 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
May 2009 Archives
GUEST BLOG #20: Diane Holloway's Teeny-Weeny NBA Lament
May 29, 2009 7:00 AM
Bianculli here: Watching the unbelievably suspenseful competition on live TV last night, with all that talent and tension on display, was a thrill -- and I'm not just talking about ABC's National Spelling Bee. But while I've found that watching LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and the others in this year's NBA playoffs has been a joy, contributing columnist Diane Holloway insists it's also been "a challenge." Read on to discover why...
Who ARE those NBA Munchkins?
By Diane Holloway
Watching the NBA conference finals games this year has been a challenge.
First, you have to find them. ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and TNT have all carried games of the Eastern and Western Conferences. The sports-on-TV section in the newspaper has become my best friend.
Then, if the game happens to be in the Nuggets' home stadium in Denver, you've got to squint to see the action. That's because the cameras are mostly floating somewhere in the tip-top of the arena, shrinking the towering basketball stars to the size of Munchkins. Pretty much the only easy-to-see activity from Denver has been slow-motion replays or boring free-throws. The rest is full-court, mile-away shots of those Munchkins.
All of which got me thinking: Some sports are spectacular on TV, others not so much. Is it the number of players, the speed of the action, or maybe even the size of the ball that makes one sport TV gold and the other more like rusty tin?
In the course of my life, I've probably watched more sports than prime-time entertainment. I'm a sports junkie. It's a joy and a sickness. When the Olympics are on, I watch everything from downhill skiing and pole-vaulting to curling and ribbon gymnastics. Networks that spend millions and millions of dollars to broadcast the Olympics generally know how to make any sport look spectacular. Proof? Even marathons can be exciting.
So what's the deal with the iffy prospect of some "regular sports"? Commentary can have a huge impact (Charles Barkley has simply ruined NBA half-time shows for me), but since that varies so wildly, we'll skip the talking heads here and concentrate on technical elements.
Pro basketball has only five players per team (who are, as previously mentioned, large and often spectacularly tattooed) and an enormous ball. So the problem with coverage must have to do with camera location and the speed of the game. I noticed a big difference watching the games in Orlando, where the action was more up-close and personal, and Denver, with its frustrating vision of ants on the court. But even in Orlando, it's sometimes difficult to pick out specific players.
Baseball and football have bigger fields and more players per team (nine for baseball, 11 for football), yet TV manages to make those competitions more intimate -- and thus more exciting. We can see clearly the pitcher throw and the batter swing. We can see a quarterback zing the ball into the hands of a receiver, and we can see (and often hear) that receiver get thwacked by defenders.
Some sports, of course, seem custom-made for TV. Tennis and golf, for example, not only tell the story of a sports match but also spend a leisurely amount of time telling the individual stories of the athletes. I've been watching early rounds of the French Open, and I can already tell apart all the Czech and Russian female players. I can't necessarily pronounce their names, but I know a good deal about each of them.
Yes, I know it's considered deeply nerdy to watch golf on TV, but really, I only watch tournaments with Tiger Woods. (It's a Tiger thing, not a golf thing.) Although I do love the beautiful music and the serene green setting . . . Is there anything more gorgeous in all of sports than the opening shots of The Masters?
Swimming, diving, gymnastics, ski jumping and figure skating -- all make for beautiful TV watching. 
Breathtaking technology advances have been key, from underwater cameras to "super slo-mo." Viewers are engulfed in those sports.
I'm not giving up on the NBA finals, but I sure wish we could see round-ball action on TV with the same precision and intimacy as other sports. When you can't pick out someone as big and obvious as LeBron James in a fast break, there's something terribly wrong.
[So you don't have to befriend your local TV listings right away, the weekend's scheduled games are as follows: Game 6 of the Lakers-Nuggets contest, 9 p.m. ET Friday on ESPN; Game 6 of Magic-Cavaliers, Saturday at 8:30 p.m. on TNT; and, if necessary, Game 7 of Nuggets-Lakers at 8:30 p.m. on ABC.--David B.]
------
Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout and early retirement. Retirement? More like between jobs. She's still sniffing out possibilities and sifting through freelance opportunities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.
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.
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.
