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Ten Noteworthy Shows You Won't See on Other Best of 2011 TV Lists
December 31, 2011 3:00 PM
By Ed Martin
By now you've read a number of year-end columns by television critics, naming their choices for the ten best programs of 2011. Here are ten that haven't shown up in many (if any) of those lists, yet still deserve special recognition as the year draws to a close. Starting with ABC's Revenge...
Revenge (ABC) -- The year's most surprising success story is a trashy primetime serial in the grand tradition of Dallas, Dynasty and Falcon Crest. For too many years, viewers have been expected to sympathize with the everyday trials and tribulations of wealthy people who could buy their way out of almost every problem (hello, Brothers and Sisters).
So it is indeed refreshing to once again be able to watch fabulous looking one-percenters do terrible things to each other and suffer for their dastardly deeds. In that context, Revenge has been the feel good program of the year -- and it's only going to get better when William Devane -- the formidable Gregory Sumner from Knots Landing -- joins the cast next month as the patriarch of the deliriously dysfunctional Grayson family.
Tosh.0 (Comedy Central) -- With apologies to E!'s The Soup (my usual pick), this year Comedy Central's uncompromisingly crude Tosh.0 was TV's Funniest Show. If you think it's easy to slap together the most shocking and unreservedly vulgar videos available on the Web and package them in a consistently entertaining manner, just compare Tosh to the clip crap that clogs truTV and other networks and then get back to me. (One caveat: I'm not including G4's genial Web Soup in that smack-down.)
Fearless goofball Daniel Tosh may be missing a sensitivity chip or two, but I think he's the only comedian who truly understands Generation Digital. And get this: His work is bringing families together! I've heard from several friends that Tosh.0 is one of those rare shows they enjoy watching with their kids.
Face Off (Syfy) -- After Project Runway, Top Chef, The Next Food Network Star and Design Star, I didn't think I could muster any interest in yet another formulaic reality series in which a number of people who share a particular skill set compete to be honored as best in show by a panel of colorful judges. Then along came Syfy's special-effects make-up competition show Face Off, and it proved to be the happiest surprise of the year, at least for fans of science fiction and horror movies who enjoy an inside look at how the magic happens.
Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan (G4) -- Except for the occasional documentary (such as National Geographic Channel's Restrepo) or scripted effort (like Kathryn Bigelow's Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker, or FX's short-lived Steven Bochco series Over There), anyone who has not served (or had a loved one serve) in either of our two long-running wars would be hard-pressed to understand in even a small way what it’s like to be there. (By contrast, those of us who grew up during the Vietnam War watched it play out every night on the evening news, in sometimes brutal bloody detail.)
This is especially true of young people, which makes all the more noteworthy G4's decision to run a weekly observational reality series about heroic soldiers who locate and dismantle IEDs in Afghanistan. Not to understate the reality of the dangers our troops in both wars face on a daily basis, but there is something about getting to know a particular group of soldiers on a weekly basis as they put their lives on the line that makes Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan entirely more impactful than an occasional war report on broadcast or cable news.
Days of Our Lives (NBC) -- The bright note in an otherwise terrible year for soap operas (and the millions of loyal viewers who watch them and support their advertisers) was the revitalization of this 46-year-old daytime drama, which like so many other soaps during the last decade had been allowed to corrode into something almost unrecognizable.
Days in September briskly disposed of the sleazy storylines and frequent violence that had been rotting it from within, and replaced them with relationship-driven stories about romance, family, friendship and community -- in other words, the very things soap fans crave but have been largely deprived of for entirely too long. Days also brought back a number of beloved long-absent veteran cast members, including Deidre Hall and Drake Hogestyn, and gave them all great material to play. But Alison Sweeney as scheming Sami Brady, and young Chandler Massey as her tormented teenage son Will, are stealing the show.
The Glee Project (Oxygen) -- After a really terrible second season, Fox's once uplifting musical comedy Glee has almost flat-lined in its third year. What a waste. The only new life this year in this prematurely feeble franchise was its companion reality series on Oxygen, a bright and breezy competition program judged by Glee creator Ryan Murphy, among others. The grand prize was a seven-episode guest stint on the mother-ship, but so many of the Project kids were so ingratiating that Murphy ended up offering extended roles on the show to four of them.
Crazy as it sounds, I think Glee Project could easily find a way to continue even if Fox pulls the plug on Glee in another year or two.
All in the Family (TV Land and Antenna TV) -- The economy is in crisis. The nation is at war. The rich are getting richer at the expense of the working class. Inflation is soaring, unemployment lines are getting longer, the banks aren't helping anyone and Washington is a complete mess. Meanwhile, young people seem to be living in a world that is totally foreign to their parents' generation.
Those are the issues the Bunker family is coping with in the most topical situation comedy on television today: The surprisingly timeless Seventies gem All in the Family.
It's so much more than "that show about the bigot," as I have heard it described by many twenty- and thirty-something television critics and reporters who have never bothered to watch a single episode. (Shouldn't that be a requirement?) It's a show about all of us -- then and, unfortunately, now. The difference is, thanks to the Bunkers, we could laugh at ourselves back then.
The Soup/Fashion Police -- E! had the perfect Friday night comedy combo in The Soup and Fashion Police, so what did it do? Send new installments of The Soup off to Wednesday, that's what. How the heck is a show supposed to recap events of the week when it debuts in the middle of the week? Ah, well, at least we still have a Friday night rerun.
I've been raving about The Soup for so long that I have nothing new to say about it, except that I'm darn glad that Joel McHale stayed even after he landed a starring role on NBC's brilliant but struggling Community three years ago. (I'm sure McHale is happy too, now that Community appears to be teetering on the brink of cancellation.)
Meanwhile, my compliments to the crew on Fashion Police and especially its host, the indefatigable Joan Rivers, for lighting up Friday night with a half-hour of comedy that fits so well with the special brand of madness that McHale and his team have perfected over the years.
Attack of the Show (G4) -- G4's daily live comedy-information-talk show Attack of the Show remains one of the liveliest and most enjoyable series on television, despite a very modest budget and very limited resources. It's a thoroughly engaging and unique blend of entertainment news, tech reviews, celebrity interviews and viral videos, delivered with a delightful nerdist humor that is impossible to resist. Shouldn't MTV be doing something like this?
As I've said many times before, the AOTS team does so much with so little it puts to shame the many television productions that do so little with so much. Give much of the credit to the effortless charm of co-hosts (and Comic-Con superstars) Kevin Pereira and Candace Bailey, and contributors Alison Haislip, Blair Butler, Chris Gore, Chris Hardwick, Sara Jean Underwood and Blair Herter.
Pretty Little Liars (ABC Family) -- What's all this talk about serialized scripted series falling out of favor with television audiences? Don't tell the millions of teenage girls and young women who can't get enough of ABC Family's contemporary dramas -- each one a serial that isn't afraid to draw out storylines, tease its viewers, and grow its cast with plenty of supporting characters to keep things fresh and interesting.
There is no better example than ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars, a mesmerizing mystery about four teenage girls haunted by intimate and potentially explosive messages seemingly sent from their dead frenemy. It continues to prove that a good mythology can keep even the increasingly fickle tween and teen audience enthralled.
'One Life to Live' Faces Its Own Death With a Doozy of a Storyline
December 19, 2011 4:29 PM
By Ed Martin
ABC Daytime's One Life to Live -- a show with more creative energy coursing through it than much of what passes for bigger-budget primetime fare -- won't breathe its last until Jan. 13. But the show is already giving itself a grand send-off.
It's a storyline that has shaken many of its characters to the core. Earlier this month, amid their ongoing dramas and traumas -- currently including a murder mystery, amnesia and a teen pregnancy -- the residents of fictional Llanview, Pa, received bad news that momentarily eclipsed everything happening in their lives: Their favorite soap opera, the long-running Fraternity Row, has been canceled.
At first blush, it may appear that this brilliant bit of reflexive storytelling is being played for laughs, especially because it has so many of the show's adult characters in tizzies of varying intensity. After all, Fraternity Row is just a TV show (or in this case a show-within-a-show), right?
Not really. Apparently, it's as important to the fictional characters on OLTL as OLTL is to the real people who watch it. There is nothing funny about the end of a soap opera, especially one that has entertained millions of people on a daily basis over the course of five decades. It leaves those people just a little bit less interested in broadcast television and a little less apt to commit to something else that might be taken away from them.
It is also a terrible loss for the dozens of hard-working people in front of and behind the cameras. (I stopped by the OLTL studio on the day before the show's final day of production, and commiserated with many cast members. The people there were great -- true pros till the end -- but the overall atmosphere suggested I was visiting the saddest place on earth.)
The many reactions by OLTL characters to the end of Fraternity Row have been priceless. Perhaps it's because news of the show's cancelation hit -- on the cover of Soap Opera Weekly, no less -- just after the shocking revelation that Brandon and Brianna, Fraternity Row's hottest young couple, were actually brother and sister. This stunning plot turn left its fictional viewers more riveted than ever by their beloved soap, and certain that its ratings would rise.
One of the most interesting aspects of this story is that many male OLTL characters have been outed as closet soap fans who watch their shows on different platforms, just like the many men in real life who are rarely included in formal audience measurement for daytime dramas. They include evil teen preppie Jack Manning (who admitted to watching old Fraternity Row episodes online), hunky con man Cutter Wentworth (who stopped a rattled waitress from spoiling the Brandon-Brianna surprise before he could watch Fraternity Row that night on SOAPnet), and ruthless business tycoon Clint Buchanan, who watches the show the old-fashioned way, when it actually debuts on broadcast television.
"I was watching the markets tank on the finance channel, and I went to turn up the volume and hit the wrong button," he told his ex-wife Viki when she caught him indulging in his secret guilty pleasure. She didn't buy it.
"How could you think I would forget that you like this show?" Viki asked Clint. "We used to watch it together all the time when Megan was on." (Viki's daughter Megan, now deceased, briefly acted on Fraternity Row many years ago.)
"Yeah, but I didn't think you watched it anymore," Clint said.
"Where do you think I disappear to every Monday through Friday from 2 to 3 in the afternoon?" Viki asked. (That's the time period OLTL occupies in most markets, including New York City. SOAPnet cable encores run weeknights at 9 ET, with the entire week encored Saturday night into Sunday morning at midnight-5 a.m. ET.)
It was eccentric hairdresser Roxy who first saw the headline about the show's cancellation on the cover of Soap Opera Weekly and emitted a scream the likes of which soap characters usually reserve for news that a loved one has died.
"It's not just a TV show! It's family!" Roxy wept. "My mom Stella passed it down to me, and I passed it down to [her kids] Natalie and Rex, and you bet that Rex is passing it down to [his son] Shane." In that moment, she pretty much expressed the emotions that millions of people are having during this decade's ongoing soapageddon. Eventually, Roxy regained her composure. "There's no use in crying just because some empty suit thinks Fraternity Row is for the birds," she sighed.
A passionate Roxy later approached Clint and insisted that he buy the rights to Fraternity Row, and find a way to keep it on the air, reminding him that it has been telecast for 43 years -- just like OLTL.
"Roxy, I'm so sorry, but as a businessman I have to respect the bottom line," Clint replied, giving voice to all those network executives who are happily canceling soap operas in order to balance budgets and ensure hefty bonuses. "If there were even one more nickel to be made off Fraternity Row. I would be making it. But I will not be saving an institution whose time has come."
Roxy has since made it her mandate to singlehandedly save Fraternity Row. I suspect this will make for an entertaining story during the final weeks of One Life to Live. The best soaps have always reflected reality while telling stories, no matter how intimate or over the top.
Even in its last weeks, OLTL -- one of the best soaps ever -- is holding true to form, this time reflecting the harshest reality of all:
Its own heartbreaking demise.
[Ed Martin published an earlier version of this story at MediaPost.]
Curses, 'Batman!': Appreciating an Animated Series That Was Too Good, and Ended Too Soon -- But Very Meta
December 11, 2011 11:10 AM
By Ed Martin
Outrageous! Cartoon Network's Batman: The Brave and the Bold, one of television's most clever shows, ended its three-year run last month without any fanfare at all -- online, in print, or anywhere else.
At least it went out in grand style. The series finale was meta to the max, as Bat-Mite -- the pesky, somewhat obsessive Bat-fan from another dimension -- observed that the show was past its prime and decided to do something about it, ultimately bringing about its demise...
"Oh, BTBATB," he lamented, "What was once so fresh has become formula! It feels like only yesterday we learned the next Batman cartoon would be a lighter incarnation. Fanboys everywhere panicked, but it was for nothing. What we got was a love letter to Silver Age comics."
True that, but one need not have been a comic book geek, past or present, to appreciate the fun of the show, which was often as chock-a-block with pop-culture references as an average episode of Fox's Family Guy. Thank goodness it will live on in reruns, downloads and DVDs.
BTBATB took its inspiration from the longtime D.C. Comics franchise The Brave and the Bold, which in its many incarnations over the years has always featured one-time pairings of two super-heroes or super-teams from the D.C. Comics universe.
This show simply moved to the concept's center Batman, arguably D.C.'s most popular hero in recent years, then paired him with major D.C. characters such as Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Aquaman, as well as more obscure heroes like Metal Men, Deadman and (shown at right) Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth.
I always thought this show worked as a perfect vehicle through which D.C. parent Warner Bros. could familiarize new generations of readers with little-known characters from the past, and re-launch them in new comic books or on other platforms.
Throughout, there was plenty of crazy good humor (much of it expressed in song) that made the show entertaining, even for viewers of all ages who weren't necessarily familiar with D.C. Comics. (Check out this musical sequence featuring the beautiful Birds of Prey performing a song that seems to be about the genitalia and sexual skills of various male superheroes.) Clearly, BTBATB wasn't for kids only:
Diedrich Bader gave a perfect vocal performance as Batman, and John DiMaggio often stole the show as Aquaman, Batman's most memorable sidekick throughout the run of the series.
No animated series since The Simpsons made such perfect use of dozens of eclectic guest voices -- especially Paul Reubens as Bat-Mite, who returned for the series finale, and, most memorably, Neil Patrick Harris as the villainous Music Meister, in a song-filled episode that took full advantage of NPH's talents as an entertainer.
As the final story progressed, Bat-Mite -- dismayed by an episode that found Batman battling an ape known as Grodd, who was armed with a device that turned people into bananas -- decided to use his powers to make BTBATB so bad it would have to be cancelled.
"I'll use my fifth-dimensional powers to make the show so bad it won't just jump the shark, it'll do a quadruple spinning back-flip over it," he declared. "The network will have to take it off the air!"
He then pulled out all the jump-the-shark staples. In short order, he gave Batman an adorable kid (and an appreciative laugh track every time she said something cute) and a perfect TV wife (complete with an ever-present pearl necklace), brought in Ted McGinley to play Aquaman, moved the show's locale from Gotham City to Malibu, and put Batman in a new costume, transforming him into Alpine Ice Climber Batman.
("Let's see how you like the Dark Knight in one of those hideous variant costumes you only find on store shelves!" Bat-Mite laughed.)
He even evoked Cousin Oliver! (If you have to ask, you aren't a student of television.) At one point, Batman was made to literally jump a giant mechanical shark.
Sure enough, BTBATB was cancelled, and the closing scene -- the most meta of all -- was itself a love letter to D.C.'s Silver Age.
Dozens of D.C. characters were seen standing around at a fanboy fantasy cocktail party on the show's soundstage, as sets were struck and props carted away. Music Meister was at the piano providing entertainment for the send-off.
Spotted in the crowd: Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, The Riddler, Aqualad, the Metal Men, Deadman, the Spectre, Superdog, Kamandi, Scarecrow and, in a last minute display of just how geek-cool this show really was, the all-but-forgotten Prez, the First Teen President of the United States. (Anyone remember his limited comic book series from the early Seventies?)
Also present were the Currys of Atlantis, who were featured in what was arguably the most memorable sequence of the show's entire run, a take-off of the 1966 Phyllis Diller sitcom, The Pruitts of Southampton. The sheer creative genius of that segment alone was reason enough to support this show for years to come.
[To see what you may have been missing, check out, and perhaps purchase, season sets of Batman: The Brave and the Bold by clicking HERE.]
Aquaman as Phyllis Diller on Cartoon Network? Outrageous!
October 6, 2011 9:23 PM
By Ed Martin
Overlooked amid the excitement of the new fall season, the cosmically entertaining Cartoon Network series Batman: The Brave and the Bold last week outdid itself with an opening segment inspired by the long-forgotten sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton, which starred Phyllis Diller and ran for one season only (1966-67) on ABC.
The segment, which you can see below, is titled "The Currys of Atlantis," and it stars Aquaman (aka Arthur Curry), his wife Mera and sidekick Aqualad, among others.
Yes, you read that right. Somebody came up with the idea to use Aquaman to pay homage to a 45-year-old Phyllis Diller sitcom most Cartoon Network viewers likely don't remember or never heard of in the first place. (Pruitts is an enduring curiosity, but it ain't exactly classic TV.) In fact, I'm guessing many people who saw the segment never even realized that there was much more to it than they realized.
"The Currys of Atlantis" opens with Aquaman singing original lyrics set to the Pruitts theme song as it was sung by Diller all those years ago. It actually begins with an unseen Aquaman proclaiming that something is "Outrageous!" -- as he often does on this show -- in place of the unseen Diller's unmistakable cackle. Then it's all Aquaman as Diller, "in color" and "filmed in front of a live studio audience." This is Family Guy territory, but without that show's essential vulgarity.
I won't assert that every episode is a gem, but I have to wonder why Batman: The Brave and the Bold (new episodes Fridays at 6 p.m. ET) isn't written about with the same obsessive reverence as genre standouts like The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park and Archer. Because, when it's on its game -- and despite a general sense of polite restraint largely missing from the others -- it belongs in the same company, as you'll see in these clips.
First, check out the original credit sequence from The Pruitts of Southampton:
Then, meet "The Currys of Atlantis":
By the way, "The Currys of Atlantis" isn't the first example of musical magic on this often surprising series (which remains entertaining for the young and young at heart even when it is focused solely on stories about Batman and other heroes from the D.C. Comics universe that do not necessarily include clever humor or great songs).
I first took note of the musical talent at occasional work on Brave and the Bold in the Season 1 episode "Mayhem of the Music Meister." The Meister was voiced by none other than Neil Patrick Harris, who performed several songs.
I leave you with the Meister's best, "Drives Us Bats" -- but since YouTube has disabled embedding the clip, you'll have to click here to hear NPH.
Big Comic-Con TV Splashes
July 27, 2011 11:50 AM
By Ed Martin
Year after year the annual San Diego Comic-Con feels more like a colorful convention for the television business rather than a mass gathering of comic-book and fantasy enthusiasts. Without question the Con builds bigger buzz for new and current television shows than just about anything else, simply by tantalizing an enormous segment of their existing and/or potential audience through star-filled panels and massive marketing initiatives.
It was a big Con for AMC, which offered an unforgettable panel for The Walking Dead...
A preview trailer that was shown at the start of the session was so powerful that the question and answer period at the end was shortened a bit so that it could be run again. (The harrowing sequences it showcased from Season 2 made Season 1 look like a day at Disney World.) Moderator Chris Hardwick skillfully energized the cast and audience alike. (Their banter redefined the word fresh, which is now the new frak.)
