April 2010

What is  the topic on the lips of America this morning? Conan Criticizing Leno? Slaminng him? Calling him and a bad giver -- gives and then takes back what he's given?  CBS "60 Minutes" gets Conan to open up on Leno. CBS, being CBS, didn't want Leno haters to wait until this Sunday evening to hear what nasty Conan had to say about the CBS Letterman show's  competitor. They released clips from the show, to stroke the flames still very much  present in the eyes of Conan lovers, who feel just as abused as Conan, about what Leno and NBC did to him.

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Sometimes when I'm watching South Park, I feel like a practical joke is being played on a nation full of viewers. About ten minutes into "Crippled Summer" I realized that I was sitting through a half hour parody of cheesy 80's summer camp movies reimagined as a cavalcade of mentally handicapped characters... only not. The layers of silliness in this episode are actually deeper than anything else over its entire run. I don't know if it was out of an uncharacteristic set of reservations Parker and Stone might have had about depicting retarded characters or if it was just a late-period indulgence, but they opted to turn all of the kids at, sigh, Camp Tardicaca into references to old cartoons. I don't care what anyone says, something was being smoked in the writer's room when this episode came across the idea board.

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Bad news for fans of Legend of the Seeker, the TV adaptation of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels. Reports over the past two days have confirmed that ABC Studios, Seeker's parent network, has decided to take the show off its docket due to poor ratings. The Tribune Station Group, which makes up the majority of the show's UHF markets, has more or less dropped Seeker following its nosedive in the ratings during its second season. The remaining episodes of the season will air as scheduled, but nothing short of a miracle will bring a third season to the air.

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House works best when it's as realistic as possible. In its glory days, the show was a weekly splash of cold water, an ongoing conversation about human frailty that bordered on both cynicism and sentimentality without going over the edge. Accordingly, one of the (unfortunately) many complaints about House over the past couple seasons is how it has so often veered away from that realism into melodrama, science fiction and too-convenient coincidences of storytelling. It has been business as usual for the dramas in the lives of the main characters to inexplicably reflect some element of the patient, whether it's his/her ailment or back story. That's why "Open and Shut" was such a breath of fresh air. The personal lives of the diagnostics team reflected the patient in believable, organic ways. By not having to carry an overbearing philosophical conceit, the actors got a chance to bring some nuance to their performances, to the benefit of the episode as a whole.

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It's a classic element of genre TV shows that unusually talented actors get trapped in a purgatory of camp, rarely if ever escaping. From Patrick Stewart's inescapable tenure as Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation to Lucy Lawless and her unfortunately unforgettable turn as the title character of Xena: Warrior Princess, actors with admirable performing chops end up carrying whole series that never quite seem to match their pay grade. Though I enjoy Legend of the Seeker and frequently defend it as a much smarter show than it seems from the outside, I still acknowledge that it's a fantasy adventure series with no pretense toward the kind of gravitas of anything that airs on weekdays. To that end, I'm glad that Craig Parker finally got to be the center of an episode. The cast of Seeker is far from weak, but Parker definitely stands out as an indelible screen presence.

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I imagine that in retrospect, the sudden fame of Ellie Kemper will be considered one of the great rising star stories of TV history. She paid her dues in the web video scene and as an occasional comedy writer for years before she got her big break on The Office. The Erin character was originally only supposed to appear in three or four episodes and Kemper herself has described the decision to add her to the regular cast as a surprise. The Office already had a very well-established cast of characters and the only one who carved out a permanent place after guest starring was Ed Helms as Andy Bernard. That Ellie Kemper could go from a low-profile bit part to one of the show's central characters in the space of half a season is pretty remarkable. Seeing how much of "Secretary's Day" focused on Erin and how natural that seemed is actually kind of shocking, given that The Office has survived for so long on the strength of its familiar cast.

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So, did Matt Stone and Trey Parker actually make another episode featuring Muhammed with a big, anti-censorship speech at the end, or did they make one, long free speech satire? Pop over to the South Park Studios website and you'll get an equally ambiguous message about them not being able to stream their "uncensored" version of the episode "201". I wouldn't put it beyond those guys to play such a massive practical joke. They've certainly pulled off bigger pranks in the past. If Comedy Central did in fact censor large chunks of the episode, then we truly are living in an absurd era. Also, should South Park Studios get the opportunity to webcast the potentially mythical uncut version, it'll be another nail in the coffin of television as a viable medium. TV with its reliance on big-name sponsors and corporate committee thinking is on the wrong side of the free speech debate, which in a just society wouldn't be a debate at all. Yet here we are, watching a bunch of cartoon characters doing excessively silly things next to a man-sized censorship box while spouting bleeps covering up the most common name in the entire world.