GUEST BLOG #19: Tom Brinkmoeller Ends TVWW Contest, Takes a Powder
May 26, 2009 6:00 AM
Bianculli here: Memorial Day weekend is over, and so is Tom Brinkmoeller's TV WORTH WATCHING contest. He'll take over from here, to explain and award the winner...
The Envelope, Please
By Tom Brinkmoeller
"They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder."
That's how Cary Elwes' Westley, in The Princess Bride, explained how he outwitted Wallace Shawn's Vizzini in the showdown over the poisoned cup.
Perhaps the same thing applies to many TVWW viewers, who have endured enough TV that is not worth watching that the bad stuff no longer affects them. That could explain why the entries for last week's grouse-along about television irritants numbered many less than those in the month's earlier Star Trek box-office poll.
But that doesn't mean there was nothing of merit entered. Eileen's complaint about how the Viva Viagra commercial must haunt the ghost of Elvis probably would have won in a much larger field.
And Chris Collins, another entrant, complained about hollow news anchors -- and, in a later e-mail, told how he wrote a song called "Katie Couric Used to be a Journalist" to try to persuade his mother away from watching Today. Had he only shared the lyrics, it would have been a photo finish.
Congratulations, Eileen. And unless it's a trade secret, would one of you non-contestants please reveal to me how you built up that wondrous immunity.
---------
I, like Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardner character in the film Being There, unapologetically "like to watch." My almost-a-geezer status gives me more time than ever to watch the lesser-hyped areas of television, where I often find some wonderful gems. Sharing those finds is even more fun than watching.
GUEST BLOG #18: Tom Brinkmoeller Launches a TV WORTH WATCHING Contest Of His Own
May 22, 2009 7:20 AM
Bianculli here: Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller does two things in his latest column. One, he starts out by referring to my Extras, the in-jokes I collect that are hidden in TV shows -- which I mention only because, next week, I'm devoting a column to my favorite Extra in years (one which, so far, seems to have gone unnoticed).
Two, Tom asks for reader feedback by bribing you with the lure of a gift. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is it's a much better bribe than when I do it. How dare he offer up an out-of-print Beatles book, and act like it's no big deal? And all under the guise of presenting and gathering TV gripes.
But go ahead, read ahead, and play along. If I complain, it'll just sound like... sour gripes.
Second (In As Many Weeks) TV WORTH WATCHING Invitational
By Tom Brinkmoeller
Many years ago, I learned many of the people who savor the Bianculli approach to television are active participants in what they read. David is a collector of what he calls "Extras" -- inside references hidden within a television show. (The final count is still out on whether he likes Extras more than he likes puns.)
And for years, his readers have happily collected and reported the obvious and the obscure Extras to him -- e.g., when Neil Patrick Harris' Barney character in How I Met Your Mother complained in a recent episode about the poor quality of today's child actors. (Old Doog yearns new slicks.) The Extras continue, by the way, on this very website, and you can find them by clicking HERE.
The continued reader loyalty showed up mightily last week when the owner of this space invited readers to guess the weekend take for Star Trek. Forty-one responses later, those of us who enjoy reading what all of you write had a better analysis of the film's chances than we would have, had we mainlined the Hollywood Reporter into our veins.
Riding that wave of involvement, and acknowledging that so much of TV WORTH WATCHING celebrates what's good about television, I'm inviting all of you to a grouse-along. TV, like a cheap wool suit, can irritate you with every move. Creative complaining about the irritant factor can be a powerful salve. You have shown yourselves to be a very thoughtful, very creative group. So how about putting on your Andy Rooney hats and scratching the medium back? I offer some examples:
If Geico really does offer the lowest car insurance price, how much lower would that cost be if the company didn't spend so much on commercial time?
Why would anyone want to watch another TV series that features an obnoxious cook? On-air promos for TLC's Cake Boss has the starring chef telling staff the orders come from God's lips to his ears. Another shows him pouring a large amount of flour from the top of a building onto an employee. Does a 40-watt IQ and high propensity to abuse your employees equal a killer TV formula? Makes you wonder if offers of a series haven't gone out to Osama bin Laden.
A yogurt brand brags about its "bifidus regularis" ingredient. Do you also think you first saw that phrase when it was supered onto the screen of a Road Runner cartoon as the scientific name for a coyote?