Not surprisingly the panel for NBC's Chuck was a huge draw, in that the upcoming fifth season of this Con favorite is also its last. The cast made clear that throughout their show's bumpy run it was frequently pulled back from the brink of cancellation by the support it received from Con attendees. The session became quite emotional at the end, with series star Zachary Levi near tears.
The session for BBC America's Doctor Who was another major event. (I was unable to attend but have heard glowing reports from reporters who were there.) It marked the first Con appearance by Matt Smith, the actor who plays the current Doctor and is the new Con God. When I talked with Smith at the Entertainment Weekly party he made clear that he was blown away by the total Con experience.
Syfy also had a good Con. The annual panels for the network's scripted hits Eureka and Warehouse 13 were moved this year to one of the convention center's largest ballrooms and drew bigger crowds than ever -- as big as those that assembled in years past for Battlestar Galactica. The media never makes much of a fuss over Eureka but at each of the last five Cons I have attended I have been impressed by the wild enthusiasm of its audience. A session for Syfy's latest hit, Being Human, also struck me as one of the network's most successful panels since those for BSG.
FX stepped up big time at this year's Con with panels for a number of its series including two that have nothing to do with otherworldliness or fantasy (Sons of Anarchy and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and one that does, in its own strange way (Wilfred). Also, FX co-sponsored the annual party thrown by Maxim magazine, which is always a Con highlight.
The panel for Fox's long-delayed series Terra Nova featured a screening of its first episode that filled most of the hour. It seemed to me that the premiere was politely received by the audience but did not make a huge impact. I was seated about midway back from the stage, surrounded by "real people" rather than studio guests in the reserved section up front, and I didn't hear or see anybody getting very excited about what they were watching. I'll have much more to say about Terra Nova, the most ambitious of the 2011-12 broadcast season's new fall series, after its session next week at the Summer Television Critics Association tour.
And the Emmy Nominees Should Be...
June 25, 2011 8:42 PM
By Ed Martin
This year's Emmy Award nominees won't be announced until July 14, but the buzz about who should be nominated in what category has already kicked into high gear.
So there is no time like the present to look back on the best series and performances of the last year and offer serious advice on who belongs where.
Here's a rundown of the series and actors that I believe are the most deserving in the drama and comedy categories. While many readers will undoubtedly feel that I have left a few of their favorites off this list, surely we can all agree that the people and the programs mentioned below warrant special attention.
The point is to remind voting members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences of the outstanding work included here, since they have an annoying habit of bypassing some of the medium's best. I tried to limit my final choices to six per category, but as always, I found it impossible to do so when considering the extraordinary supporting work on so many shows.
Feel free to add your own suggestions to each group (and please remember that perennial Emmy favorite Breaking Bad is not in the running this year since it did not air during the eligibility period).
Outstanding Drama Series
Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Friday Night Lights (DirecTV/NBC)
The Good Wife (CBS)
Justified (FX)
The Killing (AMC)
Mad Men (AMC)
Outstanding Comedy Series
The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Community (NBC)
The Middle (ABC)
Modern Family (ABC)
Nurse Jackie (Showtime)
Raising Hope (Fox)
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Steve Buscemi - Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Kyle Chandler - Friday Night Lights (DirecTV/NBC)
Michael C. Hall - Dexter (Showtime)
Jon Hamm - Mad Men (AMC)
Timothy Olyphant - Justified (FX)
Matt Smith - Doctor Who (BBC America)
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Alec Baldwin - 30 Rock (NBC)
Steve Carell - The Office (NBC)
Matt LeBlanc - Episodes (Showtime)
Joel McHale - Community (NBC)
Matthew Morrison - Glee (Fox)
Jim Parsons - The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Connie Britton - Friday Night Lights (DirecTV/NBC)
Mireille Enos - The Killing (AMC)
Julianna Margulies - The Good Wife (CBS)
Elisabeth Moss - Mad Men (AMC)
Katey Sagal - Sons of Anarchy (FX)
Kyra Sedgwick - The Closer (TNT)
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Toni Collette - United States of Tara (Showtime)
Courteney Cox - Cougar Town (ABC)
Edie Falco - Nurse Jackie (Showtime)
Patricia Heaton - The Middle (ABC)
Martha Plimpton - Raising Hope (Fox)
Amy Poehler - Parks and Recreation (NBC)
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Alan Cumming - The Good Wife (CBS)
Peter Dinklage - Game of Thrones (HBO)
Walton Goggins - Justified (FX)
Michael B. Jordan - Friday Night Lights (DirecTV/NBC)
John Noble - Fringe (Fox)
Brent Sexton - The Killing (AMC)
Michael Shannon - Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
John Slattery - Mad Men (AMC)
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Ty Burrell - Modern Family (ABC)
Chris Colfer - Glee (Fox)
Jon Cryer - Two and a Half Men (CBS)
Peter Facinelli - Nurse Jackie (Showtime)
Jesse Tyler Ferguson - Modern Family (ABC)
Stephen Mangan - Episodes (Showtime)
Ed O'Neill - Modern Family (ABC)
Eric Stonestreet - Modern Family (ABC)
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Gabrielle Anwar - Burn Notice (USA Network)
Michelle Forbes - The Killing (AMC)
Sharon Gless - Burn Notice (USA Network)
Christina Hendricks - Mad Men (AMC)
Laurie Holden - The Walking Dead (AMC)
Margo Martindale - Justified (FX)
Archie Panjabi - The Good Wife (CBS)
Kiernan Shipka - Mad Men (AMC)
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Eve Best - Nurse Jackie (Showtime)
Julie Bowen - Modern Family (ABC)
Tamsin Greig - Episodes (Showtime)
Jane Lynch - Glee (Fox)
Heather Morris - Glee (Fox)
Kathleen Rose Perkins - Episodes (Showtime)
Sofia Vergara - Modern Family (ABC)
Betty White - Hot in Cleveland (TV Land)
MTV Movie Awards: Adults Behaving Badly
June 8, 2011 1:25 PM
By Ed Martin
MTV on Sunday treated kid, tween and young teen viewers of its annual Movie Awards extravaganza to the spectacle of some of their favorite adult stars using foul language, grabbing each other's breasts and genitalia, and dropping a number of f-bombs. Nothing new there -- live appearances on MTV seem to bring this sort of arch juvenile behavior out of grown-ups.
But, just for fun, allow me to grumble about the inappropriateness of it all, as if it were 10 years ago (or maybe 20) and people still cared about what kids watch on TV, rather than dismiss questionable content by pointing out that there is nothing they might see or hear on television that they haven't seen or heard online.
If people still cared about such things, I would note how interesting it was to see Justin Timberlake once again fondle a woman in a highly suggestive manner, reaching from behind and cupping the breasts of Mila Kunis, his co-star in the upcoming movie Friends with Benefits, when the two took the stage to present the first award of the night. Remember the last time Timberlake grabbed a woman's breast on live television? The fallout from that talent malfunction lit a nasty fire under the collective behinds of the FCC and set the presentation of sex and skin on broadcast television entertainment back at least 20 years. (Violence, on the other hand, continued as ever to escalate in increasingly graphic and profane ways for the enjoyment of all.)
As you will recall, during the infamous 2004 Super Bowl half-time show, Timberlake was so rough with co-star Janet Jackson that he actually ripped off part of her top, alarmingly revealing one of her bare breasts for an entire second or two. (By the way, that Super Bowl was telecast on CBS, but the half-time show was produced by MTV.) Adults everywhere recoiled in horror, not so much from Jackson's breast as out of concern for the many children who were also watching. (Timberlake later apologized for his actions on CBS' telecast of the 2004 Grammy Awards.) He wisely played it safe this time, acting naughty on a show that kids likely weren't watching with their parents. And, he played around with a woman who wore a half-sleeve top he couldn't possibly remove without making a concerted effort to do so. I know the whole MTV thing is all about easy shock value, but I would think this very talented and uninhibited performer (who really should host Saturday Night Live at least twice every season) could have come up with something memorably funny that didn't involve doing something in front of millions of kids that would get young boys expelled from school and older boys thrown in jail.
Kunis' response -- reaching around and gingerly cupping Timberlake's genitals -- was similarly disturbing in dissimilar ways. She's got quite the following among kids who continue to discover reruns of That '70s Show, as well as young adults who remember her from that program and are now old enough to have seen her very adult performance in Black Swan. Like it or not, she's one of the new role models for young girls everywhere. In that capacity, she probably shouldn't be letting a guy grab her boobs on live television; nor should she respond by taking hold of his junk. There are better ways for girls to get noticed -- and to get even.
I'm not personally offended by such carefully constructed suggestive behavior, except for the part about a giant media company authorizing it and serving it up to impressionable kids in the interest of fun and profit. I'm just making this hindsight observation in the hopes that someone who reads it might be prompted to take a moment and explain to their kids that it isn't okay for boys and girls to casually grab each other's private parts, even if adults they admire make it look like so much innocent fun. I expect more from performers of proven talent. I wish we could expect more from giant media companies.
Moving on to the f-bombs, can it be mere coincidence that the one that slipped through came from reigning tween heartthrob Robert Pattinson, who dropped a particularly nasty one while singing the praises of his two-time movie co-star Reese Witherspoon? Seems he needs to be reminded that he owes his increasing popularity and paychecks to kid, tween and young teen girls who can't get enough of all things Twilight. At present, they are his primary audience, and he ought to have more respect for them than to reinforce the use of the f-word on a telecast he knows they will be watching. He won't be around when they use it at home or at school, and get in trouble for doing so, right?
The real culprit here, though, is MTV, which let the f-bomb through, dropping out the sound a second or two too late to block it, as if televising a live event for the first time, rather than the umpteenth time since the very early '80s. I was under the impression that live shows on advertiser-supported television that featured notoriously potty mouthed adults in action were telecast with a seven-second delay.
Nobody should be surprised by what happened on Sunday, because MTV has a rich tradition of putting inappropriate things out there and then offering lame apologies (or simply keeping quiet) after the fact. It's not very sincere, but it is highly effective, and it always results in a headline or two (see above). Interestingly, there haven't been many headlines about this particular incident. (The media focus instead has been on Pattinson's other memorable moment: Leaving Kristen Stewart on stage while accepting the award for Best Kiss and dashing into the audience to plant one on his other Twilight co-star, Taylor Lautner.) Has fatigue set in, or does everyone just enjoy a good eff now and then?
ABC Soaps: Killed by Low Ratings, or Creative Bankruptcy?
April 27, 2011 8:02 PM
By Ed Martin
I don't know what bothers me more about ABC's announcement that it has canceled All My Children and One Life to Live, two of its three long-running soap operas:
The arrogance inherent in the action of announcing both cancelations at once; the apparent failure of a major global entertainment content company to explore innovative alternatives to those cancelations; the decision to terminate two established franchises at the same time that ABC's affiliates and audience must also process the departures of daytime icons Oprah Winfrey and Regis Philbin; the fact that hundreds of people (many of whom were asked just a year and a half ago to uproot their lives in New York City and relocate to Los Angeles when ABC decided to move AMC) are losing their jobs as our economy further deteriorates; or the grim realization that, once One Life to Live ceases production, there will be no soap operas produced in New York.
What a staggering blow to the acting community in that great city. (Imagine the outsize publicity a basic cable network would enjoy next year if one were to take advantage of this latest broadcast bungle and begin producing a daily soap opera or two in Manhattan!)
Adding salt to all of those wounds: ABC's cancelation announcement April 14 said it plans to replace AMC and OLTL with a cooking show and a weight-loss show. I won't pass judgment on those programs until I see them. But the concepts, to put it mildly, suggest a creative bankruptcy on the part of the network, in that television is already overflowing with variations on both, on broadcast and cable, in daytime and primetime, and in countless segments on local and national news/entertainment programs.
I'm the first to acknowledge that the daytime drama writing pool has been allowed to stagnate in recent years. But that didn't mean ABC (or any network) had to cancel its shows. It simply meant that new writers had to be found and that ABC (which owns its soaps) had to take better care of the characters on its shows as different writers and producers came and went.
As for the all too convenient excuse of low ratings, I'm not buying it. Ratings for daytime and primetime programming are, at best, inaccurate. Further, there are many other compelling reasons to keep programs alive beyond numbers, accurate or otherwise. If there weren't, most of NBC's primetime shows would have been canceled years ago, most basic cable networks would run only movies around the clock, and The CW would likely have been terminated during its infancy!
The recent CBS cancelations of Guiding Light and As the World Turns were similarly depressing to anyone who ever enjoyed watching daytime drama (or, in the case of GL, listening to it on the radio way back when). The difference, however, is that GL and ATWT were often described as shows belonging to older generations. It was common to hear them described as "my grandmother's soaps" or "the soaps my mother used to watch when she did her ironing." Not so AMC and OLTL. Both created by TV legend Agnes Nixon, they blossomed during the youth-quake of the '70s and, in tandem with General Hospital, brought millions of teenagers, college students and young adults of both sexes to daytime. (At the time, some 25 percent of the GH audience was comprised of men.) Women continued to dominate daytime, but young people made all three of these shows cultural phenomena never before experienced in the daypart.
Given their rich recent histories and, with talented producers and writers at their helms, the proven popularity of these shows with audiences of all ages, it is truly startling that ABC decided to dump them, let alone within a few months of each other. Daily soap operas are the only form of television entertainment exclusive to broadcast networks, and thus of particular interest to advertisers.
So I can't help but wonder why ABC didn't do what it did with GH back in 1977, when that series was low-rated and marked for cancelation. ABC executives at the time acknowledged that they had nothing to lose and turned GH over to the legendary executive producer Gloria Monty [pictured back then at right with guest star Elizabeth Taylor and GH regular/rock star Rick Springfield]. She was free to do (within reason) whatever she wanted for six months. If she pumped new life into it and began to grow its audience, the show wouldn’t be canceled. Monty breathtakingly transformed GH into a sleek, contemporary serial unlike anything else on daytime television. The record-breaking Luke and Laura story grew out of that. The rest is history.
If they were so close to death, didn't AMC and OLTL deserve the same chance; the same dynamic, innovative approach to their possible salvation?
There must have been other things ABC could have tried. Perhaps it could have cut each show to 30 minutes (like CBS's The Bold and the Beautiful), in the process reducing the casts and crews of both but not eliminating everyone's jobs. What a great, fast-paced hour of daytime television that would have made! Or, each show could have remained one hour long and run in weekly cycles in the same time period -- one week of AMC, followed by one week of OLTL, then another week of AMC. Digitally empowered viewers would have no trouble keeping up. On-screen explanations and promos would take care of everybody else.
Another thought, if a cancelation simply had to occur: Why not first kill AMC (in recent years the least compelling of ABC's three soaps) and see if its disenfranchised viewers migrated to OLTL? This could have been further encouraged by guest or recurring appearances on OLTL by certain performers/characters from AMC. Susan Lucci of AMC [in left photo] is arguably the most popular actress in the history of daytime drama. (She even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.) Don't tell me that the opportunity to see La Lucci (as Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Roy Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery ) mixing it up with Erika Slezak [in right photo] of OLTL (as Victoria Lord Gordon Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson Banks) and co-star Robin Strasser (as Dorian Cramer Lord Callison Santi Vickers Hayes Laurence Vickers) wouldn't be welcomed by the daytime audience.
Finally, if I may be permitted to think way out of the box, why couldn't ABC have tried turning these beloved franchises -- both household names -- into a once-a-week primetime shows? Imagine a two-hour soap block on Friday nights, replacing whatever it is ABC runs on Friday nights. Next month ABC and the other broadcast networks will unveil to advertisers and journalists dozens of costly new primetime shows for next season. As always, most of them will fail. I think it's safe to say that primetime versions of AMC and OLTL would fare better in the ratings than many of the season's inevitable frosh-bombs.
C'mon, 'GH' Writers - Are You Trying to Kill Soaps, Too?
March 28, 2011 4:08 PM
By Ed Martin
Anyone who is still wondering why broadcast soap operas are disappearing before our eyes need only review recent episodes of ABC's General Hospital.
Don't blame shrinking audiences. (Viewers aren't really going away in these high-tech times. They're just harder to count.)
Don't blame competition from other media. (Overall media consumption is on the rise, boosted by evolving digital technologies that make following a favorite soap easier than ever.)
Don't blame the recent round of network budget cuts. (Low-budget serialized storytelling is thriving on basic cable television, and there is no reason why broadcast soaps can't adapt.)
Whatever you do, don't blame the actors. (There are dozens of fine performers of all ages on the six remaining soaps.)
So what's the problem? Take a good long look at the current Death of Little Jake Webber storyline on GH, and you'll have your answer.
It's the writing, plain and simple.
I've never been a fan of soap stories that involve the deaths of children, and that includes the now legendary Death of BJ saga on GH almost 20 years ago -- another tale in which one kid died a sudden death and made available a critical organ to save an afflicted child elsewhere on the canvas.
At the time, I thought the loss of Nurse Bobbie Spencer Jones' little girl would in the long term damage the show, in that I could imagine dozens of stories about BJ in her troubled teen and young adult years and the impact her behavior would have on her mother, who had been a rather combustible teen herself. For the most part, I was wrong about that. The show found plenty of stories to tell even without BJ, and the transplant story was so magnificently written and acted that it brought a new level of respect to daytime drama.
The only downside was that it forever damaged two previously vital characters: Nurse Bobbie and her husband, Dr. Tony Jones. Bobbie fared better than Tony, who suffered an emotional breakdown, lost his family, his job and the respect of his community, was physically brutalized by mob assassin Jason Morgan and gunned down by Carly Benson (the baby that Bobbie gave birth to during her time as a teenage prostitute and then forgot about for 20 years). Tony slowly put the pieces of his life back together, only to die from a sweeps-induced virus.
The GH writing team, which for much of the last 10 years has specialized in telling repetitive stories about local mobsters that have collectively played like a low-rent version of The Sopranos, has also during that time gone to great lengths to viciously subvert storylines and destroy characters from the show's most creatively successful periods of the past. I haven't been fond of those stories, but that has often been a matter of personal taste. My issues were with the stories themselves, not the way in which they were being told.
The current Death of Jake Webber disappointment is another matter entirely, and it comes at a time when soaps overall are in dire peril -- and in desperate need of well-thought-out stories that respect their shows' histories while reinventing them for the future.
In that regard, this latest GH tale has done everything wrong: It has made viewers feel bad about the time they have invested in the Jake storyline during the last few years, and killed off a character that was uniquely positioned to be at the center of dozens of compelling stories in the years to come. That's no way to improve a show or support a dying genre.
If the writers and producers of GH truly felt it necessary at this time to tell a story so reminiscent of the Death of BJ, then they should have killed off baby Josslyn, the daughter of Carly and her current husband, Jax, and the recipient of one of poor little Jake's kidneys.
(One of many telling aspects of the subpar storytelling here is that Josslyn wasn't even sick two weeks ago and wasn't diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer until the night poor Jake was run down by a car. In the BJ story, we had watched her little cousin Maxie suffer from a weakening heart over a period of time, a compelling tale in itself even before her cousin BJ was abruptly killed in a bus crash and Maxie received her heart.)
Why should they have killed Josslyn? To begin with, it has been reported that the actor who portrays Jax will be seen less on the show, which makes his one child comparatively unimportant in the long-term. Second, if Josslyn had died and Jake had needed a transplant, it would have been a fine opportunity for the writers to finally humanize Carly, a frequently detestable character with the emotional stability of an 8-year-old. She has done all sorts of nasty things during the last 15 years, but she has never been more disturbing than in recent weeks, when she chose to focus on sabotaging her ex-husband's wedding rather than deal with the fact that her oldest son had been raped in prison -- an incarceration that she had as much to do with as anyone else. (It was her decision to remove the boy from his birth father's family, the much put-upon Quartermaines, and insist that he be raised with her new husband, a dangerous mobster.)
