and his select friends, or goes into areas that may alienate the core audience that made him a success early on with Buffy.

A second season of Dollhouse really could explode into a fascinating new cult-TV classic gem, as did the second season of Whedon's Angel. Whedon could do it with Dollhouse if he makes it more ensemble-based in his storytelling, and takes the focus off Eliza Dushku's character of Echo. Ensembles work just fine on Fringe, Heroes, Lost and Chuck.

All I can say, and pray, is that if Dollhouse gets wiped in 'The Chair' and sent to Fox's attic (where broken Dolls end up), they save Dichen Lachman and put her on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, because that girl can do anything. Besides, Dollhouse already has its own in-house robot... in Echo.

--

Rich Greenhalgh is a student at Rowan University in New Jersey. He claims to have seen every episode of every TV series Joss Whedon has produced, and even to have read Whedon's comic-book series continuations and adaptations.

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NBC Unveils Clips of Several New 2009-10 Fall Series -- "Parenthood" Makes Best First Impression

May 4, 2009 1:02 PM

Again revealing some of its cards before its rival networks present new fare at the upcoming upfront presentations, NBC has leaked some of its new fall series clips -- not only to advertisers in New York, but to regular fans, on the Internet.

The upshot: A few of the new scripted shows, at first glance, appear decent, especially the new remake of the 1989 movie Parenthood, already made once as a TV series in 1990. For NBC, this is an improvement.

The bad news, though, is that there appears to be no good news for Life, a show so impressive it should have been renewed despite the ratings. The final fate and placement of other returning shows will be announced May 19 -- but for now, there are plenty of first impressions to go around...

These are only tentative, early impressions, not reviews -- but in the past, that was enough of a taste to single out, say, NBC's 30 Rock as the season's best new offering, and that held up. So under the theory that complex shows may need full-length samplings to make their case, and that networks put their very best foot forward in all clip compilations, here are some very basic assessments of some of NBC's new fare.

Parenthood, from Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, appears to have just the right tone -- even better than the previous series spinoff, which felt more like a filmed sitcom. (Yes, I remember the original and reviewed it, and liked it. I'm old. But to NBC, everything that old is new again... and as blasts from the past go, this beats the hell out of Bionic Woman and Knight Rider.)

The cast, this time, includes Peter Krause, Craig T. Nelson, Maura Tierney, Monica Potter and others -- quite a list -- and the backstage creative team includes two stellar talents, Jason Katims of TV's Friday Night Lights and Thomas Schlamme of The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

The clips work. The show should, too.

Other shows seem more formulaic or familiar. 100 Questions, starring Sophie Winkleman as a young woman who works her way through a memory-triggering questionnaire at an online dating firm, has the same feel as How I Met Your Mother. Mercy is like a Grey's Anatomy from the nurses' point of view, with Michelle Trachtenberg as a wide-eyed newbie. Trauma is, pure and simple, a modern-day Emergency!, but with a lot of ER adrenaline pumped in.

Community, starring Chevy Chase, is about a group of adults who form a study group at a community college. I suspect it's supposed to be funny, but there's no evidence of that from the available clips. And Day One, a serialized doomsday drama that sounds a bit like Jericho, is presented with no clip reel, just production footage. All I can say, for now, is what the "Farm Film Report" guys used to say on SCTV: "It blowed up real good."

To sift through the available evidence yourself -- and I think this is the first time, and the first network, where this has been instantly possible -- go to NBC's web page devoted to upcoming shows, which you can find by clicking HERE.

The network, with his announcement, is totally downplaying its unscripted offerings, and it's probable that, before too long, we're learn why. But with one network letting us have a peek at the fall, there's at least one new scripted series that looks to be worth anticipating.

And these days, that's a very good start.

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Closing In On Smothers Book, Opening Up On Twitter

May 1, 2009 6:00 AM

Wish me luck. This is supposed to be, and had better be, an amazingly productive weekend as I close in on the final chapters of my Smothers Brothers book. I'll still be providing BIANCULLI'S BEST BETS, so keep checking in.

Meanwhile, let me officially invite you to come follow me on Twitter, if you know how to get there and are so inclined. I'm now there under TVWORTHWATCHING -- and promise not to pester you with boring details of my so-called life.

I have no life. Just an overdue book -- and not the library kind.

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