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Victory of the Daleks

Leading the supporting cast of "Victory of the Daleks", Bill Paterson is magnificent as Edwin Bracewell, whether it's his humble absent-minded genius or his desolation at discovering the fabrication of his life. Gatiss gives Paterson great lines, and Paterson doesn't let him down, but the plot holes are big enough to pilot one of the new paradigm Daleks through - how does talking about forbidden love deactivate "walking, talking, exploding bomb"? How was Bracewell able to merge his (at the time) purely theoretical hypersonic flight and gravity bubble designs with World War II Spitfires in under ten minutes? It's a distraction from what would otherwise have been a unique and powerful character that Paterson did very well in bringing to life.   

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This week's episode of Glee was like the show in microcosm. It had a very far-out premise about which I was initially skeptical, but despite its occasional hiccups it won me over on sheer enthusiasm and showbusiness charm. Beyond that, "The Power of Madonna" was one of the strongest all-cast episodes of the series. It even had a few winking moments when it acknowledged some of the more valid criticisms of the show thus far. And hey, Jane Lynch finally got to sing again. I know it's hard to come up with reasons for Sue Sylvester to break out into song, but it's always welcome when she does.

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Whatever the opposite of timely is, that’s what this is. Dave Chappelle exited the world of television after figuring that what he was being asked to do things he found distasteful. The actor and comedian may have thought that he’d sunk into a sort of self parody, or even worse a racial parody. That, though, is part of what made his art so demanding and so consumed by audiences.

Most folks know that Chappelle high tailed it to South Africa to collect his thoughts for a few weeks. And everyone knows that there isn’t any longer a Chappelle Show to speak of unless you’ve acquired the DVD boxed sets. And while its been pretty well documented that the husband and father has receded into his estate in Yellow Springs, Ohio, not too many know what that town is actually like even after having watched Block Party and hearing countless explanations of bucolic Ohio life.

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One thing I would like to know from any of you readers who have experience in the military is whether or not squad leaders actually give inspirational pep talks in the field, and if they do whether or not they actually motivate the people fighting alongside them. It's one of those war movie cliches that has a good chance of being true, but I've never known a veteran who I felt I could ask. For screen writers making movies and TV shows, the pep talk is often a convenient way to express a storytelling concept that isn't apparent in the action, like in this week's episode of The Pacific when just such a hushed heart-to-heart revealed that the bravest men on Peleliu pushed themselves across a grim airfield with the belief that, no matter how many casualties it causes, their fight is just.

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There are a lot of stories about people ruining or abandoning paradise, but very few about people discovering it. The most prominent example is the legend of Shangri-La, a story that usually involves people finding it and for one reason or another never returning. The irony of Paradise Discovered stories is that they're usually quick to point out that no amount of physical perfection can compete with the inability to mentally accept the idea of paradise. In this week's episode of Stargate Universe, the title, "Faith", is what makes the difference in just such a situation.

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TV abhors the adorable. It's not just because bubbly, super-happy people are kind of annoying, but because conflict drives plot. Most people don't want to tune in every week to watch somebody else living a carefree life, so characters on TV series have to spend most of their time being some shade of miserable. This is especially true for Glee, a show that is more than anything an ironic depiction of the agony people feel underneath their ostensibly happy facades. So, when half of the show's main characters start out this midseason premiere in a state of euphoria, it's only a matter of time before life comes crashing down around them.

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The Beast Below

"Secrets and shadows, lives lead in fear," the Doctor warns in the second episode of new Doctor Who series. Written by executive producer Steven Moffat, "The Beast Below" finds the Doctor (Matt Smith) and Amy (Karen Gillan) investigating the mysteries of Starship U.K., a spaceship carrying all of the United Kingdom (except Scotland, who wanted their own ship). But the ship has no engines, and every five years, every citizen of Starship U.K. is told its secret - and given the choice to protest, or forget what they've learned.

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Conan O'BrienGood news: Conan is returning to television.

Conan O'Brien has landed a late-night TV spot, but not at the majors -- not at Fox -- as had been expected. The rumor was that the numbers didn't add up. He will be on cable on TBS, in the respectable minor leagues. His competition won't be Leno, Letterman or Kimmel, on the majors, NBC, CBS, ABC,  but will be Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert , on Comedy Central. Big league and minor league is not a measurement of talent. All six men are solid masters of the arts and craft of comedy. Big and minor league is a measurement of audience size. A network TV channel still is bigger than a cable channel.

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I can't express how pleasantly surprised I am that Legend of the Seeker has taken such a philosophical approach to its second season. Usually, TV shows that try to tackle "deep" concepts end up being one jumped shark short of too ridiculous (re: Lost and its metaphysical mumbo-jumbo). Seeker isn't specifically trying to be philosophical, it just happens to question its protagonists though an adventure series doesn't really have any obligation to do so. The concept contemplated in this week's episode is the relative worth of individual lives. In addition to being a central idea in the season's long arc, it's also a thread that has run throughout the series.

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At a certain point in this week's episode of Stargate Universe, the show was a science fiction thriller, a political intrigue drama, a philosophical teleplay and a medical mystery program. It can't be overstated how much this convergence of genres shouldn't have worked. And yet, it kinda did. SGU has had its problems with multiple style confusion, most egregiously in the episode "Life", the majority of which took place in a series of washed-out Earth sets that had pretty much nothing to do with space ships, aliens or weird technology. Somehow, "Divided" made its many disparate genres flow together in a way that was believable enough for high science fiction.