Why do advertisers think an English accent will make American television watchers all the more eager to buy an overpriced broom or a device that scrapes dead skin off of feet? If it works, does this explain the Simon Cowell phenomenon?
Has anyone else sworn never to buy an Oreo Minicakester because of the way women are portrayed as mindless, screaming sweets predators in the product's commercials?
Does Billy Mays scream all his conversations? If so, do you think his kids let him wish them goodnight? Is the most-mellow-voiced Empire Today announcer still working his way out a '60s lid of unbelievable grass? (Don't buy the hemp carpeting, just in case.)
Now it's your turn. Last time, Bianculli offered a prize to the person who came closest to the box-office take. I have a prize to offer, too: A review copy of the 1984 (paperback) The Long and Winding Road--A History of the Beatles on Record (it still has the publisher's press release tucked inside). A semi-worthless prize, to be sure, but I said goodbye to all my shlock from the networks about three moves ago.
Like the examples, keep your offerings as concise as possible. Judging will be totally subjective, and by me, and extra points may be awarded for creative incorporation of puns into the grouse. Or may not.
And one last thought: Since so many weight-loss commercials superimpose the disclaimer "Results not typical" over a tiny part of the screen, does your mind do evil things to you when you imagine what "typical" is?
---------
I, like Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardner character in the film Being There, unapologetically "like to watch." My almost-a-geezer status gives me more time than ever to watch the lesser-hyped areas of television, where I often find some wonderful gems. Sharing those finds is even more fun than watching.
GUEST BLOG #17: Diane Holloway Observes Season Cliffhangers and Asks: Who Cares?
May 20, 2009 10:52 AM
Bianculli here: TV has served up some strong season-ending finales this month -- Lost, 24, Grey's Anatomy, Fringe, Friday Night Lights, Dollhouse, Bones and House, just to name a few. It's become an annual TV tradition, but TV WORTH WATCHING contributor Diane Holloway asks if it's a tradition whose time has passed.
"I wonder," she writes, "just how effective cliffhanger episodes have become now that audiences are splintered, fewers episodes air, and the time between seasons pretty much erases our memory of what came in May." Click to read her full column, and to answer her query at the end...
--
Who Cares About TV Cliffhangers? No, Really, I'm Asking: Who Cares?
By Diane Holloway
Suspense is a beautiful thing, isn't it? Don't we all love perching on the edge of our sofas and wondering what the heck is coming next?
I realized about halfway through this week's 24 season-ender that I had dug my fingernails into our prized leather sofa. The dog actually growled at me once, because I think I dug into him briefly, too.
But I wonder just how effective cliffhanger episodes have become now that audiences are splintered, fewers episodes air, and the time between seasons pretty much erases our memory of what came in May.
This is not to say some of these recent episodes haven't been terrific. They have. I just question their effectiveness in maintaining a heightened state of anticipation from May until September -- or in some cases October, or even January of the following year.
People who are devoted fans of Grey's Anatomy likely would be planning their fall premiere parties even if we hadn't been left with the sad prospect of either Izzie or George dying.
But I admit this was a particularly juicy twist on the long-standing rumor that Izzie would turn toes up in the finale, because Katherine Heigl has a burgeoning movie career and wanted to leave the show.
Forgotten or overlooked were the quieter rumblings that T.R. Knight longed to return to Broadway, hence the shock of George turning out to be the mangled John Doe run over by a bus.
And the "afterlife" teaser, in which Izzie and George encountered each other at the elevator: Izzie in her prom dress from before, George in his military uniform from... Later? Never?
Will we wonder all summer who lives and who dies on Grey's? Doubtful. Word likely will leak out about contract negotiations, as in who signed on and who didn't. But even if the secret remains a secret, what then?
The cliffhanger just doesn't stir up the same passion as it did when Dallas whipped up a worldwide frenzy with the "Who shot J.R.?" episode. We have more choices now, and summer is no longer the TV wasteland it once was.
Cable has given us shows to watch during the long, hot months, and even broadcast TV serves fresh fare, at least to those who enjoy watching women beg for love (The Bachelorette and The Bachelor) or unfortunate folks flopping off big red balls (Wipeout).
