August 2009 Archives

Feeling Nostalgic about the Wild, Wild Western

August 28, 2009 8:20 AM

Like a lot of people -- more of them almost every week -- I'm loving my Sunday night dose of HBO's True Blood, one of the most enjoyable thrill rides on TV right now. But unlike most people, I have another Sunday night thrill-ride TV treat: DirecTV 101 Network's weekly rerun of HBO's 2004-06 series Deadwood.

That show, plus recommending and re-watching last week's AMC repeat of 1989's Lonesome Dove CBS miniseries, has me wondering. Will we ever see TV Westerns that good again? For that matter, will we ever see TELEVISION that good again?...

The only thing to mourn about Deadwood is that HBO cut it short at least one year too early. There was so much life left in that series, so many rich and resonant characters, and so much wild and true history from which to drama, that HBO should have persuaded David Milch to stay the course, rather than shift to, sigh, John from Cincinnati.

The 101 Network's weekly cycle of reruns just started season two last week, and featured a bloody fistfight between Ian McShane's town boss Al Swearengen and Timothy Olyphant's newly elected sheriff, Seth Bullock, that was nothing short of epic.

This week (9p ET, with lots of same-week repeats), both men are disfigured by their battle, and the next round is coming up: Seth had left his badge and gun in Swearengen's office, removing them to fight him as a private citizen, and is intent on reclaiming them. Swearengen's cold-blooded lieutenant, Dan, suggests Al gives Bullock a taste of Al's knife blade instead, and the stage is set for another superbly written, astoundingly acted episode.

Deadwood is an exceptionally excellent and entertaining TV series -- and, as a Western, it's equally rare. But this sort of brilliant TV, on cable, is alive and very, very well. Not only with True Blood and AMC's Mad Men right now, but with FX's Rescue Me, and with a new season of Showtime's Dexter right around the corner.

But watching Lonesome Dove again, and seeing what the broadcast networks once aspired to do, that's a different matter altogether. Watching that miniseries, with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as retired Texas Rangers in a country fast losing its open spaces, made me sad not only about the vanishing wilderness, but about broadcast TV's vanishing aspirations.

If CBS, or any other broadcast network, would throw its money and effort into just one Lonesome Dove every few years, it might stave off its own slide into mediocrity and relative irrelevance. Doing something special, something wonderful, is one way to attract an audience -- and, just maybe, steal back some of those Emmys in categories now surrendered almost automatically to cable networks.

Five years later, Deadwood still impresses. Twenty years later, so does Lonesome Dove. How many shows that the broadcast networks are now presenting can hope for the same claim?

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twentysomething years ago, there was "thirtysomething"...

August 25, 2009 7:42 AM

One of the most eagerly anticipated TV-shows-on-DVD releases hits stores today: the first season of thirtysomething, the ABC series that, beginning in 1987, examined yuppie angst. The tangled web of music rights is what has discouraged the series from being packaged until now... but now, as Diane Werts already has alerted us in her blog, Shout! Factory has made it a reality...

It's quite an artifact of Reagan-era television, as reflective, in its way, as NBC's The Cosby Show. Both shows presented people who were more affluent than the norm. Bill Cosby's program, though, was a sitcom populated mostly by blacks. ABC's thirtysomething, conversely, was a drama that, like Seinfeld and Friends after it, was overwhelmingly white.

The first few episodes of season one of thirtysomething are rather clumsy affairs: Everything is overwrought, overwritten and, for the most part, overacted. But starting with episode four -- a double-date dinner gone bad and re-enacted, Rashomon-like, from different perspectives -- this show began finding its footing, as well as its voice. Some scenes still irritated as others amused, but the percentage kept improving.

I'll have a full review of the DVD release later this week on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and you can read Diane's fine Newsday feature on the show and its cast and creators by clicking HERE.

Most important, perhaps, you can buy the set at a discount -- while still providing a small but much-appreciated kickback to TV WORTH WATCHING -- by clicking HERE.