It would have made for powerful drama indeed, to watch Carly and Jax say goodbye to their little girl, and then to see Carly decide to give one of Josslyn's organs to Jake, the son of her best friend, Jason Morgan, and one of the countless women with whom she does not get along, nurse Elizabeth Webber. I believe that would have been the first time in the history of the character that Carly would have acted in an entirely unselfish manner.
Why shouldn't they have killed Jake? He's actually a member of four core families on the canvas -- the Hardys (his maternal great-grandfather is Dr. Steve Hardy, the main character when GH began), the Webbers (his maternal grandfather is Dr. Jeff Webber, the illegitimate son of Dr. Steve), the Quartermaines (his biological father, Jason, is the son of the late great Dr. Alan Quartermaine and the stepson of Dr. Monica Quartermaine), and the Spencers (his adoptive father is Lucky Spencer, son of the legendary Luke and Laura). Jake's true identity as Jason's son has been a secret in order to keep Jake safe from Jason's mobster enemies. It isn't too much of a stretch to assert that Jake could have been the very foundation of the show's future.)
The only good thing I can think of to say about this story is that it has been a showcase for several actors on the show, especially the incomparable Jonathan Jackson, who plays Lucky. I haven't seen a performance of such emotional intensity on a daytime drama since Judith Light's still unsurpassed work as a tortured former prostitute forced to tell all in court on One Life to Live. To hell with the Daytime Emmys -- this guy deserves an Oscar!
Similarly, Steve Burton, the actor who plays Jason, hasn't been this good since the story of Monica's breast cancer, and Rebecca Herbst, arguably the most popular female actor in the GH cast, has never been better as Elizabeth. (ABC recently reduced Herbst to recurring status, apparently unaware of her vast legion of fans. Their collective outrage moved the network to briskly restore her full-time.)
There is so much else to complain about here that the mind boggles. I should note that Jake has never been anything but a plot point. Viewers didn't get the chance to get to know the poor little guy, so the sense of loss here has been lessened. (BJ, on the other hand, was a significant part of GH for many years. The same is true of her cousin Maxie, who remains on the canvas to this day.)
Further, it is inconceivable that a number of legacy characters with strong ties to this story haven't even been seen in the background. Elizabeth's grandmother, Audrey, who has taken care of Jake since he was born, has mysteriously disappeared. (Rachel Ames, the actress who played Audrey for more than 40 years, has retired; but if she wasn't able to return for a day or two, then couldn't the character have been recast?) Jason's stepmother, Monica, who never even knew Jake was her grandson, has also been absent, as has Carly's mother, Bobbie, even though they both work in the hospital. Lucky's mother, Laura, is currently receiving medical treatment in France, but we could have seen Luke or Lucky talking with her on the phone. Laura's mother and Lucky's grandmother, Leslie, hasn't been around, either.
Brief appearances by characters that viewers have known for decades always enhance stories of families in crisis. Not to have seen any of these people at a time of such searing tragedy is not simply annoying. It's unrealistic and irresponsible.
It is also unfortunate that the GH writers chose to muck up the emotionally dismantling drama of it all, with an absurd subplot that found six characters driving at night on the dark road where Elizabeth lives, at the very time that Jake toddled out the front door and into the path of an oncoming car. We have been led to believe that Lucky's boozy father, Luke, hit the boy -- but I'm guessing the real culprit is the driver of a mysterious black town car (license plate obscured on traffic camera footage) that was also speeding along that same road at the same time.
Shouldn't the death of one child and the near-death of another have been enough drama for this storyline? If it had to be told in the first place, why build in so silly a distraction? Further, if Luke really is to blame, is that an experience we really want to attach to a character that has been crucially important to an entire programming genre for more than 30 years? As creative decisions go, this one is perfectly wretched.
The ruination of Luke Spencer is just the latest assault on the GH audience. The writers of this show have during the last decade-plus destroyed fond memories of Dr. Rick Webber and Scott Baldwin by reworking their long-ago histories (in the process revealing a complete lack of respect for soap opera viewers); destroyed the marriage of Luke and Laura, and then sent Laura spiraling into madness (another character development nobody wanted to see); botched the brief return of long-ago loony-tune Heather Webber; and killed off good-girl Georgie Jones (who was conceived during the Death of BJ storyline and was the perfect foil for her wild sister Maxie).
Most distressingly, they killed off most of the hugely popular Quartermaine family, including the all-important Alan (who should have been allowed to retire with Monica), bad-seed AJ (like Jake a character that could have driven plot for years), adopted daughter Emily (a much-loved character who touchingly came onto the canvas when Monica was battling breast cancer), lawyer Justus (Edward Quartermaine's illegitimate grandson and one of the show's few black characters), and now poor Jake.
I'll never understand the wisdom of continually killing or otherwise destroying characters that matter to millions of viewers, especially at a time when a show is struggling to hold onto its audience.
The overriding issue for those involved in daytime drama is this: As in any other business, if you don't give people what they want, they are going to go away.
If you give them what they don't want, they will leave even faster.
Is April the New September?
March 23, 2011 8:39 PM
By Ed Martin
The 2010-11 television season has been a disappointing one, with the broadcasters failing to deliver a single new hit and the cable networks creatively underperforming, as well.
The bright spots have been few and far between: FX's smart but sadly short-lived detective series Terriers; HBO's interesting but somewhat over-praised Prohibition-era mob drama Boardwalk Empire; AMC's gripping horror smash The Walking Dead; PBS's grandly entertaining period piece Downton Abbey; Starz's savage stunner Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, and Syfy's addictive Face Off (a formulaic but fun reality competition series that belongs alongside genre standouts Project Runway and Top Chef).
In terms of raw numbers, the only new broadcast success has been NBC's legal drama Harry's Law, though most of its viewers are beyond the 18-49 age demographic over whom networks and advertisers salivate. Thank goodness CBS's irresistible The Good Wife and ABC's priceless Modern Family and recently revitalized Grey's Anatomy continue to prove that broadcast can deliver the same smart, sophisticated and sometimes sizzling grown-up fare that basic cable does so well.
The official season may have been an only sporadically satisfying slog so far, but suddenly, with just two months to go until expectations slide and the summer season begins, a host of uncommonly ambitious programs are about to make spring the new fall, or, as far as the television business goes, April the new September.
The best of the bunch is AMC's searing, gut-wrenching new crime drama The Killing (premiering April 3; photo at right). Just like Modern Family, a situation comedy about a family that is so fantastically fresh it seems to be the first of its kind, rather than the thousandth addition to its genre, The Killing soars way above the dozens of procedural crime dramas that have crowded network schedules in recent years. It's a season-long story about the devastating investigation into the brutal murder of a teenage girl and how her death impacts everyone involved. Mireille Enos, as the lead detective on the case, and Michelle Forbes, as the victim's grief-ravaged mother, deliver two of the best performances that will be seen on any screen this year.
Also worth getting excited about: Starz's Camelot (April 1), a surprisingly absorbing re-imagining of the incessantly retold tale of Britain's legendary young king Arthur and the crafty sorcerer Merlin that manages to be both intimate and epic in its storytelling; HBO's Mildred Pierce (premiering Sunday, March 27), a miniseries adaptation of the James M. Cain novel (also a 1945 movie melodrama) featuring a captivating performance by Academy Award-winner (and six-time Oscar nominee) Kate Winslet [pictured at top with Evan Rachel Wood]; Showtime's violent and sexy historical drama The Borgias (April 3), about the ruthless and powerful family that was at the forefront of the Italian Renaissance, starring Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons, and a tantalizing treat from PBS, Upstairs Downstairs (April 10), a multi-part sequel to the cherished early '70s saga, again starring Jean Marsh.
Another spring stand-out is HBO's Cinema Verite (April 23; photo below with James Gandolfini, Diane Lane and Tim Robbins). This scripted drama chronicles the making of the first true observational reality series, PBS's 1973 phenomenon An American Family. If HBO or PBS could acquire the original series, its rebroadcast would likely be one of the television events of this decade.
The spring season will also bring NBC's telecast of the final season of Friday Night Lights (April 15), a deeply satisfying conclusion to one of the best drama series in television history, and the boldly timed launch (smack in the middle of the American Idol frenzy) of NBC's ambitious new singing-competition series The Voice (April 26).
Returning gems include Showtime's highly addictive Nurse Jackie (Monday, March 28), which picks up right where last season's shocking cliffhanger left off, and the same network's always fascinating United States of Tara (also Monday), plus the sixth season of BBC America's superb science-fiction spectacle Doctor Who (April 23).
Continuing, too, are new episodes of two of basic cable's finest, both on FX -- the crime drama Justified, which remains as compelling as ever, and the wildly funny, unapologetically adult spy caper Archer, a clever cartoon that goes to a place this week and next where no animated series has gone before: Handsome, vainglorious, seemingly unstoppable secret agent Sterling Archer learns that he has breast cancer. In a remarkable display of smart writing, these episodes manage not to offend, even as they maintain the series' signature giddy rude humor.
Lastly, ABC's Dancing with the Stars is making its welcome return (all 11 competitors perform again Monday, before Tuesday's first elimination). In tandem with Fox's nicely refreshed (if a little too sweet) American Idol, that will give us four nights a week of high profile live primetime entertainment programming until the end of the May sweeps period. That should do much to bring this sleepy season around.
83d Annual Oscar Telecast Reactions: Why So Negative?
March 1, 2011 3:00 PM
By Ed Martin
While watching ABC's telecast of the 83d Annual Academy Awards Sunday night, you would never guess, if you didn't already know, that it was one of the two most important events on the broadcast calendar. There was nothing particularly big or important or exciting about it; nothing dramatic, nothing suspenseful, nothing spectacular, nothing impactful, and nothing to warrant ferocious blogging or spirited morning-after conversation. I didn't think it was as God-awful as so many critics are saying, but it wasn't great, either. For the most part, everyone showed up and did what they were supposed to do without embarrassing themselves, and that was it.
Unfortunately, that's not nearly good enough for Hollywood's biggest night of the year -- a critical few hours that should reinforce both the state of the movie industry and the power of broadcast television. Surely, both could have given us more than we saw on Sunday. In fairness, it wasn't the fault of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which produces the Oscar extravaganza, nor ABC, which has televised it for almost 60 years and will continue to do so at least through 2020, if the best pictures of the year weren't all that exciting or interesting to the majority of moviegoers or, by extension, television viewers. But you would think Oscar would have tried to put together something special to celebrate the occasion and entertain the masses.
Most of the mostly negative reviews are laying most of the blame on co-hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco, noting that neither seemed to have been trained in the specifics of hosting and that both were, to be kind, in way over their heads. But I'm going to give them a break. I appreciated Hathaway's wide-eyed enthusiasm and Franco's wry amusement. It seemed to me that they were both having fun, albeit in very different ways, and I found their enjoyment infectious.
As we have seen with the many more mature hosts who have taken on the challenge of hosting since Billy Crystal gave up the gig, the daunting Oscar stage can swallow the best of them. That never really happened with Hathaway and Franco. Their youthful energy kept them afloat, despite their lack of experience and the typically banal scripted material with which they had been burdened.
As much as I liked Hathaway and Franco, though, I thought it was patently ridiculous that the producers of this year's Academy Awards would aggressively seek to court younger viewers simply by hiring younger performers to host them. Since when does the decision to put young people in front of a camera (at the expense of more mature individuals) translate to guaranteed success with young viewers? (If that were true, soap operas wouldn't be in so much trouble.)
Let's put it this way. The Oscars are for grown-ups. They always have been and they always will be. The young audience that races off to the latest big-budget action flick or swoony vampire drama isn't likely to care one whit about the Academy Awards, unless they are film students or their favorite movies are nominated (and even then, maybe not). Franco and Hathaway took a shot at the silliness of it all right at the top, when he said to her, "You look so beautiful and so hip," and she replied, "You look very appealing to a younger demographic, as well."
I'll bet the "younger demographic" began tuning out right then and there. They know when they're being played.
Maybe Oscar should put Kirk Douglas in charge. Old age and physical challenges didn't stop him from demonstrating how to be spontaneously funny, playfully win over an audience and make a moment his own without taking anything away from the talent that was about to be honored.
Watching him gently prolong the suspense in announcing who would take home the award for Best Supporting Actress was the evening's delightful high point. Indeed, it was the only moment at the Oscar viewing party I attended that had everyone in the room laughing and paying close attention.
Maturity, it seems, might go a long way toward restoring the Oscars to their former glory after years of creative corrosion. In addition to that terrific turn by Douglas, a brief appearance by the legendary Crystal prompted so much sudden joy in the cavernous Kodak Theater that it flowed right through the television screen. Imagine what a performance by that warhorse Cher could have brought to the night, had one of her songs from Burlesque been nominated.
One of the great lines of the night came from Colin Firth. Accepting his award as Best Actor for The King's Speech, he quipped, "I think my career just peaked." I don't think that's true for Firth, but Oscar is another story. After so many years of watching the Academy Awards telecast try to get it right, yet continually make poor choices, it may well be that it passed its peak a long time ago. I hope that isn't the case, but arguments on its behalf grow weaker by the year.
Surprise! Tyler Makes 'Idol' a Warm Winter Treat
February 17, 2011 12:21 AM
By Ed Martin
The biggest surprise of this somewhat lifeless midseason is the creative resurgence of Fox's American Idol.
One might assert that the renewed appeal of this show should come as no surprise at all, given the major changes made by its many executive producers following the multitude of bad choices that crippled Idol during its last two seasons. That's certainly a valid observation: How could it not improve with a return to the three-judge format (after the clunky four-judge fiasco) and the elimination of celebrity guest judges who are not invested in the show during the crucial audition process?
Those big changes certainly helped, but it's the deluxe alterations that have really made the difference. I'm talking, of course, about the recruitment of legendary Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and multi-talented entertainer Jennifer Lopez to replace judges Simon Cowell and Kara DioGuardi.
Overall, I think Tyler and Lopez have been a little too soft in their support of many marginally talented amateurs -- one look at the formidable Mr. Cowell in that brilliantly scheduled Super Bowl ad for his upcoming Fox series The X-Factor instantly reinforced my suspicions that he would not have sat idly by and let a number of this season's hopefuls through to Hollywood -- but their participation this season swiftly set the "new" Idol apart from the "old" (as in "tired") one. The result has been a surprisingly sweet treat -- a wholly unexpected, twice-weekly surge of warm, feel-good television that has done much to take the unrelenting chill off what for most of the country has been a perfectly dismal winter.
When I first heard that Lopez was likely joining Idol -- before word came down that Tyler was also a contender -- I thought Jenny from the Block might bring a natural compassion to the show that had been lacking since the departure of Paula Abdul. I was willing to give her a chance, even though I had gone on the record with my concerns that adding even one huge celebrity to Idol's on-camera team would likely compromise a show that owed its phenomenal success to its unique ability to transform unknowns into stars. (I'm not talking about the contestants only. Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Ryan Seacrest were unknown to the American viewing public when Idol made its debut in 2002, and at that time Paula Abdul was a fading star at best.)
Lopez has indeed proven to be a fine addition to Idol this season, but the real surprise has been the fast-growing appeal of Steven Tyler. He's not just a bad-ass party boy. He's a warm, supportive, gently funny man with an ear for untapped talent -- a performer who can't resist performing when another talented singer hits the right notes. How charming was it to watch him not only express his admiration for so many of the would-be contestants but to sing along with them during their auditions? I thought putting unknowns at the mercy of larger-than-life superstars would, as they say in network offices, damage the DNA of the show, in such a way as to make it less pleasing to watch. But thanks to Tyler's unrestrained enthusiasm, just the opposite has happened (though I do long for those priceless moments when Cowell would unsparingly cut down the smug and the self-involved).
Given its troubling history with celebrity contributors -- up to and including the really bad decision last season to add judge Ellen DeGeneres -- I thought Idol in Season 10 should go with lesser known personalities: the stern but bighearted Gareth Malone of the BBC's tremendous observational reality series The Choir or Anastasia Brown, the life of the party on the much-missed Nashville Star. But I have to agree with a point Cowell made during a recent interview, when he remarked that it was wise of the Idol producers to make it into something new, which they certainly have, rather than to try to keep it as it was.
Still, I'm not going to fully retract my initial resistance to the addition of Tyler and Lopez until we're well into the live competition shows. That's when their new jobs will get difficult -- when they must repeatedly come up with smart things to say about the same contestants, being both constructive for the singers and engaging to the millions of people watching at home. Even before that, Tyler, Lopez and Jackson will have to prove they can cultivate a group of finalists in whom viewers will want to invest their time. As has been well documented, that ability seemed to utterly elude Cowell, Jackson, DioGuardi and DeGeneres last season. Similarly, two seasons back, Cowell, Jackson, DioGuardi and Abdul brought us only one memorable contestant -- the highly entertaining Adam Lambert, who has enjoyed far greater success post-Idol than that season's winner, Kris Allen.
Also in the weeks to come, we'll discover whether additional changes yet to be seen, including the contributions of music producer Jimmy Iovine as in-house mentor, are as pleasantly impactful and excitingly received as the talents of Tyler and Lopez. As this occasionally maddening powerhouse has demonstrated time and again, there are no certainties in the ongoing phenomenon that is American Idol.
Sad Eyes, Full Hearts As We Lose 'Friday Night Lights'
February 8, 2011 12:16 AM
By Ed Martin
One of the finest drama series in the history of television comes to an end this week -- and, sadly, most people won't even be aware of it. Then again, that unfortunate circumstance is nothing new for Friday Night Lights, a sublime example of dramatic programming at its best that during its five-season run has never received the level of attention it has so richly deserved.
For reasons I will never understand, the broadcast (and, later, satellite) television audience never embraced Lights to the degree necessary to turn it into a hit -- or even an unqualified success. (The inexplicable fact that members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences never saw fit to honor it with any significant Emmy nominations until last year didn't help matters, either.)
It's a miracle, in fact, that Lights survived its first season on NBC, a network that did almost nothing right during the last five years, but nevertheless saw fit to renew the show for a second season, and then partner up with DirecTV to further extend its life by another three. What a shame they couldn't extend it for three more.
Where will we be without this one-of-a-kind show; one that stood apart from so much of dramatic series television in its unapologetic fondness for small town life as it is lived by millions of Americans? Lights didn't need doctors, lawyers, detectives or crime scene investigators to keep its stories moving. Instead, it focused on the challenges faced by ordinary working-class people for whom the simple pleasures were the best: family dinners, time spent with friends, town parades and especially Friday night high school football games. And it did so with so much grace and compassion that it transcended much of its medium -- especially broadcast.
In this week's quietly emotional series finale (premiering Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on DirecTV's The 101 Network), Lights to the last continues to deliver everything we have come to expect from it since the beginning. Coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami quietly and realistically grapple with and work through a very difficult situation that would change their marriage if they let it; one that would have most television couples ranting and raving and weeping and screaming like lunatics. In fact, their scenes together in the final two episodes should be required viewing for marriage counselors everywhere, not to mention scriptwriters. Further, every actor working in television should feel obligated to study the performances of Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton. Together, they made the Taylors' relationship the warmest and most realistic marriage seen on television since that of John and Olivia Walton 40 years ago.