Nobody is going to talk about a cliffhanger all summer. It's just not going to happen. So maybe it would be better to stir up suspense and provide a satisfying conclusion in the same fabulous season-ending episode.
Is Eric dead on CSI: Miami? Probably not, so it would have been more entertaining to leave him bleeding and yelling at Callie for shooting him.
Do you really care whether Mike married Katherine or Susan on Desperate Housewives? Nah, but ending the season with a big silly wedding could have been tons of fun.
Cliffhangers may be a dying tradition, but apparently they aren't dead yet. Some show creators are still trying to squeeze extra ratings out of them. What do you think? Are you desperate to find out who tied the knot on Desperate Housewives? Have you started your office pool on the Izzie-or-George mystery?
Whatever your opinions, we promise to reveal them before September.
--
Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout and early retirement. Retirement? More like between jobs. She's still sniffing out possibilities and sifting through freelance opportunities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.
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.
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.
GUEST BLOG #16: Diane Holloway Salutes Michael J. Fox's Fierce, Fiery Stint on FX's "Rescue Me"
May 14, 2009 10:24 PM
Bianculli here: Michael J. Fox just completed a fabulous guest stint on FX's Rescue Me. New TVWW contributor (but veteran TV critic) Diane Holloway loved what she saw -- and wants more. Here's a taste of her reaction:
"It has been the most unsympathetic portrayal of a handicapped person I've ever seen. And coming from the boyish-looking Fox, whose incredible spirit in his battle with Parkinson's has endeared him to millions, it's been breathtaking."
For her full column, read on.
--
Acting Crazy Like a Fox -- Brilliantly
By Diane Holloway
How do you turn a lovable actor best-known for playing lovable, squeaky-clean preppies into a thoroughly unlikable wretch?
The answer lies somewhere between the remarkable talent of Michael J. Fox and the brilliant writers of FX's Rescue Me. If you've been watching the fifth season of Denis Leary's scorching fireman drama, you know what I'm talking about.
Fox's Emmy-worthy performance has been bold and stunning. It has also been, at times, hilarious and downright ugly.
Fox recently wrapped up a scheduled five-episode run as Dwight, the handicapped, alcoholic and drug-addicted boyfriend of Tommy's ex-wife Janet. But since the series is scheduled to run through most of the summer, there's a chance he could return. Fingers crossed.
In the role of Tommy's latest annoyance, Fox used his own twitches and slurs, brought on by his long bout with Parkinson's disease, to devastating effect.
When Tommy first discovered Janet had a new live-in guy, he didn't know the beer-swilling Dwight was wheelchair-bound, and challenged him to a fight. Dwight eagerly accepted, swinging his fist from the couch while Janet brought him his wheelchair. A shocked Tommy tried to back off when he saw the chair, but Dwight was having none of it.
The best Bad Dwight scene of the season found Tommy on a reluctant outing with his ex's aggressively grumpy lover. Popping pills and downing entire cans of beer in a single gulp, Dwight drove his car through the streets of New York like a certifiable madman, spewing foul language and bragging about the non-handicapped status of his wildly active (yet unpredictable) sex life with Janet.
It has been the most unsympathetic portrayal of a handicapped person I've ever seen. And coming from the boyish-looking Fox, whose incredible spirit in his battle with Parkinson's has endeared him to millions, it's been breathtaking.
Most of us know Fox, now 47, from his youthful days on TV's Family Ties (1982-89) and Spin City (1996-2001). Or maybe from his subsequent movies, such as Back to the Future. Or his many public appearances on behalf of charities related to Parkinson's. He was diagnosed in 1991, at the ridiculously young age of 30, but kept his condition secret for seven years.
Only days after the final (only for now, we hope) Dwight episode, Fox's inspirational ABC special Adventures of an Incredible Optimist aired, no doubt only deepening viewers' love affair with the actor. The special was prompted by the release of Fox's second memoir, Always Looking Up, which follows an earlier memoir, Lucky Man. The guy is indomitable.
So here is real-life Fox, lighting up our lives with genuine humor and bravery, relishing the love of his wife, Tracy Pollan, and their children, as he battles this debilitating disease. At the same time, here is actor Fox, yelling nasty stuff at the famously nasty Leary in a near-epic showdown of crude characters. Dwight made Tommy look almost gentle!