And, coincidentally, guess what it costs to purchase?

thirtysomething dollars.

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Don Hewitt Dies At 86, But His 41-Year Old CBS "60 Minutes" Is Still Ticking

August 20, 2009 7:08 AM

[My "Fresh Air with Terry Gross" tribute to Don Hewitt is broadcast Friday (Aug. 21), and available on the web any time after about 5 p.m. ET that day by clicking HERE. -- David B.]

Compared to CBS producer-director Don Hewitt, who died yesterday at age 86, there aren't many men whose personal experiences and professional accomplishments span so many important events in the history of television. There may not be any -- and that includes Walter Cronkite, whose tenure at CBS Hewitt both preceded and outlasted.

Hewitt's resume, and his value to the maturation of TV news coverage, is, in a word, unparalleled. It is also, in another word, astounding...

60 Minutes, which Hewitt created in 1968, is his most famous TV child, the one that has lived the longest and prospered the most. It has been a Top 10 show in three different decades, and continues to prosper: last week's installment, with an exclusive interview with Michael Vick, was the week's second most popular program.

60 Minutes didn't climb into the season's Top 10 until 1978, after being on the air, in several different time slots, for a decade. It's nestled comfortably, and usually victoriously, in the Sunday 7 p.m. ET slot ever since, delivering some of the best TV journalism of its era... even as the eras changed.

But here's a mind-boggling fact to consider. When 60 Minutes first ended a season in the Top 10, executive producer Don Hewitt already had been at CBS News for 30 years. Thirty. And he would stay for another 25 years, at which point he stepped down as 60 Minutes' producer in 2003.

And before that, his achievements were amazing. When Douglas Edwards and the News became the first CBS evening newscast in 1948, Hewitt was an associate director, and soon was promoted to director and producer. At the first televised political conventions in 1948, Hewitt was at the helm for CBS.

In 1951, when Edward R. Murrow and producer Fred Friendly launched the superb TV newsmagazine See It Now, and Murrow called for an unprecedented split-screen image showing both U.S. coasts at once, Hewitt was the on-camera director at Murrow's side in the CBS control room.

In 1960, Hewitt was the director of the first televised presidential campaign debates, between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. In 1963, he directed CBS's mammoth, wall-to-wall coverage of Kennedy's assassination and funeral.

And so on. Like Forrest Gump, wherever there was a major breaking news event, Don Hewitt was there. He worked with Walter Cronkite as that CBS anchor -- a term coined by Hewitt -- reported most of the major stories of the 1960s. And Hewitt's eventual flagship program, 60 Minutes, made major news of its own, every decade, and continues to do so.

I interviewed Hewitt several times over the years, including for my first book, Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously. In that 1992 book, Hewitt extols the virtues of other TV achievements -- Sesame Street, The Civil War -- and admitted that one of the secrets, and charms, of his own 60 Minutes was its stubborn consistency.

"60 Minutes is one of the few things that looks the same as it did when you were a kid," he told me. The gas stations look different, the supermarkets look different, the cars look different. Everything looks different, except 60 Minutes still looks the way it did when a lot of the viewers sat on their fathers' laps and watched it.

"And over the years people have said to me, 'You know, you ought to change that stopwatch.' I said, 'You've got to be crazy!' I wouldn't change that stopwatch. You know why? That stopwatch is like the squeaky screen door to grandpa's house."

This Sunday, 60 Minutes, fittingly, will devote its hour entirely to Don Hewitt.

And it will begin, just as fittingly, with that same ticking stopwatch...

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Fox "Octomom" Special Is the Runt of the TV Litter

August 19, 2009 9:46 AM

Already this year, the Fox network has presented Osbournes Reloaded, a variety series so bad, and so poorly received, Fox shelved it after a single showing. You'd think that would be a lock for worst TV program of 2009 -- but tonight, Fox presents Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage.

Would that it would remain so...

It's not fair, in most cases, for critics to come to a work of art with predisposed opinions, except about the aggregate quality of the artists participating in the project at hand. But there are times when you can smell the stench before you even open the lid, and -- based on the on-air promos alone -- this is one of those times.