The final episodes are set during the Christmas season, so many of the original teenage characters who previously left the Texas town of Dillon (and the narrative) to attend college are back in town for the holidays. (Seeing them again really does feel like being reunited with dear old friends.) Tim Riggins is back, too, fresh out of prison (with much time off for good behavior) and determined to make the most of life in his hometown, rather than run away from it. Scenes in which Tim and his friends pick up friendships and relationships right where they left off, while revealing that they are all just a little bit older and a wee tad wiser -- but not all grown up yet -- are triumphs of richly insightful writing and uncommonly nuanced acting. Taylor Kitsch, the underrated actor who portrays Tim, should be an Emmy contender for his deeply felt work here.
The new kids who have populated the show during its last two seasons are also well-served by the series finale, especially Vince (Michael B. Jordan), the quarterback who has had to overcome unrelenting family issues while trying to better himself, and nice-guy Luke (Matt Lauria, now on the new Fox series The Chicago Code), who has had family problems of his own. One of these guys continues to pursue a dream he never thought possible, while the other decides that it's time to quit dreaming and get real. True to form for this always truthful show, their storylines emphasize that no two teenagers are exactly alike, and that simple decisions made at that age can reverberate for the rest of their lives.
Lights debuted on NBC in 2006, and at the time it proved to be a much-needed reminder that not everyone in America had succumbed to the unprecedented greed and rampant consumer spending that was devouring so much of the country at the time. That may be why it didn't register with a large audience. Who wanted to be reminded that ordinary folks like the residents of Dillon were still living in small homes, driving old cars and struggling to pay their bills while selflessly caring for their loved ones -- not when there was so much money to spend and so many good times to be had and there were so many McMansions to be built? Then the economy went into the tank, and Lights in its last two seasons suddenly reflected a newer and broader reality.
Right from the start, something about Friday Night Lights has reminded me of the classic 1971 movie The Last Picture Show, an uncompromising account of life as it was experienced by high school students (some of them on their school's football team) in a dying Texas town in the early '50s, many of them destined never to go anywhere. Not that Dillon was shown to be dying, but throughout the series it was clearly a town with severe economic concerns.
During its second season, when it seemed like Lights was headed for cancelation, I suggested to programming executives at a pay cable network that they consider picking it up, in part because Lights felt to me like a really great cable series struggling to break out of the broadcast mold, and also because I thought the greater creative nurturing that pay cable offers would allow even more realism in the telling of its stories. Part of me still thinks that Lights could have achieved a level of greatness comparable to Last Picture Show in the pay arena.
But it is hard to argue that this singularly enriching show didn't achieve its own kind of perfection against all odds.
(TV's Friday Night Lights is available on DVD here.)
MTV's 'Skins': Smart, Sensitive and Sweet?
January 30, 2011 7:37 PM
By Ed Martin
Why the uproar over MTV's Skins? Could it be that there is so little else to get excited about, during the opening weeks of what is shaping up to be a curiously dead midseason? Had we become that dependent on Lost and 24 to bring us back to life after a long holiday break? Was the entertainment value of the American Idol audition shows entirely dependent on the blunt honesty and wry wit of Simon Cowell?
There doesn't seem to be very much passionate interest out there about anything on television, with a few exceptions: The Real Housewives of Bravo, the All-Stars of Top Chef and the anxious teens of Pretty Little Liars comprise the very short list. Maybe new episodes of Glee will do the trick, though given its curiously uneven fall season I wouldn't count on it.
Which brings me to Skins (airing Monday nights at 10 ET on MTV): Take one risky remake of a risk-taking British series about disaffected youth, throw in predictable protests from a television watchdog group (in this case the Parents Television Council), add a few advertiser pull-outs, and you're good to go with a controversy that will keep the show in the media spotlight for weeks.
Frankly, the show isn't worth all this fuss. I don't think it's as bad as many critics would have us believe. But it sure as hell isnt going to impress anyone already enamored of the original, a masterpiece of modern storytelling that owes more to its overlooked subtlety and nuance than its much-buzzed-about shock value and naughty bits. Here, as there, Skins may challenge the tastes of certain viewers, but there is nothing remotely obscene or exploitative about it. Indeed, at times it is remarkably smart, sensitive and sweet. Some of the actors in the MTV version playing characters that have sex and take drugs may indeed be under the age of 17, but they aren't depicting anything teenagers haven't already seen on one screen or another. And they aren't making porn, so everyone worked up about this should take a deep breath and chill. (They might also consider that every actor involved in this show participated with parental consent and, I assume, legal representation of some sort.)
I have seen only the two episodes that MTV has televised to date, so my opinion may change. But I have seen in their entirety the first four seasons of the British original, which serves as a sketchy blueprint for the American version. Taken together, I consider the first two British seasons (Season 1 cast pictured here) to be among the very best series in the history of television (Seasons 3 and 4, not so much, but that's another column). They offer a consistently profound look into the lives of a group of high school students, and they explore universal truths about maturity, companionship, adolescence and adulthood that resonate at any age, not simply among the young.
That said, the original Skins, as entertaining and insightful as it is, never comes across as representative of all teenagers. Rather, the core characters interact with and rotate around each other because of the specific individuals they are, a circumstance not uncommon in adolescent social environments.
(An interesting side note: After watching the first two episodes of our Skins, a friend of mine who graduated from high school more than 40 years ago turned to me, laughed and said, "This is exactly what high school was like when I was a kid! What took them so long to get it right?")
It may be true that, over time, various characters and their experiences in Skins will speak to most teenagers. But that doesn't mean the show is about all teenagers all the time. In this particular fiction, as in real life, no two teens are shown to be the same, even if they have much in common. Its creators might disagree, and many of its detractors will continue to assert otherwise, but I don't see Skins as a general reflection of "normal" or "average" teenage life, because there is no such thing. Look around. Not all teens are singularly obsessed with sex, drugs, partying and anti-social behavior, and not all parents and teachers are clueless buffoons.
I was sorry to see that last week's second episode of Skins suffered so precipitous a plunge from the show's Week 1 ratings, because it was much better than the first, and it largely focused on the new Skins' most interesting character: Tea, a confident, openly gay 16-year-old girl who isn't afraid to express herself. (She doesn't exist in the British version.) Tea is played by Sofia Black-D'Elia, an engaging young performer who already stands out from her cast mates. It may be that many viewers bailed after the first episode because, as with the British opening hour, it focused so heavily on the character of Tony. British Tony (played by the very talented Nicholas Hoult, pictured here on the left) was a sexy, sensitive, multi-dimensional troublemaker, a bad boy who was so inherently good you couldn't help but root for him. American Tony, on the other hand, came off in Episode 1 as a smug, arrogant asshole.
I think this had more to do with the way American Tony was written and directed than with the performance of James Newman (pictured here on the right), a young man who (according to his MTV bio) has never before acted in anything. Nevertheless, the acceptance of this crucially important central character -- and, perhaps, Skins itself -- is going to rest largely on his inexperienced shoulders.
Ed Martin's 'Official' 10 Best of 2010
December 31, 2010 9:37 AM
By Ed Martin
With so many top quality programs on so many networks these days, it has become darn near impossible for critics to narrow the choices for their best-of-the-year lists down to a mere 10.
If anything, the difficulty of this annual challenge points to the fact that people who complain there is nothing worth watching on television don't know what they are talking about.
Consider this: My list of the 10 best programs of 2010 does not have room for ABC's Lost (a hot contender until Mother and purgatory came along) and Grey's Anatomy (another very near miss); HBO's True Blood and Treme; FX's Damages and Terriers; AMC's The Walking Dead; BBC America's Luther and The Choir; Showtime's Nurse Jackie; Starz' Pillars of the Earth; PBS' Sherlock; Discovery's Life, or CBS's The Big Bang Theory.
(Fortunately there was room on my Alternate Top Ten of 2010 to show some love for such noteworthy efforts as Starz' Spartacus: Blood and Sand, BBC America's Doctor Who, USA Network's Burn Notice and FX's Archer.)
And now, here is my official Top 10 list, beginning with the year's two best programs. The remaining eight are listed in no particular order.
Mad Men (AMC) -- Series creator Matthew Weiner shredded the narrative canvas of his much-honored period drama toward the end of its third season, ending the marriage of advertising executive Don Draper and his wife, Betty, and taking Draper and his closest associates out of their longtime firm and into a start-up agency, leading viewers to expect that Mad Men's fourth season would be all about rebuilding. Just the opposite: The newly single Don struggled with growing alcohol abuse, mounting difficulties with his daughter ,Sally (Kiernan Shipka in one of the true standout performances of the year), and major losses at his surprisingly fragile new business. Like the show itself, Jon Hamm has been outstanding from the start, yet gets better every year. Elisabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks also outdid themselves this time around.
The Pacific (HBO) -- The Pacific wasn't simply another landmark television miniseries -- it was one of the finest productions of any kind in the history of the medium. This seemingly insurmountable World War II saga about three real-life soldiers who fought in devastating land battles across the Pacific Theater from 1941 to 1945 was so emotionally impactful that viewers could feel the loss of each and every Marine who died in them. The state of the art battle sequences were just as unforgiving and intense as the opening half-hour of the modern World War II classic Saving Private Ryan. Now that they have so thoroughly covered World War II with Band of Brothers and The Pacific, I'd like to see executive producers Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman develop a similar epic about World War I before it completely recedes from memory.
The Good Wife (CBS) -- This intoxicating legal/political drama has consistently disproved the prevailing industry theory that scripted broadcast hours can't be as bold and boundary pushing as those on basic cable because of certain content restrictions -- not to mention its unapologetic determination to target grown-up viewers with storytelling carefully crafted to appeal to smart people. In other words, Good Wife is a ground-breaker. The performances by series lead Julianna Margulies and her cast are flawless, and the writers' canvas-wide attention to human detail, particularly among its supporting characters, is extraordinary. The last episode of 2010, about the Lockhart Gardner Bond team's collective effort to stop an execution with only nine hours to spare, was the series' best yet.
Breaking Bad (AMC) -- This series, pairing a desperate high school chemistry teacher with a gift for cooking high-grade meth and his former student who sells the stuff, has delivered more singularly sensational stand-out episodes than any show since The Sopranos. This season was no exception, offering up the series' most jaw-dropping hour to date. In the pulse-pounding final sequence of One Minute, Walter White's brother-in-law and DEA agent Hank Schrader, who had just been relieved of his badge and gun, was targeted in a sun-splashed shopping center parking lot by two murderous emissaries of a drug kingpin who wanted Walt eliminated. Hank took four bullets while crushing one of his attackers between his SUV and another vehicle and blowing the other's brains out. Dean Norris, the actor who plays Hank, rose to the level of his Emmy winning co-stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, whose estimable talents were also on spectacular display in the episode titled Fly (in which Walt became crazy obsessive about an insect in his meth lab) and the breathtaking season finale. Series creator Vince Gilligan moves these guys from one fresh hell to another with a storytelling style that can only be described as fearless. Under his wise guidance, Breaking Bad does more to illustrate the consequences of bad choices and vile behavior than any crime drama on television.
Dexter (Showtime) -- I've heard some grumbling of late that Dexter's recently concluded fifth season wasn't as good as its fourth. That may be true -- how can you top that terrifying (and Emmy-winning) turn by John Lithgow as Arthur Mitchell, the Trinity Killer, who murdered lovely Rita before becoming Dexter's latest victim? But Dexter this year still belongs on any list of television's top shows, if only for its unequaled ability to create and sustain moments of almost unbearable tension, in almost every episode. Like Lithgow before her, I think Julia Stiles will take home a guest Emmy for her riveting performance as Lumen, the victim of a savage group assault who sought deadly revenge, in the process briefly becoming Dexter's soul mate. I'd love to see her return next season. (Incidentally, I would also like to see the writers do more with Mitchell's widow and teenage children. They don't know Arthur is dead, and they don't know their friend Kyle was actually Dexter, but you'd think they would have seen some of the media coverage surrounding Rita's murder. The Trinity Killer case remains unsolved, but it cannot be forgotten, because Arthur hit the Miami-Dade Police Department way too close to home.)
Modern Family (ABC) -- Modern Family is still the freshest and funniest situation comedy on television, and it just keeps getting better. One has to go back to Seinfeld and Friends -- and before that, way back to All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show -- to find other sitcoms that consistently showcased each and every member of their casts (including supporting and recurring players) in such grand, award-worthy fashion. I'm okay with the fact that the characters on this show never seem to have serious money problems, which would suggest they aren't all that modern or contemporary, because that might compromise the giddy escapism of it all.
The Closer (TNT) -- Kyra Sedgwick this year finally received a long-overdue Emmy Award for her sparkling star turn as Deputy Police Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, one of the most entertaining television characters to come along in years. There are more procedural crime dramas on television than shows of any other genre, but Sedgwick's charming, disarming, powerfully quirky and deeply heartfelt performance elevates this one above the rest. The ensemble around her is pretty terrific, too, and together they make The Closer as much fun in reruns as it is the first time around. (That's great news for its syndication sales.) What a bummer it was to learn that the next season for this show will be its last, reportedly because Sedgwick, a New Yorker, wants to stop commuting to Los Angeles, where The Closer is filmed. I wonder if anyone discussed the possibility of having Brenda Leigh and her husband relocate to New York or New Jersey? Failing that, couldn't they all agree to produce two or three Closer movies a year?
Justified (FX) -- Though not unexpected, the cancellation of FX's Terriers continues to hurt. Fortunately we still have Justified, the network's other new outstanding drama of 2010 and a strong contender for best new series of the year. It's a gritty, witty, gripping crime drama about an amiable Kentucky lawman named Raylan Givens, a character featured in several stories by legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard, brought to life in a career-making performance by series lead Timothy Olyphant. As Boyd Crowder, an old friend of Raylon's gone very, very bad, Walton Goggins is so scary good, he's reminding us all over again that he should have won an Emmy for his work on The Shield as psycho cop Shane Vendrell.
Boardwalk Empire (HBO) -- Several episodes into its first season, I was beginning to think that HBO's richly detailed take on life in Atlantic City during Prohibition wasn't going to make this list. The story was moving too slowly, and I simply didn't care about any of the characters, even personable crime boss Nucky Thompson (the always fascinating Steve Buscemi) and the lovely Mrs. Schroder (Kelly Macdonald). Then Boardwalk Empire began to pick up its pace and excitingly reveal the dark and twisty innards of several people on its canvas, in particular bizarre federal agent Nelson Van Alden. Michael Shannon, the actor who portrays Van Alden, is already a front-runner for an Emmy next year as outstanding supporting actor in a drama series.
Glee (Fox) -- I was tempted to leave Glee off this list because of its unfortunate proclivity to overshadow the development of its regular characters in favor of shameless star-worship, to frequently veer from the absurd to the ridiculous (Carol Burnett as a freakin' Nazi hunter?) and, most of all, to slide from smart snark into lazy nastiness. But I caved in favor of the things Glee does so well: showing young viewers the benefits of inclusive social interaction, celebrating love and friendship, and producing extraordinary musical sequences the likes of which have never been seen in scripted television entertainment. I can't help but wonder, how do the producers of Glee continue to find so many unknown young performers of outsize vocal talent (most recently the remarkable Darren Criss) while American Idol has so much difficulty identifying three or four singers per season that don't make viewers' ears bleed?
Ed Martin's TV Top 10 List Unlike Any Other
December 20, 2010 12:28 PM
By Ed Martin
It seems that every year the same great shows appear on the annual Top 10 lists of most critics. (This year's predictable but deserving standouts include Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Pacific, The Good Wife, Modern Family and Lost.) That's why I always precede my own year's-best column with one honoring shows that likely won't enjoy such distinction but are worth a last shout-out before the new year begins.
Here's my Alternate Top 10 list for 2010.
Burn Notice (USA Network) -- USA's high-octane spy series is still the best crime caper on television, and Jeffrey Donovan and Gabrielle Anwar as the mysteriously terminated (or "burned") former government agent turned freelance spy Michael Westen and his bad-ass former girlfriend (and ex-IRA operative) Fiona Glenanne are still the hottest pair anywhere. Bruce Campbell as Michael's capable buddy Sam and Sharon Gless as his tough-talking mother Madeline provide invaluable comic support. Coby Bell has been a terrific addition this season as Jesse Porter, an agent Michael accidentally burned.
Pretty Little Liars (ABC Family) -- One of the most engrossing scripted series of the summer, Pretty Little Liars -- a mesmerizing mystery about four teenage girls haunted by increasingly intimate and potentially explosive messages seemingly sent from their dead friend -- proved that a good mythology can pull in even the increasingly fickle tween and teen audience and keep them enthralled. Liars quickly eclipsed The Secret Life of the American Teenager as the most talked-about series on ABC Family. When it returns on Jan. 3, expect this show to hold its own against all of midseason's first-run broadcast programming.
Doctor Who (BBC America) -- When you consider that most scripted television franchises don't last a season, and that truly successful ones last between five and 10 years, the longevity of Doctor Who is somewhat unfathomable: It debuted in November 1963. Beginning in 2005 and continuing through 2009, the creative genius known as Russell T. Davies did such a phenomenal job redefining this ancient franchise for a new generation of viewers (while remaining mindful and respectful of the generations that came before) that his would seem to be an impossible act to follow. Ditto the work of David Tennant, a fine actor who inhabited the title character so completely, it was as if nine men hadn't preceded him in the role. But new showrunner Steven Moffat and new leading man Matt Smith masterfully assuaged all fan fears and quickly exceeded all expectations. Together they repositioned Doctor Who all over again, in the process delivering one of its most deliriously entertaining seasons ever.
Spartacus: Blood and Sand (Starz) -- So ultra-violent that it cannot be categorized with anything else on television, Starz' grandly graphic sword-and-sandal adventure was pulse-pounding entertainment far more adult than most of the uncensored R-rated movies on premium cable channels. The powerful performances by its uniformly able-bodied cast, including Andy Whitfield, Lucy Lawless, Manu Bennett, John Hannah, Viva Bianca and Jai Courtney, were fearless, ferocious and flawless.
Archer (FX) -- A sleek, stylized and seductive animated series about hot-blooded, ruthlessly competitive secret agents, Archer is the best new comedy series of 2010. What's not to admire? Its look is martini-cool retro. Its vocal performances (especially those of H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, Jessica Walter and Chris Parnell) are first-rate. Its sense of humor is one of naughty sophistication. And its stories are great grown-up fun. In fact, Archer may also be the sexiest animated series in the history of the medium.
The Soup (E!) -- E!'s weekly take on the highs and lows of reality television and pop-culture jaw-droppers is still the funniest show on television. That has a lot to do with the talents of indefatigable host Joel McHale; if anything, his sublime comic timing has improved since he took on the lead role two years ago in the NBC sitcom Community. In an unexpectedly great development, The Soup this year was finally paired with a similarly funny and timely series in Fashion Police, making for a great hour of unforgiving comedy Friday nights at 10 p.m. ET. Let's hear it for Joan Rivers; as the high-energy host of Police, she has finally found the perfect television vehicle for her particular talents.
America's Got Talent (NBC) -- American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and Survivor this year remained the most talked about reality competition series on television. But NBC's underappreciated America's Got Talent was more entertaining than any of them, thanks to its hugely talented final four: Flamboyant musical performer Prince Poppycock, dazzling performance artists Fighting Gravity, preternaturally talented 10-year-old opera singer Janet Evancho, and disarming folk singer Michael Grimm (who won the top prize). In fact, each act in this year's top 10 was extraordinarily gifted. Much as NBC might benefit by moving this show into the formal broadcast season, I hope it remains a summer staple for years to come.