Good actors are supposed to be able to twist expectations and surprise the audience. Maybe we've always underestimated Fox's talent. We've definitely underestimated his bravery.
FX has already renewed Rescue Me for a sixth season. Let's hope we see Dwight again this season, and that he becomes a recurring character.
It's too good to end now.
--
Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout and early retirement. Retirement? More like between jobs. She's still sniffing out possibilities and sifting through freelance opportunities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
"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.
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.
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.
GUEST BLOG #15: Tom Brinkmoeller On A First-Class TV Travel Series
May 5, 2009 7:21 PM
Bianculli here: Today's guest column, the latest from Tom Brinkmoeller, finds its inspiration from a travel series -- one that inspired Tom to interview the producer about why public television's Rick Steves' Europe seemed so different from most other TV travel shows.
Read on to travel to Tom's full column...
Ultimate Journeymen Make Up 'Team Steves'
By Tom Brinkmoeller
Disclaimer: Even though this is the second time I recently have used this space to praise public television, you will not be hit up for a pledge or made to endure a showing of a Wayne Dyer or Suze Orman special. It is not my intention to put your wallet, your patience or your intelligence in jeopardy. -- T.B.
--
Travel shows, or "travelogues," as they used to call them in Jimmy Durante's day, are just about as old as photography itself. Whether professionally produced or a friend's home movies, people love to show off pictures of where they've been. The challenge to giving this work-horse genre some pedigree is to make the viewing as compelling as the photographer's perceived experience.
Nobody does this better than public television's Rick Steves, whose series have made world travel unintimidating and inviting, educational and entertaining -- and a bit addictive to wannabe travelers. As a viewer, one can guess at the reasons Rick Steves' Europe, which is seen in 95 percent of US markets, ranks so high in a relatively crowded category. For more accuracy, it's nice to be able to ask an insider.
Producer Simon Griffith has been in on the making of more than 80 episodes over 10 seasons with Steves, and his insight takes away the guesswork. The guesses were pretty accurate: Each half hour is the result of extensive preparation, a well-crafted script, high production values, teamwork among talented people and more hard work than any project connected with the word "vacation" ought to contain.
All that, and an ethics policy that doesn't make the kind of "pay for play" deals that help many travel programs reduce costs by trading exposure in the programs for accommodations, travel, meals and favors. After a decade of filming, the team behind this series continues to avoid production shortcuts and formulas. Each episode connects and flows in a way most viewers feel they have a close-to-being-there impression of the destination visited.
Griffith shared the details of how they reach these goals. Each episode takes six "usually really long" days of morning-into-the-night shooting, says Griffith, part of the trio that puts the shows together. (He's the man with the beard often seen sharing a restaurant table with Steves; videographer Karel Bauer, who shoots those meal scenes, sits down at the third place setting, no doubt to cold food, once the scene is finished.)
Twice a year, the team makes a three-week production trip. These trips wear out even the show's host, whom Griffith calls "a genuine Viking" because of Steves' nonstop work ethic. One almost can get empathy fatigue hearing about the double-time marches Steves' small production crew makes during its European trips. Every day starts with an early working breakfast, in which the three review the script for the day and plan the next 12 or so hours of shots.
"We make sure we don't just shoot the nouns," Griffith says, which would result in "a video slide show" that emphasized little more than pointing a camera at each location. Steves' script is supplemented during a "meeting of the minds" that adds interlocking sequences of visuals giving the production a rich and polished look unique to travel shows.
This, by nature, eats up a lot of videotape -- "about 12 40-minute tapes per show," Griffith says. "We certainly have to do things again and again" until all the required elements fall into place.
"Occasionally, we'll have to do 20 to 25 takes before we get what we want," he says. "We can easily take 15 or 20 minutes to shoot a 20-second transition scene."
This can get tricky if the scene to be reshot is one in which Steves speaks to the camera as he drives. To make sure they get the proper lighting and background, the crew repeatedly will travel the same stretch of the road, "sometimes for a half hour or more," until the scene is perfect. Griffith says other drivers on that road don't always share the crew's enthusiasm for perfection.