I remember being on the Today show once, debating an executive from E! Entertainment who, at the time, was arguing the "value" of The Anne Nicole Show and complaining that most TV critics had formed a very harsh opinion of it after sampling only the premiere episode. I don't remember what I said in response, but I do remember what I was thinking. It was one of the only times I censored myself on live TV.

"If you hand me an ice cream cone," I was thinking, "and you've filled it with excrement instead of ice cream, I don't need to lick all three scoops." (Thinking back on what I was thinking, since I was talking to myself, I may not have used the word "excrement.")

Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage (this is where I'd normally insert the day and time, but I don't want you, or anyone, to watch it) has that kind of offal flavor.

Here's the scoop: You see footage of Nadya Suleman, the "Octomom," perched on her bed with her many babies, twitching and rolling while she looks at them like they're pieces of an Ikea bookshelf she has no idea how to assemble. You see her driven to her home and confronting absurdly flocking hordes of photographers, and screaming, in a voice raw and grating enough to dive for the volume on your TV set, "What am I, the president? NOOOOO!!!"

NOOOOO, Octomom, you're not.

With your six previous kids -- and who needs Jon & Kate Plus Eight when you have Octomom & Six & Eight More? -- you're closer, in TV terms, to a freak show than to a sweet family drama called Fourteen Is Enough. Add in the recent disclosures about a past as a stripper, and a reported fascination with Angelina Jolie, and you're a cautionary tale.

And if, as many accuse, you're in it for the publicity, watching this TV special would only make us a nation of enablers. Most of the smelliest TV guano this summer has been rejected instantly and resoundingly. It would be nice, though not necessarily expected, if Fox's Octomom TV special suffered the same fate.

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AMC's "Mad Men" Returns with Its Charismatic Cast of Retrosexuals

August 14, 2009 9:05 AM

Season three of AMC's Mad Men begins Sunday at 10 p.m. ET -- and once again, it throws you into a 1960s world that's fascinating for both its retro contrasts to today, and for its unsettling similarities. It's one of the very best shows on television, and returns this weekend without missing a step...

When we left off at the end of last season, Jon Hamm's Don Draper had walked away from Sterling Cooper after the new British owners had designated a rival as president, and Don's wife, Betty (January Jones), told him she was pregnant. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was averted at the last minute, but what about Don's future?

Sunday night, as the third season begins, we don't learn about Don's future until we get a glimpse into his most distant past. We see him heating a small pan of milk on the stove, but the kitchen suddenly gives way to a different place, and to a strange room, with a woman in bed, attended to by a doctor.

What we see next aren't Don's memories -- they can't possibly be -- but are his impressions, based on what he's been told, of the circumstances of his birth, and even the genesis of his name. Only after that prologue do we get our bearings and learn where Mad Men is picking up its narrative in season three.

The good news -- and it's not a spoiler, because it's been out there, and occurs in the opening minutes -- is that Betty is still pregnant (which means series creator Matthew Weiner, who wrote the opener, hasn't leapfrogged over the John F. Kennedy assassination), and that Don is back at work at Sterling Cooper. That's where, with the plots focusing on firings and unsettling changes, the events of Mad Men echo, with uncomfortable resonance, what's happening to most of us today.

I love, but won't describe, what happens Sunday to some of the regular characters, especially Christina Hendricks (above) as Joan, but it's delicious to watch. My full review of Mad Men for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, with a couple of clips from the show, can be heard (after about 5 p.m. ET Friday) by clicking HERE.

For here, for now, put it this way: Mad Men is exactly the kind of show TV WORTH WATCHING was created to champion. And celebrate.