Attack of the Show (G4) -- G4's live, daily no-budget wonder Attack of the Show remains the coolest show on any screen, even after the departure of its hugely popular co-host Olivia Munn. The AOTS team does so much with so little, it puts to shame the many television productions that do so little with so much. Even when the unthinkable happened -- that would be the departure of the luminous Ms. Munn (soon to be seen in the new NBC sitcom Perfect Couples) -- co-host Kevin Pereira and various guest co-hosts (especially Alison Haislip and Morgan Webb) kept the show's signature blend of entertainment news, tech reviews, celebrity interviews, viral videos and nerdist humor intact.
The Fourth Hour of Today (NBC) -- What the heck is this show doing on a Top 10 list, you ask? It's here because the fourth hour of Today is the most enjoyable and viewer-friendly live program on daytime television. Live with Regis and Kelly is too rigidly structured to permit true spontaneity, The View is just too distressing to sit through (it went fantastically off the rails when co-hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg gave in to their tempers and huffed off the set because guest Bill O'Reilly made a remark they found objectionable), and The Talk has yet to become anything special. In contrast, sparkling, self-deprecating co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb took the tail end of Today and turned it into an hour of fresh, fast-paced, irresistible fun.
The Bold and the Beautiful (CBS) -- In a dark year for soaps that included the unceremonious demise of CBS's As the World Turns, that same network's Bold and the Beautiful did something hugely hopeful and impressive: It took on the challenges faced by the homeless and the disenfranchised and worked them into the very fabric of its canvas, not as a soapbox sermon but as an informative story that also entertains as it goes. Several soaps, including this one, have in the past featured brief stories about homeless people, but that isn't the case here. B&B is reportedly going to keep this issue in play for a long time to come. Meantime, it is still delivering all the sex, romance and overdone relationship drama that soap fans crave. This is how it's done!
Who Shot JR? What a Craze!
November 19, 2010 6:55 PM
By Ed Martin
Dancing with the Stars is on fire right now, not just in the ratings but in the media, the workplace, online, at parties and in that cacophony commonly referred to as our "national conversation." The spark that ignited the blaze came with Bristol Palin's upset ascension last Tuesday to this week's finals at the expense of Brandy, a much more talented competitor. There went the opportunity to see for the first time in the history of this show two strong female contenders (Brandy and Jennifer Grey) compete for the mirror ball.
Still, all that noise is kind of exciting. Outside of American Idol season finales, there hasn't been a lot happening on broadcast series television in recent years that gets everyone talking and reacting with such passion. Many of us remember when huge responses to things we had seen on the broadcast networks occurred with relative regularity.
That brings me to Dallas and, specifically, the resolution of the Who Shot J.R.? cliffhanger 30 years ago this week (Nov. 21, 1980, to be exact) -- a scripted series phenomenon the likes of which people hadn't seen since the birth of Little Ricky on I Love Lucy in January 1953. The Dallas milestone is the second highest rated episode of a television series in the history of the medium, later topped only by the finale of M*A*S*H in February 1983.
Looking back, it seems to me that scripted broadcast entertainment television peaked on that fateful Friday night when the world learned who shot all-powerful oilman J.R. Ewing -- simply because there has never been a moment like it since.
A number of factors contributed to its outsize success. Dallas, which began life as a throwaway Saturday night mini-series in April 1978, caught fire with its move to Friday in September of that year and was white hot by the 1979-80 season. The sizzling saga about a family of Texas oil tycoons ended its second season on March 21, 1980, two months before the time that most series now take their annual rest, and it didn't return until Nov. 7 (due to production delays resulting from the strike that year by members of the Screen Actors Guild).
But millions of viewers remained focused on the residents of the Southfork Ranch during the show's prolonged summer break because of its deceptively simple yet hugely dramatic Season 2 cliffhanger: After thoroughly pissing off almost everyone around him, J.R. was gunned down by one of his angered acquaintances.
The nationwide (worldwide!) obsession that followed had nothing to do with whether he would survive. Of course he would survive; Dallas would have died along with J.R. if Larry Hagman had been written off the show. Rather, it had to do with identifying his assailant. On Nov. 21 we learned that it was J.R.'s scheming sister-in-law Kristin (played by Mary Crosby).
The history making drama of it all did more than just bring an even bigger audience to what was already the highest rated show on television. Indeed, it changed series television as it had been known, by setting the stage for hundreds (or is it thousands?) of season finale cliffhangers in the decades to follow -- first in other primetime serials and eventually in almost every series, comedy or drama, on broadcast or cable. There had been previous end-of-season cliffhangers on other series and two on Dallas itself -- one at the end of the 1978 miniseries, the other at the end of its first season, but there hadn't been anything like this one. Before long, almost everyone wanted to get in on the act. Season finale cliffhangers remain de rigueur to this day.
All I can say is that Dallas made life a lot more fun that year for those of us who were watching, even during its extended summer break. Television series have delivered countless cliffhangers and explosive season finales since, including the infamous Moldavian massacre on Dynasty in May 1985, the lunacy of which actually worked against the show, and many more on Dallas, which lamely repeated itself at the end of its tenth season by having Sue Ellen Ewing open fire on J.R. just as her sister had eight years earlier.
Happily, it has been reported that Larry Hagman, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy, the actors who portrayed J.R., Sue Ewing and J.R.'s brother Bobby, are in talks to reprise their roles in a new Dallas series for TNT which would focus on the children of their characters. This is great news for anyone who remembers how much fun Dallas and other primetime serials used to be. They were part of what made the early '80s a time of great excitement on broadcast television, even with the nascent threat of all that cable wire looming on the horizon.
Consider: During the summer of 1980, when Dallas was in reruns and tens of millions of people were waiting with breathless anticipation for its return in the fall, there was building over on ABC Daytime similar unprecedented excitement on General Hospital. That was the summer that Luke and Laura went on the run from the menacing Frank Smith mob, sending that show's ratings skyward and setting it up for the historic stories to come in 1981 (the tale of the infamous weather machine that brought a blizzard to Port Charles in mid-August and, shortly after that, the record-setting wedding of Luke and Laura).
GH that year forever changed the daytime drama genre, as most soap operas scrambled to add similar young couples to their canvases and send them off on thrilling adventures for countless summers to come.
But just as no daytime serial has ever had the level of success enjoyed by General Hospital during that period, no primetime serial will ever deliver the same excitement as Dallas did with Who Shot J.R.?
'Bold & Beautiful' Delivers Grit & Gusto
November 17, 2010 12:32 PM
By Ed Martin
Just when I thought significant creative advancement in daytime drama was a thing of the past, CBS's The Bold and the Beautiful has suddenly brought a new level of excitement to the genre, all the while reminding me why I started watching soaps in the first place.
The new energy at B&B began a few weeks ago with a storyline in which one of its veteran characters -- fashion industry titan Stephanie Forrester, played with great grit and gusto by multiple Emmy winner Susan Flannery -- was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. The cancer had spread and she was told she likely has only a few months to live, even with aggressive treatment. Nothing new there: Through the decades, countless soap characters have been brought to the brink of death by cancer and other diseases, only to survive after a last minute medical treatment, often an experimental one -- a storytelling contrivance, I might note, that rings false and somewhat offensive to those of us who have actually lost loved ones to catastrophic illnesses.
But this time it feels new and different -- and realistic. If Stephanie doesn't lose this battle (and Flannery doesn't leave the show), I'm certain that she will be permanently changed by the experience, as cancer survivors often are.
B&B hasn't stopped there, which is why I feel it is breaking new ground. This may be a show about the rich and the fabulous (and the fabulous-looking), but it is doing something decidedly down to earth with this narrative by layering a second huge story of profound social importance on top of it.
After weeks of stubbornly asserting that she would decline treatment in what she perceives as a losing battle and instead do her best to enjoy the time she has left, Stephanie inadvertently came into contact with members of the homeless community in Los Angeles, the city in which B&B is set. She was so moved by the sheer determination of the homeless and the disenfranchised to survive and make better lives for themselves that she was moved to have the tumor in her lung removed and make arrangements for further treatment once she has recovered from the surgery. She now wants to live, not to continue the life she has had, but to be able to devote herself to helping those less fortunate.
I'm told that B&B won't shy away from documenting the challenges that late-stage cancer patients must endure as they fight to survive. Other soaps tend to sanitize such things, but I don't think this one will, if only because I don't believe the formidable Flannery would agree to play it that way. (I may be forgetting something, but I think the last time soap viewers saw a character endure the prolonged difficulties and frequent setbacks that often come with cancer treatment, told in real time over a period of many months, was on General Hospital in 1994-95 with the memorable story of Monica Quartermaine's battle against breast cancer.) Of course, Stephanie's circumstances, as punishing as they may be, will be easier than those faced by millions of Americans, in that she is a fantastically wealthy person who can afford the finest medical care and focus her energies solely on the challenge of getting well, a luxury not available to most of us. Happily, this damning imbalance has been acknowledged by Stephanie in conversation with other characters.
Stephanie's story is being played with such raw honesty and deep integrity that, regardless of her fate, I can't help but believe that the show will keep important concerns about the homeless on its canvas for a long time to come. Indeed, B&B recently showed Stephanie prematurely checking out of the hospital after her surgery and returning to the streets (and a shelter) to talk with homeless people about their circumstances and learn all she could about them. (In another strong shot of realism, some of the people she met were living very nicely just a couple of years ago but lost everything to the economic ravages of our ongoing recession.) The show's producers hired dozens of homeless people to either talk about their lives (to the fictional Stephanie) and/or appear as extras during these unforgettable episodes (and others leading up to them).
I'm particularly impressed with the way executive producer Brad Bell and his team integrated these two storylines into their canvas, keeping their other characters and their personal dramas in play while taking so much of the show to places it has never before been. B&B's story structure is in perfect balance, offering as much romance, sex, scandal and superficial fun as ever. The veteran cast members are all in typical fine form (especially Flannery, likely next year to add another Emmy to her shelf), while the uniformly appealing younger players are more than holding their own.
It seems to me that the producers and writers of the other five soaps could learn a lot by watching B&B these days. At a time when so many stories on the remaining daytime dramas have so little to offer, even as entertainment, B&B is singlehandedly proving that soap operas can still have enormous value on many levels. All things considered, that's a minor miracle.
'Walking Dead' Isn't Just Graphic Horror - It's Compelling Human Drama
October 28, 2010 1:15 PM
By Ed Martin
Television viewers will remember 2010 as the year that began with the arrival of the most brutal and graphic series in the history of the medium -- Starz' gory gladiator epic Spartacus -- and ended with the premiere of another show that is in many ways even more violent and shocking -- AMC's The Walking Dead.
Tellingly, both programs could have been slapdash cheese fests, in the rich traditions of the low-budget sword-and-sandal movies and goofy zombie flicks that filled drive-ins (and late-night pay cable) for decades. Both could have enjoyed instant distinction and ongoing discussion simply because they show things most series do not -- they dare to go there. Instead, the integrity of their artistic visions and the uncompromised quality of their storytelling should make both of them strong contenders for many critics' annual best-of-the-year lists.
The difference between the two, of course, is that Spartacus is a pay cable series unfettered by content restrictions while The Walking Dead -- a powerful horror story about a handful of people struggling to survive after most of the human population becomes man-eating monsters -- is on advertiser-supported basic cable, where it doesn't so much push the envelope as rip it to shreds. Not since The Shield has an original basic cable drama done so much so quickly to move beyond the understood limits of its medium. Like The Shield, it does so with such high standards and such a strong sense of purpose that it seems unlikely to generate much of a fuss. I can't say that it raises the bar for other television series about zombies, because there are no other ongoing series about walking corpses. I'd rather say that it raises the bar for zombie movies, which tend to shy away from character development and focus on the terror at hand.
I've been catching up on the comic book series on which Dead is based, and it's pretty clear from the start (on the page and on the screen) that the title refers as much to the rag-tag human survivors of whatever happened that turned most of the population into mindless creatures, existing solely to consume the flesh of living humans and animals, as it does to the creatures themselves. (I have no idea if the comic, which is still a hot seller after seven years, has ever provided an explanation as to how life as we know it came to so ghastly an end.) Emotionally and psychologically, many of the survivors are as dead as the zombies around them, an understandable end result of working so hard to stay alive when life doesn't offer the possibility of anything beyond an extension of their present despair.
It is this narrative element that elevates Dead from a standard horror story to a satisfying human drama. Interestingly, it is clearest when the living confront the dead: A determined show of compassion by a police officer for a bisected zombie and a man's failed effort to eliminate the zombie that was once his wife are deeper and more profound emotional moments than any of those shared by the survivors (at least during the first three episodes).
That's another thing that makes Dead so unique and so special -- its ability to suddenly pull the viewer in and engage sympathy on a primal level, even if you're busy trying to maintain a safe psychological distance from the unrelenting horror at hand. Dead is scary good fun to watch in a detached state, but it's a more intense viewing experience with those periodic emotional connections. You have to feel for these people, even when they aren't particularly likeable, and you're reminded from time to time that the flesh-eating monsters deserve some compassion, as well.
In some ways -- and to its credit -- Dead feels more like a very long movie (or a series of one-hour movies) than a dramatic television series. It is that distinctive. It is also that aggressive.
I note with some concern that the first episode of Dead has the potential to turn off viewers with specific sensitivities, including those who cannot stomach certain forms of violence. An animal suffers a particularly awful fate that may prompt a number of viewers to abandon this series and never look back. It's a key sequence early in the run of the comic book, but it is infinitely more repugnant and upsetting on film than on the page. If this were my production, I would have found a way to work around it, since the series takes other notable liberties with the source material.
(Speaking of which, the Dead comic has long been a hot topic at Comic-Con. So it should come as no surprise to learn that its considerable fan base was over the moon with AMC's display and panel presentation for the series at this year's geek extravaganza. The waiting line for the Comic-con photo op pictured below, placing yourself inside a re-creation of an especially shocking scene in the first episode, stretched for over an hour.)
AMC is making history here. There have been many anthology series over the years on broadcast, basic and pay that might be classified as horror (Night Gallery, The Hitchhiker, Masters of Horror, Fear Itself) and even more ongoing dramas with strong horror elements (Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries). But I can't recall another series structured around a core group of characters that was a full-throttle, straightforward horror show, utterly devoid of humor, camp or general weirdness.
How extraordinary it would be if The Walking Dead were successful enough in its freshman run to warrant additional seasons, and if those subsequent seasons were also timed to the arrival of Halloween. I'd like to see them debut earlier in October, to take advantage of and enhance the spirit of the season. Fresh Dead would be a wonderful addition to AMC's annual FearFest.
Syfy Dazzles the Digerati
October 16, 2010 10:02 AM
Meaghan Rath, Sam Huntington and Sam Witwer in Syfy's January series Being Human
By Ed Martin
At a time when many established television networks have been cutting back on their publicity and promotion efforts, it is remarkable to watch one of them actually move in the opposite direction.
That's what Syfy has done since 2007 with its annual Digital Press Tours, in which it brings executives and talent from its series together with dedicated bloggers, tweeters and Web writers for a day of press conferences and other activities. It does so in addition to (rather than in place of) its twice yearly presentations at Television Critics Association tours and its massive presence at the San Diego Comic-Con (the highlight of which remains the must-attend party it throws with Entertainment Weekly).
This year's digital tour took place earlier this week at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando and was bracketed by activities that fueled further interest from the digerati: An opening night dinner (which included a surprise guest appearance by NBC Universal President and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Zucker), followed by a tour of Universal's 20th Annual Halloween Horror Nights (an area featuring eight haunted houses populated by hundreds of actors portraying zombies and ghouls) and a private closing night event at the sensational new theme park The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
(The locations of Syfy's digital press tours always complement the network's genre base. For example, the 2008 tour took place at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the legendarily "haunted" hotel that was the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining, and it concluded with an official ghost hunt led by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of Ghost Hunters.)
Twitter had yet to explode four years ago when Syfy produced its first digital tour, but it largely powered this week's event, as the several dozen writers in attendance were actively encouraged to tweet like mad throughout the day. Facebook postings and YouTube uploads were also welcomed, and Foursquare venues were established for the tour itself and each of its panels.
In a sign of how times are changing, digital photography and video recording were permitted before, during and after each session. Executives and talent alike were totally on board with this approach, which is hardly the case at many other press events (including most sessions at TCA tours). It was not uncommon to see Syfy talent hanging out on site after their sessions ended, sitting for video and audio interviews and posing for pictures. (This photo: Neil Grayston of Eureka and Allison Scagliotti of Warehouse 13.)
Once upon a time that material would have been held until a later time and uploaded onto Web sites, but most of it now is instantly tweeted -- and, more importantly, competitively re-tweeted. The digerati were told that the writer whose tweets generated the most re-tweeting after each press conference would win a (very modest) prize.
Watching the digital press tour in action reminded me of what I see every year after panels at Comic-Con, where hundreds (if not thousands) of fans hurriedly tweet and upload comments, pictures and videos obtained during sessions. It is a massive information output operating totally outside of traditional journalism and communication structures.
But Syfy's digital press tour represents a hybrid of the old and the new, with an organized foundation that allows access only to credentialed attendees and directly feeds their digital output in a very informal but productive manner. Incidentally, Syfy refers to the ever-expanding group of bloggers and others that attend these tours as the Syfy Digital Network.
An event that generates thousands of tweets quoting what television personalities have to say about their shows (or themselves) has its place, but Syfy wisely added weight to the tour by integrating some breaking news into the day. That happened during a panel for Syfy Ventures (the network's portfolio of businesses and joint ventures) featuring Syfy President Dave Howe; Syfy Executive Vice President, Original Content and Universal Cable Productions Co-Head, Original Content Mark Stern; Syfy Digital Senior Vice President and General Manager Craig Engler; and Syfy Ventures Senior Vice President Alan Seiffert. As they outlined plans to expand Syfy into a "global lifestyle brand" and find partnerships that will take Syfy beyond television, Seiffert announced that the network had just closed a deal with female genre merchandise company Her Universe to create a branded line of apparel and accessories under the Syfy Gear banner. Her Universe founder Ashley Eckstein was on hand to provide further information, the details of which seemed to generate a fresh frenzy of twittering in the room.
The digital press tour also featured the first press conferences for the network's upcoming series Being Human -- an adaptation of the BBC drama about contemporary vampire, werewolf and ghost roommates -- and Marcel's Quantum Kitchen, a reality series starring Top Chef season two runner-up Marcel Vigneron, a young chef who specializes in highly unusual scientific methods of preparing food. (Liquid nitrogen sometimes plays a key role.) If Vigneron's series, debuting in February, is as entertaining as his demonstration of how he pulls together certain dishes, it will likely find an audience even though Syfy isn't a destination for cooking show enthusiasts.
Being Human, on the other hand, should easily fit right into Syfy's established mix of scripted genre programming when it premieres in January. The chemistry between the three leads (Sam Witwer, Meaghan Rath, Sam Huntington) during their panel was extraordinary. If that comes through in the series itself, Human will surely be the network's next breakout hit.