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In a recent interview with Joel Keller of TV Squad, actor/comedian David Cross opined that the prospect of a big-screen cap on the TV comedy Arrested Development will never become a reality. His reasoning was that the considerably large cast and creative team of the series is too scattered, old and committed to other projects to entertain the possibility of a return to the Bluth family epic that made many of them famous. Especially for the youngest members of the cast, this is true. Michael Cera, who has been labeled (somewhat unfairly) as the movie's biggest opponent has a full-blown film career these days while Alia Shawkat, who played Maebe Funke, is set to co-star alongside Ellen Page in a new cable series called Stitch N'Bitch. But there are plenty of other reasons an Arrested Development movie won't, and probably shouldn't, happen.

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A surefire way to screw something up is to try too hard. More and more often, this seems to be what kills an episode of South Park. Rather than play to the show's strengths (crude humor, unique shock value, attention to detail), a bad episode spends all of its energy focusing on its premise, even when that premise isn't very good to begin with. This is the TV equivalent of going to a restaurant where the chef emerges from the kitchen to describe the merits of the food he cooks, only neglecting to actually let you eat any of it. It's hard to describe South Park as being lazy, exactly. It's still visually impressive, well-acted and even strangely affecting, but the ideas themselves end up falling short too frequently these days.

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Recently, it was announced that actor Kal Penn has decided to leave his post with the Obama administration to return to film. In early 2009, he unexpectedly joined the White House Office of Public Engagement upon the election of current President Barack Obama, using his birth name Kalpen Modi. In order to do so, his character on Fox's medical mystery drama House had to be written off the show. This provided last season with its biggest shock, the sudden suicide of happy-go-lucky Dr. Lawrence Kutner. Since then, House hasn't really been the same. This once consistently impressive show has had a lot of trouble capturing the right tone and its writers have explored some pretty drastic plot elements that have mostly fallen flat. So, by leaving the show just shortly after joining its central cast, did Kal Penn do irreparable damage to House?

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Charlie SheenAn item in the Daily Beast reports that  Charlie Sheen wants more money to re-new his contract to continue as the star of the hit series "Two And A Half Men"  and  is threatening to walk if he doesn’t get what he wants. The Daily Beast columnists says that Mr. Sheen deserves  more money. because of the value that he adds to the show, and the amount of money that the show generates. Mr. Sheen is  currently receiving $825,000 per episode. Warner Bros, which produces,. and CBS, which airs "Two and a Half Men " are raking in millions.

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The Eleventh Hour

The Doctor has twenty minutes to save the world. Nothing new. However, he's got to do it without his sonic screwdriver or the TARDIS, but with a new companion, a newly-regenerated body, and with a new showrunner, new production team, new theme music and new title sequence. Welcome to Doctor Who 2010, Series 1, Series 5, Series 31, whatever you want to call it. This is Steven Moffat's Doctor Who, and Matt Smith and Karen Gillan team up to take the legacy into its 47th year. 

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"Hey! First ever space battle!" Thanks, Eli. I'm glad somebody other than me said it. After several months off the air, Stargate Universe came back this week with a crackerjack of an episode. I know this series is supposed to be about the way people isolate themselves from those around them and how civilized society is a difficult prospect to maintain, but I can't be blamed for wanting my shiny sci-fi show to have some wicked cosmic combat every now and then. The dramatic angst of SGU gives the series some gravity, but without the snazzy technology and popcorn excitement, it would be just another soap opera.

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Scrubs

A week has gone by since Zach Braff announced that the ninth season of the ABC comidrama Scrubs would be its last. Since then, the only comment ABC has made is that a decision has not yet been reached. That said, after the disappointing ratings the ninth season received, it'd be hard to imagine Scrubs being brought out for a tenth year. Ten years is a long time in the world of television; maybe Scrubs, for all its wacky humor, poignant insights and character arcs, has had its time. 

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John ForsytheOne of the grand men of television  exits. John Forsythe,  actor,  star of three hit television series,  as Blake Carrington, of "Dynasty," (1981-89), as the voice of Charlie in  “Charlie’s Angels,” (1976-81), and as  Bentley Gregg in  “Bachelor Father,” (1957-62), died yesterday, Thursday, April 1st,. in Santa Ynez, Calif. The cause of death was "complications of pneumonia, following a yearlong battle with cancer. Mr. Forsythe had earlier received a diagnosis of colon cancer, and in 1979 underwent quadruple bypass surgery." He was 92.

He is being best remembered as Blake Carrington, the ruthless Denver oil tycoon on the Tv series “Dynasty,” which ran from 1981 to 1989 and took its place as the symbol of the crass money decade of the Reagan years.



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Jay LenoThe suits at NBC announced to the world, yesterday, the latest Nielsen rating on what can be called the "drama" concerning late night, or could be  called, "see we were right and a lot of you were wrong."  

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