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Solution to Emmy Flap: Make Better Programs, Stupid

August 13, 2009 7:51 AM

So the Emmy folks have backed down, and agreed not to pretape and edit awards presentation in eight of the night's categories. The guilds representing those writers, directors and actors not only raised a stink, but threatened to raise the rates for the rights to show clips from nominated TV shows throughout the September 20 CBS telecast. Good for them -- but there's an easy way for the broadcast networks, which are worried about losing viewers for the annual Emmy telecast, to emerge as ultimate victors.

To paraphrase the reminder posted in the Clinton election campaign war room: It's the programs, stupid. Make better ones...

Of the eight categories the CBS telecast sought to have pre-taped, most were in the movies and miniseries categories, which the broadcast networks long ago have abdicated to cable. Only 10 percent of the 40 nominations went to the four major broadcast networks, and only one of them to CBS, which is televising the contest next month.

But cable is now showing up strongly, in the major categories of drama and comedy series as well. Long ago, cable efforts were deemed largely unworthy of being folded into the Emmys, and presented their own awards, the Cable ACE awards. Now, ironically, cable is seen, grudgingly, as being TOO worthy.

They have larger budgets. Shorter seasonal runs. In many cases, bigger stars. And they can swear, and be violent, and be sexier than the government-overseen broadcast networks. How can CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox hope to compete?

Make better programs, stupid. And, when you make them, support them.

NBC's Life (above) was a great show, but the network had little patience with it. Fox's The Simpsons remains brilliant, and NBC's 30 Rock is a superb comedy, even with its broadcast TV restrictions.

The way out of this, for the broadcast networks, may be to rethink their goals. Present shorter seasons -- 10, 12, 14 episodes a year -- and spend more time and money to make them better. The Holy Grail of 100 episodes of syndication will take longer to attain, but DVD sales will increase if the shows are worth savoring, and owning.

And by the way, broadcasters should get back in the movies and miniseries business. At this point, the networks should be worried about ways to get viewers back to the TV set -- and major stand-alone events are one way to do that, and promote the weekly series at the same time.

When cable grabs more and more of the Emmy glory, the broadcast networks have no one to blame but themselves -- and their hunger for cheap-cost programming over quality television.

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Taking One Final Smothers Day Off -- To Finish Final Proofs!

August 10, 2009 8:52 AM

The corrected proofs are due today for my Smothers Brothers book -- the last phase of production before the book heads to the printer.

So I'm taking the day off from the blog, to finish proofreading the final chapters. First you write the book, then you have to read it...

And then, and only then, OTHER people can read it...

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"Monk" Begins Final Season with a "Brady" Punch

August 6, 2009 8:54 AM

When USA Network premiered Monk in 2002, the program was so unexpectedly delightful, many critics asked what it was doing on basic cable when it was good enough to be on broadcast network TV. Seven years later, as Monk begins its final season, no one asks that question any longer...

From 2002 on, basic cable has given us The Shield, Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck and others on FX; The Closer, Saving Grace and Leverage on TNT; Psych, Burn Notice and others on USA, which branded its roster of original shows with the slogan "Characters Welcome." Tony Shalhoub's portrayal of Adrian Monk, the detective with a tragic past and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, was the network's original Character.

In 2009, as Monk prepares to take his tics and walk into the TV sunset, he still is.

Friday's final season premiere (9p ET, USA) has Adrian obsessing over his favorite childhood show: "The Cooper Clan," an obvious playful variant on The Brady Bunch. One of the series' former child stars, Christine Rapp (played by Elizabeth Perkins from Weeds), has written a tell-all book -- but the morning Monk is first in line for her local book-signing event, she's targeted for murder.

Christine's assistant, played by Rena Sofer, offers the starstruck Monk a job as the star's bodyguard.

"$1,000 a week?" Monk says, repeating and accepting the offer, but with a caveat: "I can't pay it all at once." When he's told they'll pay HIM, it's an even better deal.

The mystery is easy to crack, but the fun, as with the classic Columbo mystery series, is in watching the socially awkward detective rub up against the rich and arrogant, knowing all the while the persistent investigator will win in the end. At first, Monk is enthralled with the now very mature Christine, even though he turns down her offer to watch her change for a photo shoot.