Syfy's digital tour also featured panels for the ongoing series Caprica, Sanctuary, Destination Truth and Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, along with upcoming one-shot holiday episodes of Eureka and Warehouse 13 (both scheduled for Dec. 7) and the new reality series Hollywood Treasure, which stars Joe Maddalena, the world's leading auctioneer of original movie, television and pop culture collectibles. (It premieres Oct. 27.) Kofi Kingston and Beth Phoenix, two wrestlers from World Wrestling Entertainment, were also on hand to discuss the recent genre-defying move of WWE Friday Night Smackdown to Syfy.
Unfortunately, there were no cast members on hand from any of the network's Ghost Hunters series. But in every other way Syfy's digital press tour was a one-day crash course that showcased where the network is at and where it is going, smartly packaged and presented for maximum digital exposure. Syfy will surely expand on this in the years to come, and it will come as no surprise if other networks follow suit.
In fact, one can only wonder what they're waiting for. Why not take full advantage of today's communications technology in a way that complements but does not compromise other areas of publicity and promotion?
Are Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez Right for 'American Idol'?
September 22, 2010 4:34 PM
By Ed Martin
The summer's worst-kept secrets were confirmed Wednesday: Long-time Aerosmith front-man and legendary party guy Steven Tyler and entertainment goddess Jennifer Lopez will replace Simon Cowell, Kara DioGuardi and Ellen DeGeneres next season at the American Idol judges' table.
The much-ballyhooed live online presentation of this "huge" news proved to be an epic fail: There was no audio for the first few minutes on americanidol.com and ustream.tv, the two sites carrying the live reveals on stage at The Forum in Los Angeles. An unintentional cone of silence fell over Tyler's entire appearance and much of Lopez's time with host Ryan Seacrest. The audio popped in just as Lopez declared that she wanted to find "the next Michael Jackson," which had me wondering if she had ever seen the show. Right now, it seems to me that Idol is so far removed from what it once was that it will be lucky to find the next Prince Poppycock!
To give credit where it's due, the Idol team is reverting to the three-judge format after two seasons of reckless self-destruction. But gosh, what's with the addition of two superstars to a franchise that has never been about stargazing? Giant celebrities have never fit comfortably in the Idol mold; in fact, their presence goes against everything that made this show an instant (and unexpected) phenomenon right from its start back in the summer of 2002. The public has embraced Idol because it is all about discovering talent on the stage and empowering viewers at home. It is not about the "stars" at the judges table.
Consider these observations: With the exception last season of response to Harry Connick Jr., I have never heard anyone rave about the contributions of any celebrity mentors or performers on this show. They come, they go, they sometimes give bad advice to the eager young wannabes, and then they are forgotten. Moreover, the decision back in Season 3 to rotate celebrity judges throughout the competition proved unfortunate, as few understood it and none was invested in its outcome. The arrival of Ellen DeGeneres and the addition of numerous celebrity judges to the Season 9 audition process (which yielded the least-talented group of finalists in the show's history) proved to be breaking points.
The selection of Steven Tyler truly baffles me. I have no idea what he will bring to the show that is in line with the proven preferences of its audience, which has never actively embraced kinetic entertainers (except for Adam Lambert). The gentler, quieter, classier Jennifer Lopez might have an easier time fitting in. I believe she will be the first judge who is also a parent. She will certainly be the first mom on deck, so I would expect she might bring a nurturing quality to the show.
I don't know if they are available or would have even wanted the gig. But if I ruled American Idol, my dream duo would have been British television personality Gareth Malone, the well-informed, multi-talented star of the BBC reality competition/observational documentary hybrid series The Choir (seen here Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on BBC America), and music industry executive Anastasia Brown, the best and brightest and smartest judge on USA's late and much-missed Nashville Star.
Malone trains kids and teenagers to sing in classical music groups at schools or in communities that generally do not offer music programs for young people. He knows music. He's used to working with kids (most of them younger than the average Idol contestant) and he is especially good with those who have lots of talent but no real experience at performing. He has a strong presence on camera. He can be quite charming at times but can also be devastatingly direct, sometimes reducing his pupils to tears with his criticism. Also, since he always begins each arc of the show with more novice singers than will fit in a final choral group, Malone is no stranger to the difficulties of painful weekly eliminations.
The tough-talking and unwaveringly direct Brown actually became known as the "female Simon Cowell" during her three years on Nashville. She was always entertaining to watch and interesting to listen to, crisply and efficiently weeding out the weakest performers without batting an eyelash. Brown understands how challenging and unforgiving the music and entertainment industries can be, and she was never afraid to play the bad guy when other judges on the show (and there were several) were determined to be nice.
Like most of the regulars we have come to know on Idol, Malone and Brown are largely unknown to viewers. That's a good thing. Remember, when this show debuted in '02, few people had ever heard of judges Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson or co-hosts Ryan Seacrest and the long-forgotten Brian Dunkleman. (Paula Abdul had been a big star -- way back in the '80s!) Like many of its contestants Idol made them stars, too. That's the way the audience likes it!
'As the World Turns': Why the Sun Should Never Set on Soaps
September 16, 2010 11:11 AM
By Ed Martin
Companies put so much time and money into their efforts to establish household names that it always amazes me when they turn around and destroy one. Not that it happens very often. But it's going to happen this Friday, when the final episode of the venerable CBS soap opera As the World Turns will be telecast.
Like many people reading this column, I wasn't around when ATWT debuted way back on April 2, 1956. But I remember my mother and my friends' mothers watching it when I was a kid. I think all people born anytime during the '50s, '60s and '70s can recall something about this show from their childhoods, perhaps because it was the highest rated daytime drama from 1958 to 1978.
Even if they never watched it they probably heard people talk about it. They might remember, as depicted last season on Mad Men, that it was famously interrupted on Nov. 22, 1963 for a devastating announcement by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Or they might recall the recurring sketch that it inspired on The Carol Burnett Show titled As the Stomach Turns, which itself became a commonly used comic phrase. They might also remember that ATWT in the summer of 1965 seeded a primetime spin-off titled Our Private World featuring vixen deluxe Lisa Miller Hughes. (Played by Eileen Fulton, Lisa -- now Lisa Miller Hughes Eldridge Shea Colman McCall Mitchell Grimaldi Chedwyn -- is still on the ATWT canvas and will be seen in the final episode.)
As the World Turns was the breakout serial that made soaps a driving force in American popular culture and set the stage for daytime dramas to enjoy a half-century of success. I can't help but wonder why CBS and Procter & Gamble, the two corporate giants that made it so vital for so long, would choose to eliminate a product that is so well known it is recognized even by those who don't use it (or in this case watch it). Actually, I do know why ATWT ended production in June and will never be seen again after Friday. For reasons both internal and external, daytime soap operas are a doomed entertainment format. (You can scroll down in this very blog to my Dec. 17, 2009 entry, the one with the headline Ed Martin Says We Need Our Soaps, to learn why all of their days are numbered.)
Like millions of other soap opera enthusiasts, I was all worked up one year ago when CBS and P&G killed Guiding Light, a legendary soap that started on radio in the '30s. I wondered why nobody in the television business could come up with a way to continue so historic a franchise -- as a weekly primetime show, a basic cable series, a groundbreaking Internet production, a series of made-for-television movies. But the Light went out, the world kept turning, and here it is a year later and another soap that can only be described as iconic is falling victim to the inability of current television executives to think outside the box.
There was a time not too long ago when I thought ATWT would revitalize daytime drama. In recent years, the show added to its canvas two gay characters -- Luke Snyder and Noah Mayer -- and suddenly enjoyed more online publicity than any other soap. (It was as if broadcast soaps were finally catching up with MTV's notably diverse reality serial The Real World.) Indeed, savvy young viewers who were drawn to this storyline lifted the Luke and Noah scenes (hundreds of them over the years) out of daily recordings of the show and posted them on YouTube, launching a new kind of character-specific soap opera watching. Meantime, CBS launched a reality series on its Web site titled InTurn in which aspiring young actors lived together and competed for a contract role on ATWT. InTurn ran online for three seasons.
No matter what the producers of ATWT tried, though, it seems it was never enough to save the show from the multiple corporate and creative forces that were coming together to destroy it -- and, in fact, all broadcast soap operas.
To anyone who gets them, to anyone who understands the deep emotional connection that comes with following well-crafted stories featuring multi-generational characters on a daily basis over a long period of time, there is nothing else in the media landscape that comes close. Consider the unforgettable drama last week on ATWT as the long-running Luke and Noah storyline was brought to a hugely emotional conclusion.
Even the short version reads like the stuff of classic soap opera: Luke's new love interest, dashing but distant surgeon Reid Oliver, who restored Noah's eyesight a short while ago, tragically died from injuries sustained in a car accident while racing to another city to retrieve a donor heart for his ailing arch-rival Dr. Chris Hughes, with whom he was competing for the position of chief of staff at the city hospital. (Reid was speeding to Bay City, the setting for another unceremoniously axed P&G serial, Another World.) Reid insisted that Chris receive his heart just before he died. Everyone tried to comfort an utterly devastated Luke, including Chris' girlfriend Katie, but only Noah was able to get through to him. (Van Hansis, the actor who plays Luke, deserves an Emmy for his heartbreaking performance during the story of Reid's death. Of course, given the fiasco that the Daytime Emmys have become, maybe I shouldn't wish that embarrassment on him and should instead just encourage the networks to find this guy a primetime role he can run with.)
At the other end of the soap age range, and no less engrossing, the long absent Dr. John Dixon (Larry Bryggman), who has deep ties to a number of other characters, has been brought back for the show's final weeks, and it has been splendid watching him interact with the family members and friends he has ignored for years -- especially his bitter ex, ruthless businesswoman Lucinda Walsh (played by the mercurial Elizabeth Hubbard). In a grand display of soap storytelling at its best, John's return has reignited and partially resolved a number of old storylines while also advancing much current drama. (For example, John, a highly skilled surgeon, transplanted Reid's heart into Chris.)
I'll miss such marvelous moments from As the World Turns, as I do those from Guiding Light and so many other soaps, some long gone (like Another World), others still with us but no longer delivering the goods. The particular long-term viewing pleasure that daily dramas provide is still something that only television can offer, but as soaps continue to suffer and die, it's getting increasingly difficult to find. Soon, all we'll have left are endless variations on Bravo's Real Housewives franchise.
'Entourage' surprises with its own Hollywood comeback
September 9, 2010 11:16 AM
By Ed Martin
I pretty much wrote off HBO's Entourage two seasons ago, but this summer it has, without warning, become the television equivalent of a seductively trashy beach read. For the first time in the history of this series about a movie star of marginal talent and his opportunistic buddies, its characters are learning that there are actual consequences for bad behavior, and the results are unexpectedly entertaining.
Entourage always felt a little too sanitized to me, given that it's an uncensored comedy about young men with the means to enjoy whatever they want whenever they want it. As TMZ and so many other tabloid magazines and Web sites have made inescapably clear, the young end of the entertainment business isn't known for its sensitivity or its sobriety. Temptation is everywhere, especially when money is no object and egos obliterate normalcy.
But check out Entourage this season. (Air times below.) Suddenly it's all alcohol and drugs and porn stars and partying and psychotic behavior. Now that's Hollywood!
After six seasons of playing actor and eventual superstar Vincent Chase as a laid-back, low-key, stand-up guy, I can only assume Adrian Grenier is having a ball with young Vince's downfall, the causes of which are coming at him from every direction, not all of them intentional.
His best bud and manager, Eric (Kevin Connolly), is now in business with an upcoming cut-throat smoothie named Scott, whose aggressive attempts to ingratiate himself to Vince often include playing to his weaknesses and encouraging all kinds of risky business. (Scott is played by this year's Hot Actor, Scott Caan, who steals almost every scene he's in, just as he stole the pilot for CBS' reboot of Hawaii 5-O from its leading man, Alex O'Loughlin.)
Other bud Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) is on the verge of becoming a tequila titan, with potential financial backing from the one and only Mark Cuban, who knows a good investment when he sees one. Thanks to a boozy bit of Twittering, Vince has become the unofficial spokesperson for Turtle's new product, which comes to him through his sexy new girlfriend's father, a stubborn Mexican businessman.
With so much tequila lying around the house, Vince has given in to heavy drinking, handily encouraged by his half-brother, Drama (Kevin Dillon), who's been busy drowning his own career sorrows, and his new girlfriend, the real-life porn star Sasha Grey, who also likes to party, very often naked.
It's all too much for Vince to resist, and his reckless indulgences have brought his career to the brink.
Meanwhile, his combustible agent Ari has been so busy with his own multiple crises that he initially didn't notice what was happening to his star client, though that changed when he found Vince lying naked and wasted by his swimming pool. Still, Ari can't focus on helping Vince because he's too busy burning in fresh hells of his own creation -- lurid accusations of sexual harassment that have mushroomed into full-on scandal after finding their way onto Deadline Hollywood, a failed business deal with the NFL, and an explosive confrontation with rival Amanda Daniels (Carla Gugino) in a crowded restaurant that may have brought his marriage and career to a humiliating end.
All of these storylines are working so well because they collide with and energize each other with some frequency, just as multiple storylines on soap operas used to do, back when they were well written. Entourage is also making excellent use of the many supporting characters that have brightened its canvas in recent years. Autumn Reeser as young agent Lizzie Grant, Beverly D'Angelo as Ari's partner Babs, Constance Zimmer as studio chief Dana Gordon, and the above mentioned Ms. Gugino light up the screen whenever they appear. So do Emmanuelle Chriqui as Eric's ever-patient fiancee Sloan, Janet Montgomery as his helpful assistant Jennie, and Perrey Reeves as the long-suffering Mrs. Ari Gold.
Further, there have been enjoyable (if sparse) contributions from recurring players William Fichtner, Rhys Coiro and Gary Cole, while Jonathan Keltz has proven the perfect straight man as Jake, Ari's new secretary and the frequent target of his tirades. If I've one gripe this season, it's that we haven't seen enough of secretary turned agent Lloyd, played by the once-invaluable Rex Lee.
Not all of Vince's issues are the stuff of comedy, at least not in the traditional sense. Then again, Edie Falco was just honored with an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her portrayal of the hard-drinking, drug-abusing, adulterous title character on Showtime's Nurse Jackie, so it's only fair to cut Entourage some slack. Just like watching Jackie cope with the consequences of her reckless choices, there is satisfaction to be had in seeing Vince screw up after all that partying, messing up meetings and potentially destroying everything he has worked for. The same is true of Ari, although the world of crap he's drowning in is the clear result of his toxic personality and brutish business ethic, the likes of which are not uncommon in a town where vulgarians often come out on top.
I sure as hell hope that come Sunday's season finale everything isn't readily put back in order for them. Should Vince and Ari be made to suffer for their spectacular bad choices right through next year's episodes, finding some kind of redemption only as the series draws to a close, then Entourage might well be remembered as a great show that ended the way it should, rather than as a pointless comedy that overstayed its welcome.
[Before Sunday's HBO season finale at 10:30 p.m. ET, catch up to the previous two episodes Thursday (Sept. 9 at 10 and 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO). Entourage starts its broadcast syndication run next Monday-Friday (Sept. 13-17 in late night). Check local TV station listings.]
Jimmy Fallon Pumps Up an Exceptional Emmy Telecast
August 30, 2010 1:00 PM
By Ed Martin
What got into the Emmy Awards this year? The three-hour telecast was actually fast-moving and entertaining! In terms of award-giving there wasn't a misfire all night. Even the host exceeded all expectations, pumping the show full of infectious energy right from the top and keeping at it throughout.
It seemed as though the Emmy producers threw out the old rulebook and decided to loosen up to a greater extent than ever before. This may be the result of the ceremony being banished to the dog days of August (due to NBC's NFL obligations) when, presumably, fewer people would be watching or caring about what went on.
(A note on that: Would it have been so calamitous for NBC and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to schedule the Emmys on a Monday night in September? Major award shows including the Academy Awards used to run on Mondays. When was the stone-carving ceremony that irrevocably moved all of them to Sundays, even at the expense of a potential audience?)
Whatever the reasons, host Jimmy Fallon was allowed to do what he did best on his old Saturday Night Live days -- perform killer impersonations of musical performers and cleverly clown around with a youthful exuberance that is much rarer in the medium than it ought to be (especially in late night, where everyone suddenly seems so old -- including, sometimes, Fallon).
The opening number, featuring Fallon in Bruce Springsteen mode belting out Born to Run while cast members from Glee, 30 Rock, Mad Men, Community, The Vampire Diaries and Lost, plus Kate Gosselin and Randy Jackson, sang and danced all around him, jazzed the home and theater audience alike, and the excitement never really flagged after that.
(Another note: Since Fallon was dressed as Springsteen in the iconic "Born to Run" video (picture at top above), couldn't arrangements have been made to have him pull Courteney Cox out of the audience and onto the stage, just as Springsteen did a quarter century ago? Maybe it's not too late for MTV to orchestrate something similar at this year's Video Music Awards.)
Not content to rest on a killer opening, as too many hosts on too many award shows often are, the indefatigable Fallon remained front and center throughout.
(He even delivered a second high-concept musical performance later in the show, paying a collective farewell tribute to 24, Law & Order and Lost as Elton John, a member of Boyz II Men and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, respectively.) His guitar-strumming strolls down the aisles provided welcome breaks from all that stage-watching and facilitated home-audience star-gazing. Near the end, he scored one of the biggest laughs of the night when he introduced presenter Tom Selleck as his "real" father.
Fallon ought to win an Emmy next year for his Emmy excellence. Indeed, the only time he fizzled was when he was forced to read lame-ass tweets from viewers. They were about as amusing as the mindless banter created by ridiculously overpaid writers with which so many presenters were saddled -- which is to say not at all. (Comedy stars Matthew Perry and Lauren Graham were made to look so unfunny they should demand public apologies.) It's a safe bet that tweets will not be included in future Emmy telecasts. Now if we could only do away with all that foolish joke-telling, too -- except when Ricky Gervais is on stage.
Also on the short list of things that should never be seen or heard during future Emmy ceremonies: Dreadful voice-over babble as winners are walking to the stage. Music will do very nicely, thank you.
As for the awards themselves, there were only two major categories that completely eluded both my predictions and preferences: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and Outstanding Reality Competition Series.
There was a time earlier this season when it occurred to me that Archie Panjabi of The Good Wife would be a major contender in the former, so her win wasn't a huge surprise to me, even if I thought it would go to her co-star Christine Baranski (and even though I hoped Sharon Gless would be recognized). The big win for Top Chef was the biggest and most interesting surprise of the night. I like Chef, but I don't necessarily think it is more deserving of an award than The Amazing Race (or Dancing with the Stars, for that matter).
The other exciting surprise -- and also, from where I sat, the nights' happiest moment -- was the long-overdue win for Kyra Sedgwick of The Closer as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. At last!
One might also say that Jim Parsons' much-deserved win as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for The Big Bang Theory was something of a surprise, but only because everyone thought Alec Baldwin of 30 Rock would own this category for the run of his show. Meantime, the only person surprised by Edie Falco's win as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy for Nurse Jackie was Falco herself.
There can be no complaining about Jane Lynch, Eric Stonestreet and Aaron Paul being honored (along with Panjabi) in the supporting categories. Same goes for Mad Men and Modern Family being honored as Outstanding Drama and Comedy Series, respectively.
Interestingly, the only big win that didn't sit well with me was the three-peat for Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston. It's not that Cranston doesn't deserve ongoing recognition for his consistently brilliant performance. It's just that he already has two Emmys for his work on the show (and wasn't given quite as much great stuff to do in its third season as in its first two), while three of the other men who were up for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series -- Michael C. Hall, Jon Hamm and especially Hugh Laurie -- are egregiously overdue (and did their best work ever last season). Going forward, perhaps Sedgwick's long-awaited win will give those guys hope.