Sometimes, when shooting in a very controlled venue, such as the Louvre or Prado museums, they are given limited access outside of the museum's normal hours. To add to the feel of what it is like during a normal visit, the crew will recruit guides, security guards and cleaners from their normal duties to stand in as tourists.
When daylight ends, often scenes will be shot of restaurant experiences, performances or downtown areas that better illustrate the script. Then, finally, the shooting ends.
While Griffith and Bauer often take that as a chance to unwind over a leisurely meal or drink in a relaxed cafe, Steves will go back to his room to work on his blog, communicate with his office, plan his weekly radio show or fine tune the next day's script.
Steves' attitude about serving the people who turn to him for travel advice is characterized by a sentence in his recent blog entry: "You can read a book without flying to Rome. A walking tour (which costs triple the price of that book) should connect you vividly to the place."
"Rick is one of the hardest working persons I've ever met," says Griffith.
Once they have returned home, three to four weeks are spent editing editing each episode into finished form. That's 30 weeks of work to produce each six-episode season. (Think NBC spends five to six weeks on each episode of Howie Do It?)
Steves' enthusiasm for perfection seems to pay off. His Edmonds, WA, company, Europe through the Back Door, includes a full-service travel company, tour-book and video sales, Steves' weekly radio show, a very popular travel blog, as well as the TV series. If his blog reader reactions and the questions from radio callers are a barometer, Steves' enthusiasm for travel has to be contagious, and is reflected in sales figures.
But even if one may never be able to take actual vacations in Europe, each half hour's work by these perfectionist journeymen has to be the next-best thing. To find where and when Rick Steves' Europe is broadcast in your area, click HERE.
---------
I, like Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardner character in the film Being There, unapologetically "like to watch." My almost-a-geezer status gives me more time than ever to watch the lesser-hyped areas of television, where I often find some wonderful gems. Sharing those finds is even more fun than watching.
GUEST BLOG #14: Diane Holloway on Leno at 10, Now That It's "Officially" Official
May 5, 2009 9:46 AM
Bianculli here: With NBC unveiling much of its fall 2009-10 prime-time lineup yesterday, our newest veteran TV columnist, Diane Holloway, confronts the reality of Jay Leno's new talk show occupying the 10 p.m. ET slot each weekday -- and likes it even less than when it was first announced.
"Seeing Leno stretched across the lineup, five days in a row," she writes, "just seems wrong."
Read on for her full story, and to weigh in yourself on whether you expect, come fall, to vote Leno, or Leno no!...
Come Fall, Will You Vote Leno, Or Leno No?
By Diane Holloway
Jay Leno ends his reign on The Tonight Show on May 29, but come September we'll be able to see more of the chin-jutting comedian than many of us will want to stomach.
NBC, as you may have heard on this site or elsewhere months ago, is turning over its last hour of prime time (10 p.m. ET) every single weekday to Leno. The late-night talk show becomes a nightly prime-time talk show, complete with silly sketches and a slew of Hollywood celebrities.
The reality of this Leno overkill sinks in now that NBC released its new fall schedule yesterday. Seeing Leno stretched across the lineup, five days in a row, just seems wrong. His jokes aren't funny; his interviews are fawning.
Conan O'Brien, who assumes The Tonight Show in June, hasn't complained publicly about this deal, but it's highly likely that he isn't thrilled. If Leno is booking all the big actors for prime time, what does that leave for O'Brien in late night?
NBC undoubtedly sees the odd programming move as a cost-saving venture. A talk show, even if Leno really is pulling in the $30 million annual salary reported in various publications, is cheap compared with the larger cost of an ensemble drama. Plus, Leno will deliver almost a full year of rerun-free fresh episodes.
The network also believes that the aging baby boomers who have kept Leno afloat all these years are getting too old for late-night TV and will welcome the chance to watch him earlier and then hit the sack.
Nevertheless, doesn't this move just scream "desperation" to you? It does to me. NBC has been dubbed creatively bankrupt before, and ditching the whole concept of scripted drama in the late prime, when more viewers are available than the previous two hours, seconds that emotion.
What do you think? Will you watch the new prime-time Leno?
--
Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout and early retirement. Retirement? More like between jobs. She's still sniffing out possibilities and sifting through freelance opportunities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.
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.
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.