"Shy," she tells her assistant, as Monk demurs with a smile. "I like that in a man."

After she leaves, the assistant mutters to Monk, "She likes ANYTHING in a man."

And once Monk reads the child actress' memoirs, he learns, to his horror, how true that is, as the book provides a list of sexual conquests. Bob Denver, with an asterisk. Cheech. Chong. Cheech AND Chong...

After that, he treats her with more disdain than admiration -- but that, too, is funny. So is a Monk fantasy "flashback," in which he envisions himself as an audience-fave member of The Cooper Clan. It's a hoot -- as is Monk, each week, as it plays out a very successful and impressive run on USA.

And there's that bouncy Randy Newman theme song as a bonus...

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One "Cheers" for the TCA Awards: How and When the Awards Really Began

August 4, 2009 12:06 PM

Last weekend in Pasadena, critics, producers and stars convened to share the love in what was billed, accurately, as the 25th anniversary of the Television Critics Association Awards. The little-known, little-remembered fact, though, is that two years before the first TCA Awards, there was the one and only TCA Award...

The story begins in the late 1970s. I had been a TV critic for two years when I attended my first TV press tour in 1977, and quickly found kindred souls who were determined to push for journalistic integrity and independence at every opportunity. At the time, the networks reimbursed newspapers for press tour expenses, and controlled the planning and scheduling of set visits and press conferences.

As a whole, TV critics were of two minds about this. TV critics, as a whole, are of at least two minds about anything. Some of us in the post-Watergate era were pushing to take charge as much and as quickly as possible: demanding the appearance on press tour of network executives, paying our own way, and making the scheduling of tour events more of a joint effort.

Others in the press corps at that time were happy with the way things were. These included the critic who, infamously, would pack draperies from home and get them dry cleaned by the hotel, just so the network would foot the bill. Imagine a tour that made room, in the same row of press seats, for Woodward and Bernstein and Martin Short's Jiminy Glick.

But the feisty, independent-minded turks -- people like Ron Alredge of the Charlotte Observer, Lee Winfrey of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Barbara Holsopple of the Pittsburgh Press and William Henry III of the Boston Globe -- carried they day. They, like me, were founding members of the Television Critics Association in 1978, and we all became officers or board members.

Those early years, in many ways, were "two steps forward, one step back" affairs, because democracy, in the hands of TCA members, meant so many opinions -- and negative ones as the usual default setting -- that many things done were undone just as quickly.

One thing I remember was getting approval from the officers and board to investigate interest in the creation of an annual TCA book, collecting criticism, essays, TV milestones and other stuff, including an official TCA vote on the year's best TV shows, into a readable yearbook about television. This was way before most books about TV, much less the Internet, and we quickly secured a bid from a publisher.

When we took it back to the membership for approval, though, some members saw too much value in the TCA Awards aspect of the proposal, and wanted to shelve the book and look into creating a TV awards show instead. That led to more disagreement, and another seeming deadlock. No book. No awards show. No awards, period.

So during the summer 1983 portion of the TCA press tour, I asked the officers and board if I could conduct a sort of test-balloon experiment: poll every TCA member in attendance, and compile their collective vote for an official TCA award in a single category: Outstanding New Series. The winner would be announced before the tour was over, and the recipient presented with an official notification.

It sounded like a harmless enough way to test the waters, so the TCA officials said okay, and took it to the membership, who agreed in enough numbers to pass the proposal. That year, it's worth noting, the TCA officials included Ed Bark of the Dallas Morning News (see the previous post for Ed's triumphant return to press tour), our own Diane Holloway (then of the Austin American-Statesman) and, from Maine's Portland Press Herald, the late David Williams, whose little brother Brian is now the anchor of The NBC Nightly News. TCA members on my side, and helping to tally votes, included our own Tom Brinkmoeller.