Predicting the Emmys -- Take Three
August 27, 2010 5:17 AM
By Ed Martin
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Should win: Mad Men
Will win: Mad Men
Nothing sucks the excitement out of the Emmys faster than for the same show (or performer) to win year after year after year, but there's no getting past the fact that AMC's endlessly engaging period piece is among that handful of shows in the history of the medium that simply gets better with age.
While even the best shows begin to ripen and rot by their third or fourth season, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner isn't afraid to make major changes to his narrative structure each year, with consistently spectacular results.
As much as I support Mad Men, AMC's other red-hot drama, Breaking Bad, may be the winner here, because it delivered two of the three best individual hours of television drama during the Emmy eligibility period, the episodes titled "One Minute" and "Fly." (The other top hour was "The Son," an emotionally dismantling episode of Friday Night Lights that towered above all else.)
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Should win: Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Will win: Michael C. Hall, Dexter
If Michael C. Hall is ever to receive an Emmy for his work on Dexter, it will happen this Sunday, because he's coming off wins at the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Hall excitingly stepped up opposite a bone-chilling turn by the incomparable John Lithgow as the latest serial killer to invade his character's domain. But my own choice would be Jon Hamm, who, like fellow nominees Hall and Hugh Laurie, is seriously overdue for recognition here. And then there's Bryan Cranston, as much a potential three-peat winner as Mad Men. It's not his fault that he's so fine in the role of a lifetime.
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Should win: Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer; Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights
Will win: Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife
If anyone is going to block the formidable Glenn Close of Damages from a third consecutive win, it's Good Wife star Julianna Margulies, like Michael C. Hall already a Golden Globe and SAG winner for her work during the nomination period. She's certainly deserving of the honor, but I've been waiting forever for Kyra Sedgwick to take home an Emmy for her uniquely entertaining work on The Closer, and for Connie Britton to simply be nominated for her luminous portrayal of a small town working wife and mother on Friday Night Lights, so I'm standing by them.
Outstanding Comedy Series
Should win: Modern Family
Will win: Glee
ABC's sensational freshman hit Modern Family really does deserve this award, on account of it being the funniest and most sophisticated comedy series on television during the Emmy qualification period and all. But I just spent four weeks in Los Angeles and it was my observation that one can't walk into an entertainment industry event or hit a Hollywood hot spot without running into someone who over-the-moon adores Glee, so I have to assume that the momentum in the industry is so huge there is no way this show won't win.
Plus, it was just honored as Program of the Year and Outstanding New Program by the Television Critics Association, and you can't beat that! I certainly have nothing against Glee, but I'll be thrilled if I'm proven wrong.
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Should win: Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory
Will win: Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock, or Tony Shalhoub, Monk
Tony Shalhoub already has three Emmys for his work on Monk, while Alec Baldwin has two for 30 Rock, making them obvious Academy favorites. And since they were both as strong as ever last season, I see no reason why one of them won't win again this year.
Baldwin has the industry momentum, coming off two consecutive wins (and because the tiring 30 Rock still remains an industry darling), but Shalhoub gave a powerful performance during the two-part Monk series finale, so I'm calling this one a toss-up. As always, Jim Parsons was way funnier than either of them, but he has never been honored by the Academy, so I'm not holding out much hope.
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Should win: Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie
Will win: Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie
I'd say Showtime can look forward to a win in this category, because if Toni Collette doesn't take home a second consecutive award for her performance in the outrageously demanding role of a woman with multiple personalities on United States of Tara, then Edie Falco ought to get it for her portrayal of a hopelessly harried wife, mother, nurse, mistress and drug addict. I'm going with Falco, because with her work on Nurse Jackie, she has done something I didn't think possible -- she has shoved aside all memories of her career-defining role as Carmela Soprano.
GUEST BLOG #67: Ed Martin says we need our soaps
December 17, 2009 11:25 AM
[Bianculli here: Contributing writer Ed Martin is all in a lather over how the broadcast networks are treating -- or mistreating -- one of television's oldest genres: the soap opera. And I agree with him completely...]
What's left for broadcast TV to call its own? Soaps
By Ed Martin
The '00s may be the new Golden Age of primetime drama, but for fans of daytime serials they have truly been the Dark Ages, right up until the very end. With only 14 days left until the turn of the decade, and just three months after the last episode of Guiding Light, a historic franchise that spanned 15 years on radio and 57 on television, CBS and Procter & Gamble Productions recently confirmed what had been a chilling rumor circulating for months on the internet: The cancellation of As the World Turns, currently the longest-running scripted program on television and, like Light, one of the medium's few remaining national treasures. ATWT will have its final telecast in September 2010 during its 54th season.
I mean, damn -- Guiding Light was the soap that so many of our grandmothers listened to on the radio, before television came along, while As the World Turns was the one everyone's mother watched while doing their ironing during the '50s and early '60s, when television came into its own. Don't they deserve better than this?
How ironic that ATWT should die this way at this time. This was the first soap opera to enjoy an alternate life on YouTube and elsewhere, in the form of viewer-made short videos lifted from episodes and cobbled together by character or storyline, making it easy for people to watch 
only the stories and characters they were interested in. (The groundbreaking love story of gay teens Luke and Noah has been an internet sensation all on its own.) What a shame that nobody on the network or production level could figure out a way to make this very dynamic viewer interaction work on the show's behalf.
This would seem to be the perfect time for me to state the obvious, as I have so many times before: Daily daytime drama is virtually the only form of ongoing programming that remains unique to broadcast television. With the exception of big-ticket sports events, and a couple of awards shows, there is simply nothing left that broadcast can call its own. There are no daily soap operas on cable networks, and while there are a host of new serials on the web (many starring unemployed actors from daytime dramas), these mini-soaps are a long way from the television variety.
What's killing the genre, even though it remains popular with millions of viewers of all ages and still supports franchises that are instantly recognizable to tens of millions more? How about the fact that soap operas have been under attack from the outside and the inside for so long that long-term survival is no longer an option? External enemies include the handful of network executives in whose hands the fate of daytime drama has been placed -- men and women who understand little about soap operas and care about them even less -- as well as clumsy audience measurement techniques that don't come close to reflecting the breadth and depth of the popularity these programs enjoy, nor the loyalty their viewers tend to feel toward the networks that broadcast them and the advertisers that support them. While it is true that changing American lifestyles have had a negative impact on daytime drama viewing patterns, don't believe all that crap about cable and the internet killing them off. Twilight-like madness still follows when popular soap stars gather together for promotional or industry events.
The internal problem is a creative one that to some degree has been so consistently enflamed by some of those external enemies referenced above that it has become positively cancerous, literally eroding the soaps from within. For the last 10 years, and to some degree much longer, the soap operas on every network have remained in the clutches of a small group of head writers and executive producers who ran out of fresh ideas and interesting initiatives a long time ago. Successful innovation seems to elude the people who are paid to innovate. As a result, there hasn't been a soap opera on broadcast television that has actually been fun to watch on an ongoing basis 
since NBC's Days of Our Lives in the early and mid-'90s, when the late lunatic genius James Reilly took control of the show and put its characters through wild trials (including demonic possession and trips to alternate universes) that made Days more exciting than all other soaps combined. Those ever-essential young viewers were especially impressed.
For most of the last 10 years, though, the experience of watching just about any daytime drama on a consistent basis has been one long depressing chore, only occasionally punctuated by brief periods of engaging storytelling. These sporadic swells have been so surprising that they have felt like happy accidents. As the decade progressed, the soaps largely lost their ability to tap into the moment and reflect the fantasies, desires and expectations of their viewers. This happened once before, way back in the '70s, but a handful of skilled producers (mostly on ABC) identified that problem and fixed it.
It would be unfair not to point out that there have been a handful of strong and satisfying stories and performances on every soap opera during the difficult '00s. The producers and writers of 
One Life to Live [ABC photos at top and at right], for example, have been especially fearless for many years now, consistently keeping their canvas populated with colorful and diverse and sometimes controversial characters, most of whom feel very contemporary -- even the veterans. Given the new audiences OLTL has reached out to in so many creative ways, I can't believe its ratings aren't stronger. Then again, as mentioned above, I don't put much stock in daytime audience measurement.
Days of Our Lives has recently experienced actual audience growth by bringing back popular characters from years past. CBS' The Bold and the Beautiful continues to be a powerhouse on the international market. ABC has very publicly given votes of confidence to All My Children (by relocating it from New York City to a dazzling high-definition studio in Los Angeles) and One Life to Live (by moving it from its outdated studio space on New York City's Upper West Side to the network's high-def downtown studio where AMC had been located). Still, I fear that none of this is enough to halt the genre's overall slide, let alone reverse it.
The resultant damage is terrible to see, and not only for viewers. With Guiding Light dead, As the World Turns soon to be snuffed, and All My Children relocating to the West Coast, this is truly a catastrophic time for the New York acting community. 
Countless movie and television stars began their careers acting in New York City-based soap operas. (Soon, OLTL will be the only one left.) For example, it was only a few years ago (eight, to be exact) that Matt Bomer first attracted a following as nice-guy turned psycho-killer Ben Reade on Guiding Light. Bomer is one of this year's most popular breakout stars thanks to his lead role on USA Network's sparkling new crime caper White Collar.
I wonder if any daytime soap operas will remain when the next decade comes to a close. I wouldn't count on it. All I can really say at this point is that I'm glad I was around to enjoy them when they were at their best. And even when they weren't.
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
GUEST BLOG #66: Ed Martin Bestows Mercy Upon NBC's "Mercy"
December 9, 2009 1:52 PM
[With all my Smothers distractions, some pieces by the other regular TVWW contributors have been piling up like airplanes approaching LaGuardia. Here's one by contributing critic Ed Martin, coming to the defense of NBC's Mercy, which airs tonight at 8 ET...]
Standing Apart From the Critical Pack -- Proudly
By Ed Martin
Speaking as a television critic, it's always interesting to find yourself on the opposite side of the fence from the majority of your peers. What do you see or not see that they perceive in so different a light?
I'm not just standing on the other side of the fence -- I'm way over on the other side of the field -- in my appreciation of NBC's Mercy, a soap operatic medical drama about the hard-working nurses and doctors who toil at an inner-city New Jersey hospital. Mercy may not be as bold as Showtime's Nurse Jackie or as hefty as ABC's Grey's Anatomy, to name the two most obvious genre comparisons, but it isn't so bad as to warrant so little attention in the media.
Granted, the 2009-10 fall season has delivered a particularly strong group of new broadcast series, including ABC's Modern Family, The Middle, Cougar Town, FlashForward and V; Fox's Glee; CBS's The Good Wife; and The CW's The Vampire Diaries, so there may not be a lot of enthusiasm left for a show that sounds like (but is most definitely not) a low-rent Grey's clone.
Maybe critics just wrote it off after watching its mediocre pilot. I suspect that many of them are smarting over the fact that they singled out Community as the NBC freshman most likely to survive and thrive, only to sit back and watch the audience reject it, while they mostly dismissed Mercy as stale junk food.
If that's what they were thinking, they were wrong. Mercy is more like fresh comfort food, which likely explains its status as NBC's most successful new series here at the end of what has been a very trying year for everyone. The characters on its canvas are not only easy to take, they're easy to like, something that can't be said about many of the self-absorbed, silly talkers over at critics' fave Grey's.
What's more, Mercy will likely always be remembered as the program that launched the career of Taylor Schilling, the highly watchable young actress who plays Veronica Callahan, the nurse around whom much of the drama revolves.
Thankfully, there is no McSteamy or McDreamy nonsense at no-frills Mercy Hospital, though there is a handsome doctor named Chris Sands (played by James Tupper of Men in Trees), fresh off a tour in Iraq during which he met and enjoyed a brief affair with Veronica, only to end up working at the same hospital as she when they both returned to the States.
That wouldn't be nearly so dramatic a set-up were Veronica not married to a very regular guy named Mike (Diego Klattenhoff, another star on the rise) who is none too pleased that his wife cheated on him, even if she was in a war zone at the time and perhaps not acting like her normal self. All three characters in this emotional triangle have grown increasingly sympathetic as the season has progressed.
The rest of the Mercy cast is similarly likeable, especially Michelle Trachtenberg as naive Chloe Payne, a newbie nurse who's all heart, if somewhat unbelievably clueless about certain things (like expecting to be taken seriously after wearing Hello Kitty smocks to work). I've always felt that Trachtenberg came on too strong as cloying supernatural construct Dawn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I find her annoying in her recurring Gossip Girl role of rich witch Georgina Sparks. But I enjoy watching her balance the twin pressures Chloe faces as she tries to build both a grown-up career and an adult personal life, often flailing or failing at both but never growing cold or cynical in the face of multiple defeats.
Strikingly beautiful newcomer Jaime Lee Kirchner as Sonia Jimenez, the other nurse at the center of the Mercy drama, is yet another talent to watch. Dealing with problems at the hospital or navigating her rocky love life, Sonia is about as subtle as a jackhammer, and she can be difficult to care about except when she is caring about others. She is currently dating a young police officer named Nick (Charlie Semine) who is perfect for her, all tough on the outside but a sensitive soul underneath his law enforcement exterior. In fact, Sonia and Nick are so great together that I fear the writers will plot to have Nick killed in the line of duty. Like I said, Mercy can be very soap-operatic.
I'll admit, the stories on Mercy haven't exactly been groundbreakers, but they've been perfectly satisfying, with nice (if sometimes predictable) emotional payoffs throughout. Mercifully (no pun intended), the November sweeps period has passed without one of those mad-crazy sweeps stunts that have so grievously compromised Grey's over the years (the ferry boat crash, Meredith's extended death, Denny's ghost, etc., etc. and so forth).
Perhaps it's the simplicity of those stories, but it isn't difficult to understand the motivations of any of the characters on the Mercy canvas, a frustrating glitch over on the otherwise stellar Nurse Jackie. (I still can't figure out why the title character takes as many drugs as she does, especially with two beautiful little children at home, or why she has a lover on the side when she's married to the greatest guy on earth.) But what I like best about Mercy is that everything about it looks so real, due in large part to the fact that it is actually filmed in New Jersey. It seems unlikely that the perfectly ordinary Mercy Hospital will ever be known as a sterling showplace for state of the art medical technology and contemporary architecture, like Seattle Grace or the title institution in CBS's perfectly dreadful Three Rivers.
Mercy works as lightweight entertainment, but I'll give it props for its timely relevance, too, in that Veronica (and, to a lesser extent, Sands) is having a tough time fully integrating into civilian life after experiencing the unspeakable horrors of Iraq. Also, and of even more importance, it's clear that the hospital in which she works could use a bailout or two.
Given the current collision of our declining economy with our eroding health care system and the fact that millions of Americans are suffering as a result -- including those who are paying a small fortune for medical insurance and are still having difficulties -- it would be impossible to believe the storytelling in any contemporary medical drama that did not keep economic challenges faced by hospital employees and their patients alike at its center.
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
GUEST BLOG #49: Ed Martin Checks Into CW's New "Melrose Place"
September 10, 2009 12:03 PM
[Bianculli here: The CW unveiled its remake of Melrose Place earlier this week, and is repeating the pilot Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET. Contributing critic Ed Martin has seen next week's episode as well, and has some thoughts about how to amp it up quickly...]
Martin's "Melrose" Mantra: A Whore Should Never Be a Bore
By Ed Martin
There hasn't been a column written about The CW's continuation of the '90s pop-culture fave Melrose Place that did not include a mention of Heather Locklear. Everyone seems to think that if Locklear would agree to reprise her role of ferocious businesswoman Amanda Woodward on the new show, its future would look brighter.
Putting aside the question of why Locklear would even want to do such a thing, the fact is that the new Melrose Place doesn't need her. What it needs is Marcia Cross! More specifically, it needs a Marcia Cross Moment -- as soon as possible.
I'm referring, as you might imagine, to what may be the most famous scene in Melrose history -- one that did not include Locklear. It was the sequence in which Cross' Kimberly Shaw, the brilliant young doctor who had been gravely injured in an auto accident, returned to the life she had known after a long recovery period seemingly as good as new.
Until, that is, she slipped out of sight and pulled off her wig, revealing a monstrous scar along the side of her head that called to mind the Frankenstein movies of yesteryear.
Yes, Locklear was so contagiously energizing as Amanda that her addition to the series late in its first season saved what had been a turgid twenty-something drama, and instantly transformed it into irresistible top-drawer trash. In other words, once Melrose stopped pretending to be something other than what it should have been from the start, it was a hit.
But it took more than the addition of a super-bitch to make Melrose so memorable. Locklear's Amanda got everyone talking, but the show didn't explode until Kimberly went wacko, determined not simply to ruin the lives of her former friends and neighbors, but to kill them all by blowing up the titular apartment complex (in a storyline that was rightly compromised at the time, out of respect for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing).
To their everlasting credit, the writers and producers of Melrose didn't rest on their laurels after adding Amanda and Kimberly to the canvas. They also gave grievously put-upon good girl Jane Mancini (Josie Bissett) a slutty kid sister named Sydney, played by a then-unknown Laura Leighton. We all know Melrose Place was not a show that was ever spoken of in the same breath as the word "Emmy," but there were times during Leighton's run when I honestly thought she deserved a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.
The writers put Sydney through all manner of hardships (she became a prostitute, endured a number of failed relationships and was briefly institutionalized against her will, among other trials), but even at the character's worst, Leighton always made the audience aware of her internal turmoil. More often than not, Sydney was the personification of self-loathing. Leighton made her so surprisingly sympathetic that I was genuinely bugged when she was hit by a speeding car on her wedding day and died.
When The CW announced that Melrose Place would be revived this fall, just as 90210 had been last year, we learned that Sydney had faked her death. (A full explanation has yet to be offered within the storyline.) This was good news for the new show, I thought, because Sydney was the most complicated character in the history of this franchise. Her wild past history and vivid emotional depth would provide the foundation necessary for Melrose to be successfully re-established.
Then we learned that Sydney would be killed off again at the end of episode one and that the rest of her involvement in the story would be presented via flashbacks. Sure enough, there she was, stone cold dead, floating face down and bleeding profusely in the pool before the end credits rolled.
Not good. The first two episodes excitingly establish that Sydney was the new landlady of the apartment complex and had become intimately involved in many of the characters' lives, and that shiny red-head Violet (played by singer Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, she of the legendary Saturday Night Live fail) might either be her long-lost daughter or a scheming brat pretending to be such. How much fun would it have been to watch Sydney deal with a monster daughter while spiraling downward into some of that old self-loathing again for having given up her only child all those years ago?
Oh, well, there's only so much they can do with Sydney at this point -- unless she's once again faking her own death as the means to get out of multiple messes of her own making. Now THAT would be vintage Melrose.
By the way, I think it's strange that the characters in the apartment complex blithely go on about their business in episode two, which begins the day after Sydney meets her violent demise. They go so far as to hang at the pool, even though Sydney's corpse was gushing blood in it just a day or two before. Is that enough time for it to be properly cleaned and sterilized? It's all very gross -- and very Hollywood.
Seriously, if it weren't for Katie Cassidy (a beautiful young actress, seen at the top of this column, who might eventually be spoken of as the new Heather Locklear), the new Melrose would be in as much trouble as the old Melrose was during its first forgettable episodes.