The winner, I was hoping, would be NBC's St. Elsewhere, but it finished in second place. The winner that year was another freshman NBC show, and another TV masterpiece, from the 1982-83 season, a then-struggling sitcom named Cheers. The TCA presented NBC press representatives (Gene Walsh and Bud Rukeyser, if memory serves) with news of the sitcom's win just prior to an NBC press conference, NBC put out an official press release congratulating Cheers for receiving the first TCA Award, and that was it.

Instantly, TCA members wanted to expand the categories -- but whether to do so on or off TV became an argument that consumed another year of meetings. But two seasons later, in 1984-85, the TCA Awards as we know them were born. Only once, in all the intervening years, were they televised.

Bad idea then. Bad idea now.

But the TCA Awards, I'm proud to say, were and remain a great idea. They started with Cheers... and started with me.

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GUEST BLOGS #38-39: Diane Holloway, Bill Brioux on 2009 TCA Awards

August 3, 2009 7:34 AM

[Bianculli here: The Television Critics Association celebrated the 25th anniversary of its TCA Awards presentation this weekend in Pasadena, and two of our contributing writers were there to file reports. I was there only in spirit, but remain emotionally invested, because I originated and presented the first TCA Awards, back when it was a single TCA Award. I'll tell that story tomorrow. Today, we hear from Diane Holloway and Bill Brioux on such deserving winners as Bryan Cranston, Jim Parsons, Betty White, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men and True Blood...]

TCA Awards Go Out with a "Big Bang"

By Diane Holloway

My, how time flies! The Television Critics Awards celebrated a quarter century of high-fiving quality TV with an appropriately splashy ceremony at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena on Saturday night. Yep, we've been honoring television with our very own glass plaques for 25 years.

Sci Fi Channel [now Syfy] and its Battlestar Galactica picked up the Program of the Year award, and NBC's ER, which just ended an Emmy-laden 15-season run, received the Heritage Award. Noah Wyle was on hand to accept for the medical drama.

But the big winner was The Big Bang Theory, which won for Individual Achievement in Comedy for star Jim Parsons and Outstanding Achievement in Comedy for the show itself.

Parsons stammered through his acceptance speech, pointing out that he "depends totally on writers," winding up by sucking up to critics in his very own words: "I liked you very much before this, but I feel like I owe you dinner now."

Big Bang creator/producer Chuck Lorre pronounced his show's win "a freakin' miracle" and said he wanted to "speak from the heart, but my heart was killed 20 years ago on Roseanne."

Bryan Cranston, who pulls out all the stops as the frantic chemistry-teacher-turned-drug dealer on Breaking Bad, won for Individual Achievement in Drama.

"I wish our company of actors could be here with me tonight, but you didn't award this to them," Cranston cracked before launching into the longest and funniest acceptance speech of the night. "I want to be sincere about this... but I just can't," he said.

The stylish 1960s saga Mad Men won for Outstanding Achievement in Drama, with Mr. GQ himself, Jon Hamm, on hand along with other cast members. But it was creator Matthew Weiner who accepted, revealing that he loved TV so much that he almost flunked out of college because he watched too much.

TCA president Dave Walker (New Orleans Times-Picayune) introduced the evening's host, Chelsea Lately funny girl Chelsea Handler, who started things off by describing herself as "the poor man's Kathy Griffin."

Not really. Some of us think Handler is just as funny as, if not funnier than, Griffin. Commenting on some of the TCA nominees, Handler said she was surprised that Fox News wasn't up for a comedy award. And she described nominees Fringe, Mad Men and Lost as dramas "about the Republican Party."

A highlight of the evening was the ever-feisty Betty White, whose career spans 60 years and includes such iconic series as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls. The octogenarian received the TCA Career Achievement Award, grinning as she proclaimed, "You can't get rid of me! I just won't go away!" And indeed she stayed for the after-party, happy to enjoy a drink and praise from journalists.

I had the pleasure of handing out the evening's first award, for Outstanding New Program, to HBO's campy vampire saga True Blood. Creator Alan Ball accepted, and seemed genuinely thrilled with the show's first accolade.

Here is a complete list of winners for the 2009 TCA Awards:

New Program: True Blood, HBO
Individual Achievement in Drama: Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad, AMC
Individual Achievement in Comedy: Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory, CBS
News and Information: The Alzheimer's Project, HBO
Children's Programming: Yo Gabba Gabba!, Nickelodeon
Movies, Miniseries & Specials: Grey Gardens, HBO
Heritage Award: ER, NBC
Career Achievement: Betty White
Achievement in Comedy: The Big Bang Theory
Achievement in Drama: Mad Men, AMC
Program of the Year: Battlestar Galactica, Sci Fi/Syfy
------

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. She's now sniffing out other possibilities. 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.

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TCA Awards: Saluting TV's Best... And Our Own Best, Ed Bark and Dave Walker

By Bill Brioux

The TCA Awards are a blast because a) they're short -- the whole deal takes about an hour, b) they aren't televised, so the speeches are fun and filthy, and c) the winners all show up because, well, even in these tough times we're TV critics, dammit.

Chuck Lorre, the creator of The Big Bang Theory, took the stage to accept the Best Comedy award for that show. "I'd like to speak from the heart," he opened, paused just long enough, and then, "but my heart was killed 20 years ago on Roseanne."

Lorre spoke about his sometimes "adversarial" relationship with critics over the years (he also created and produces Two and a Half Men), but he seems to have mellowed now that we've given him an award (and he has more money than God).

Other winners last night were Big Bang's Jim Parsons (a critics' darling because he plays a nerd), Bryan Cranston (a repeat winner for his breathtaking role in Breaking Bad) and Betty White, who got our Career Achievement prize. Nobody deserves it more.

Besides iconic, much loved roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Golden Girls, White is a true TV pioneer, making her local TV debut in 1949 and being on network since 1952.

Nickelodeon's original Yo Gabba Gabba! series took the children's programming prize.

A highlight of the night for critics was the appearance of "Uncle Barky," former Dallas Morning News man Ed Bark, who told stories about the 25 years of TCA statue salutes.

The first ceremony, related Bark, took 20 minutes, had a single guest (former NBC chairman Grant Tinker) and featured plaques purchased in a local trophy shop in Phoenix, Arizona (site of part of the annual press tour back in the mid-'80s for some long-forgotten reason).

Bark, who put on another clinic for the dot-com kids in the session room with his classy questions these past few days, rallied those of us trying to bridge the beat as it lurches into the 21st century. When you know how to use words, they connect with a power and resonance that makes you want to follow them to understanding and delight. Bark has that gift, and it was so cool to share it again last night.

[The picture above, taken by me a few press tours ago, shows Bark at left, with Dusty Saunders of the Rocky Mountain News (and now the Denver Post) at center and TV WORTH WATCHING founder David Bianculli at right. You can continue to read Bark's excellent work, on the web, at UncleBarky.com.]

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner and a few of his cast members, including Jon Hamm, made the after-party scene. Mad Men was singled out for the second year in a row as TV's best drama. HBO's True Blood was named best new show, with creator Alan Ball accepting. The cable network's Grey Gardens was named best TV-movie or miniseries.

Besides Bark, several other alumni from the TV beat made the scene, including former Washington Post scribe and past TCA president Michael Hill, and Toronto Sun crush Claire Bickley (here with TCA legend Rodi Alexander), always Queen of the Scene. Some stayed even after the open bar went cash-only around 11 p.m., that's just how much love there was in the room.

Especially for outgoing TCA president Dave Walker. The rock-steady New Orleans Times-Picayune newsman gave his entire nervous system to this collection of professional cry-babies over a harrowing presidential term, surviving writers' strikes, business model breakdowns and Katrina. The man is free at last. Bow your head and give thanks.

--

Bill Brioux started contributing to TV WORTH WATCHING in 2008. A veteran TV critic and reporter, Brioux was TV columnist for the Toronto Sun from 1999-2007. He runs and writes his own website about all things television, called TV Feeds My Family.

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