Cassidy's portrayal of bisexual bitch Ella Simms, a cut-throat Hollywood power publicist in the making, is razor-sharp and as much fun as every portrayal by every actor of every character on this show really ought to be. (Next week Ella lands an impossible-to-get actor client by convincing him to expose himself at a party and -- well, you'll see.) But the other female characters aren't at all interesting. Not even good girl medical student Lauren (Stephanie Jacobsen), who has started sleeping with men for money to pay her medical bills. When it comes to trashy primetime serials, a whore should never be a bore.
And speaking of boredom, none of the young men on the scene make memorable impressions during the first two episodes, either. Interestingly -- and alarmingly -- they are eclipsed by two guest stars: Victor Webster as Ella's boss Caleb, and Nicholas Gonzalez as Detective Marco Rodriguez. Executive producers Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer would be wise to keep these two around, at least for a while.
Original Melrose Place cast member Thomas Calabro is also part of the new show, back in familiar form as scumbag Dr. Michael Mancini. Remember what a bland good guy Michael was during the pre-Locklear days, before he went bad? He's still rotten, but he's gotten boring again with age. Josie Bissett and Daphne Zuniga (as sullen photographer Jo Reynolds) will reportedly make guest appearances in the weeks to come. But I'm concerned about what may happen to their characters, given the seeming waste of Sydney Andrews.
All these complaints aside, I would like nothing better than for the new Melrose Place to follow in the tracks of the old, and become the trashiest serial on prime time television. (Though The CW's new drama The Beautiful Life: TBL, about young men and women exploited by the modeling business, might get there first if it loosens up). I'm good with Melrose stumbling and fumbling around for a while but I won't wait forever for it to bring in the crazy.
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
GUEST BLOG #33: Ed Martin loves a show named 'Maria'
July 17, 2009 7:15 AM
[Bianculli here: Contributing columnist Ed Martin checks in again with another valuable find from cable TV's outer orbit. This time it's BBC America's imported reality competition series, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?...]
How do you make a great reality competition? R-E-S-P-E-C-T
By Ed Martin
This has been an extraordinarily satisfying year for fans of reality TV.
Powered by more dazzling Top 10 talent than in any previous season and one of the most exciting finales in its history, American Idol demonstrated once again why it deserves to be the most popular program on television. Dancing with the Stars also outdid itself on the talent front. The Amazing Race featured two unforgettable teammates -- Margie and her deaf son, Luke -- who became instant audience favorites. The Real World: Brooklyn was the MTV franchise's best effort in years, ending on a level of extreme duress as Iraq War veteran and disarming prankster Ryan learned that he had been called for a second tour of duty. And in perhaps the most surprising reality kick of all, Celebrity Apprentice, in its final episodes, became essential Must-See TV, as legendary comedian Joan Rivers locked horns with poker champ Annie Duke for an extended take-no-prisoners conflict.
More recently, America's Got Talent has in only a few short weeks identified many likely finalists (including several exceedingly gifted kids) and one very humble contestant (chicken catcher and aspiring country singer Kevin Skinner) who evoked memories of Britain's Got Talent internet sensation Susan Boyle. So You Think You Can Dance is also having a splendid season.
But off to the side of all this marvelous American-made madness have been two British talent shows that have provided more consistent feel-good entertainment than any of the series mentioned above. Last spring, BBC America offered the American premiere of the 2007 reality hit Any Dream Will Do, in which young men competed for the title role in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that debuted in the West End later that year. Dream was actually a follow-up to the hit 2006 British search-for-a-star competition How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, with young women competing for the lead role in a West End production of The Sound of Music.
Joseph completed its run on BBCA several weeks ago, and Maria has since inherited its Sunday time period (8-10 p.m. ET, with an 11 p.m. ET repeat), making for some delightful summer night viewing.
If the Maria/Dream format sounds familiar in a bad way, you may be having a flashback to You're the One That I Want, the abysmal 2007 NBC reality effort in which men and women competed for the lead roles of Danny and Sandy in a Broadway production of Grease. I suffered through most of You're the One, so my prior impression of this malleable franchise -- the brainchild of legendary composer and theatrical producer Andrew Lloyd Webber -- was not particularly positive. But I was floored by the talent on display when I first discovered Dream, and I am now happily hooked all over again on Maria.
The full season of Maria was originally telecast in 2006, so it may seem like old business. But as they once said over at NBC, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you! The winner went on to star in a West End revival of The Sound of Music that ran for over two years. (Similarly, Any Dream winner Lee Mead enjoyed an 18-month run in Webber's West End revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.) The Maria winner can be easily identified through a simple Google search, so if knowing the outcome is an issue for you, don't surf the web for anything related to this program.
Why all the enthusiasm? Maybe it's because the Maria contestants -- especially the five who remain -- could handily hold their own against any past or present Idol favorite (with the possible exceptions of Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson). Unlike Idol, which always ends up with a few unaccountable clunkers in its Top 10, the finalists on Maria (like the Joseph finalists before them) have been uniformly great.
Indeed, it isn't just the super-talented contestants that have made these two shows more enjoyable than Idol. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the premier voice of authority and top judge on both, has given them a dramatic weight greater than that of Idol's four judges combined. The engaging experts who critique each performance -- actor, singer and Torchwood star John Barrowman, vocal coach Zoe Tyler, and theatrical producer David Ian on Maria; theatrical producer Bill Kenwright, actress Denise Van Outen, Barrowman and Tyler on Joseph -- have more interesting insights to offer than Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, Kara DioGuardi and Simon Cowell and seem to take their jobs more seriously than their Idol counterparts.
And host Graham Norton, one of the most effortlessly engaging television personalities in the world, keeps everything moving at a brisk clip without any of those uncomfortable attempts at forced humor that compromise Idol main man Ryan Seacrest. Also, Norton's flashy suits and shirts add to the visual fun of these shows, something the increasingly drab Seacrest should consider.
Another reason Maria and Dream have worked so well is that the young singers on both have been uniformly respectful of the grown-up judges. Everything the professionals say matters. Cowell has often commented on the differences between the young people who appear on talent shows in England and those who snarl and growl their way through various American productions. The contestants on Maria and Dream are ecstatic when they succeed and crushed when they don't. Sometimes they become emotional when they are told that they will continue through to the following week. The contestants' honest displays of emotion add much more to the entertainment value of these programs than the often-snarky responses of some Idol contestants. Then again, maybe Lloyd Webber, Barrowman and their colleagues command more respect than Cowell and Co.
To put it simply, everything about these shows has worked, from the staging to the costumes to the music to the weekly climactic sing-offs, in which the bottom two vote-getters perform together and then wait for Webber to choose which one will survive and which must say goodbye. (On Joseph, elimination meant surrendering one's colorful coat. On Maria, the young ladies sing the classic So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music as the eliminated Maria departs. Thankfully, she does not have to remove her colorful housemaid's dress.)
It may be that the producers of American Idol can learn a few things by watching How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and Any Dream Will Do, but I think young people hoping to compete on future seasons of Idol (or any American talent show) can gain valuable insights from them, too.
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
GUEST BLOG #27: Ed Martin on a wholesome show that's full of sex
June 25, 2009 9:30 AM
Bianculli here: Contributing writer Ed Martin is back, raving about last Monday's second-season premiere of ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and trying to recruit viewers in time for next week's episode two. He does a fine job, by playing the sex card...
'Secret Life': It's not just about the boobs
By Ed Martin
There is no other series with so split a personality as ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, a genuinely entertaining family drama that is more wholesome and heartwarming than just about anything else on television -- and yet so sexually supercharged that it borders on the surreal. Seriously, this show puts so many hormones in play it makes Gossip Girl feel like Gidget.
True to form, Secret Life's second season began on Monday night with its main characters obsessing over breasts. The episode had the makings of a great drinking game. Had viewers of legal age downed a shot every time one character commented on another's boobs, they would have been blotto by the first commercial break.
Much of this talk was centered on Amy (Shailene Woodley), the 15-year-old who found herself pregnant at the start of the series, gave birth (seemingly without breaking a sweat) in the Season 1 finale, and is now struggling to care for her son while continuing in high school; and her mother Anne, who is pregnant by a male acquaintance, or possibly by her estranged husband (and Amy's father), George, in the unlikely event that George's long-ago vasectomy failed last year around the time the two of them hit the sheets.
Naturally, Amy and Anne are both a little top-heavy right now, prompting a broad range of responses from their loved ones. Other breasts made themselves known, too, including those of happy hooker Betty (the jubilant Jennifer Coolidge in a recurring role) and a number of Amy's teenage friends and acquaintances.
As any loyal viewer will tell you, the very likable characters on Secret Life never miss an opportunity to share their thoughts about wanting sex, having sex or abstaining from sex -- and the overkill can be problematic, to say the least. In Monday's episode, the only breaks from talking about baby-making came when talking about babies themselves -- especially Amy's 2-month old bundle of love, John, who has turned his bad-boy baby-daddy Ricky (Daran Kagasoff) and Amy's too-understanding-to-be-real boyfriend Ben (Kenny Baumann) into buckets of gooey man-mush.
One subplot veered from talk about sex to talk about abstinence to an actual act of intercourse (occurring off-screen) as sensitive jock Jack (Greg Finley) bedded cheerful cheerleader Grace (Megan Park), a devout Christian who prayed for months before deciding to lose her virginity. In a scene that I am almost certain was not intended to be amusing (but was), Grace couldn't stop complimenting Jack after they did "it," sounding not for a second like a teenage first-timer as she told him how "skilled" he was at lovemaking.
The only other time that the cloud of all-consuming sex talk parted was for the delivery of devastating news -- the sudden death of Grace's dad, Marshall (John Schneider), which happened at approximately the same time she was having sex with Jack. Grace's character trajectory promises to be the most dramatic on the show this season.
The many responsibilities that come with and consequences that may result from youthful sexual activity have always been the driving forces of Secret Life. I watched this episode in the company of adults and young teenagers, and while the old folks were slack-jawed at all the sex talk, the kids (all of whom had seen every episode of this show at least twice) just brushed it off and made clear (to the adults' collective relief) that real life is nothing like Secret Life (a series they nevertheless love more than any other).
Apparently, tweens and young teenagers have other things on their minds, like music and video games and social networking and school and sports. A healthy curiosity about sex fits in there somewhere but it doesn't dominate -- no matter what ABC Family would have us believe.
As over-the-top as it can be in its strident determination to explore all facets of teen sexuality, there is something strangely comforting and gently appealing about Secret Life. It may be the storytelling, which, if one puts aside all the super-frank sex talk, resembles that of a soap opera during the glory days of daytime drama. (That would be the '70s and '80s, when record numbers of tweens, teens and twentysomethings fixated on the genre.)
It's all about a complicated community of ordinary people making their way through life. The characters screw up constantly, but when one gets in too deep, he or she is rescued and comforted by family and friends. Teens and their parents are often at odds, but they just as often find themselves connecting, even when they don't expect to do so. (On this week's episode, Ben's dad Leo, aka the Sausage King, brought happy hooker Betty home after dinner and had to rouse his son out of bed to borrow condoms. "I'm optimistic," geeky Ben offered as his dad opened his overstocked condom drawer. "So am I," Leo smiled, grabbing a fistful.)
Secret Life is greatly enhanced by its simple production values, which are as retro as the show's approach to storytelling, if not to the stories it tells. In other words, it looks like a beloved television drama from decades past: There's no hand-held camera work, no rapid-fire editing, and no elaborate on-location shooting. People refer to it as edgy and contemporary, because of all the sex stuff. But in every other way it feels as old-fashioned as a Hallmark Channel original movie, except for all the sex stuff.
Another reason that Secret Life resonates with viewers (consistently bringing ABC Family some of its highest ratings ever, and often outperforming competing broadcast and basic cable fare in teen and young adult demos) is that while the narrative focus is clearly on its multi-dimensional teen characters, the adults on the show are similarly well-drawn.
There isn't another couple on television quite like ever-quarreling Anne and George (played to comic perfection by one-time box-office teen queen Molly Ringwald and the always appealing Mark Derwin), nor a single dad as genuinely grounded as Leo (Steven Schirripa, in a perfect turnaround from his Sopranos role as hit-man Bobby Bacala). These are just a few of the many grown-ups who add so much to this show and avoid every cliche about TV moms and dads while doing so. They're as much fun to watch as the kids.
I'll end with a question for Brenda Hampton, the creator of Secret Life and the producer of the long-running WB hit 7th Heaven, another family-focused drama that appealed to young people. Why is this series titled The Secret Life of the American Teenager? No matter how intimate or potentially embarrassing, the kids on this show have no secrets from each other or the adults in their lives -- none that last, anyway. That may be the most laudable of its many fine qualities.
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
GUEST BLOG #11: Ed Martin Checks Into "General Hospital"
April 27, 2009 6:44 AM
Bianculli here: Today's guest column has Ed Martin, who counts daytime soaps among his specialties, offering ways to further revitalize ABC's recently recharged General Hospital. I'm not a fan of the show these days -- but if Ed's ideas about swapped lookalikes, revived dead characters and long-dormant revenge plots come to pass, I just might become one.
Click to read his full column about Constance Towers, Elizabeth Taylor and others...
How Helena Cassadine Can Save General Hospital
By Ed Martin
ABC's once-mighty General Hospital has been on a downward slide for far too long. Too many years of too many violent and repetitive (and ultimately silly) stories about mobsters and their women, coupled with the senseless deaths in recent years of a number of popular core characters, have left it in ruins.
But the last two weeks have brought with them a blast from the past that has once again made GH a television show worth watching. Given the industry's cock-eyed obsession with youth at the expense of all else, it is rather satisfying to report that the bolt of lightning that has brightened up the dull and dreary world of Port Charles is a sizzling senior citizen played by Constance Towers, a veteran actress who was born in 1933 and is now in her sixth decade of film and television work! As the murderous, manipulative madwoman Helena Cassadine, Ms. Towers rocks the witch.
Actually, I have never been a fan of the all-powerful, unstoppable, bloodthirsty Helena. She was created way back in 1981 as the means by which Elizabeth Taylor -- then a self-declared GH super-fan -- could attend the wedding of the now-legendary Luke and Laura. She was barely referenced during the decade that followed, except when Laura disappeared (in early 1982, when Genie Francis left the show) and reappeared (in late 1983) after being held captive at the Cassadine compound in Greece, where she was forced to marry Helena's oldest son Stavros. But throughout much of the '90s and frequently during this decade Helena has returned to Port Charles time and again to cause all kinds of trouble.
As written for Ms. Taylor, Helena was the epitome of class and elegance, her malevolence measured by her place in international society. But as written for Ms. Towers, she is just a mad, malevolent meddler. If it were up to me, Helena would never have come back to Port Charles after the big wedding, or she would have been killed off years ago. Back in the days of the grand executive producer Gloria Monty, when stories on the show had distinct beginnings and endings and villains came and went, always paying for their crimes, a homicidal evildoer like Helena would have never been permitted to survive for as long as she has.
But I am so alarmed by the current state of General Hospital that I'm going to cut Helena some slack. In fact, I now believe Helena could be utilized in a story that would undo much of the seemingly irreversible damage that has been done to GH during this decade, especially where the show's once story-rich Quartermaine family is concerned.
Indeed, it seems to me GH has been losing fans at a rapid clip since it began killing off members of the Quartermaine clan. It would take a drastic and outrageous story to fix the resultant mess, and that's precisely what makes Helena uniquely qualified to ride to the rescue on her broomstick. The character and her family's history, dating back almost 30 years, are so over the top that nothing she might do would surprise viewers. After all, it was the saga of the Cassadine family's plan to freeze Port Charles in August 1981, by way of a weather-controlling machine hidden on a remote tropical island, that propelled GH into the pop-culture pantheon even before Luke and Laura famously got hitched.
Here's what GH should do with Helena. In a wild storyline that would recall the GH of old, it should be revealed that AJ, the oldest son of Drs. Alan and Monica Quartermaine, did not die in 2005 when he was murdered by an already forgotten minor character. Rather, one of Helena's minions got to AJ before his "lifeless" body was discovered and injected him with one of those only-on-a-soap drugs that kept him alive, albeit with a barely perceptible heartbeat. AJ was later removed from the now-crowded Quartermaine crypt and whisked away to that secret lab Helena had built ages ago, several floors below the basement of the title hospital. In 2001, we were told that Helena's son Stavros hadn't really died when Luke seemingly killed him back in 1983. He was actually in that same subterranean lab in a state of suspended animation awaiting the development of the treatment that would revive him almost two decades later.
As Helena's story progressed, we would learn that Cassadine medical personnel revived AJ and slowly nursed him back to health, all the while programming him to be loyal to Helena, who had grown tired of her long-running conflict with Luke and Laura Spencer and decided instead to seek long-overdue revenge on the Quartermaines -- and not simply because Tracy Quartermaine is now married to Luke. Longtime viewers will recall that it was a Quartermaine -- the globe-trotting Alexandra -- who first brought the Cassadines to Port Charles back in 1981 and touched off a series of events that eventually led to the death of Helena's beloved husband, Mikkos. With AJ as her pawn, Helena would eventually take control of the Quartermaines' vast business empire, restoring her to a position of great power in the international financial community.
We could then happily discover that, despite his programmed loyalty to Helena, AJ felt the need to make things right with his father Alan, whom AJ shot in the back the last time the two were together. When Alan suffered that fatal heart attack after the Metro Court Hotel hostage crisis in 2007, AJ secretly arranged to have him brought to Helena's subterranean lab, where he has since been stabilized and remains in a coma. Helena was fine with this because she had nothing against Alan and thought that he, too, could be useful to her if he regained his health, perhaps as chief of staff at General Hospital after she takes control of it.
Further, it would be revealed that Helena had, at the time of Emily Quartermaine's murder in 2007, been having the young intern followed at all times, since she despised the girl and could not abide the love her grandson Nikolas Cassadine had for her. Helena had been planning to kidnap Emily and brainwash her into rejecting Nikolas, and she had arranged for a double to replace Emily while the brainwashing took place. As it happens, it wasn't Emily whom Diego Alcazar murdered on that fateful night. It was the double. (Remember, the actual murder occurred off-camera!) The recently introduced Rebecca would turn out to be the brainwashed Emily, sent into action by Helena as part of her nefarious plan.
There are other much-missed characters that could be tucked away in Helena's lab, including Justus Ward, the grandson of Quartermaine patriarch Edward, and Georgie Jones, ex-wife of Tracy's son Dillon. It's not like any of this extreme science-fiction would be new to GH, or even to the Cassadines. After all, Stefan Cassadine secretly kept Lesley Webber alive for 12 years after Helena attempted to kill her in 1984, and Helena held Lucky Spencer hostage for one year and brainwashed him while Luke and Laura grieved the "loss" of their son in a fire. And, as mentioned above, Helena kept a comatose Stavros alive for 18 years until he returned to briefly wreak havoc on the residents of Port Charles in 2001 before falling into a bottomless pit in that same subterranean lab. The Cassadines are world-class experts at mischievously switching bodies, keeping the almost dead alive, creating convincing lookalikes, and fooling everyone into thinking their loved ones are either lost or not. We need them to be restored to their full power, and we need that now!
Think of the excitement that would be generated by this wild and wacky storyline -- one that would be very vintage GH -- as so many much-missed characters returned to the narrative in the biggest Cassadine caper since the classic story of the weather machine. (And if some of them had to be recast, so what?) Best of all, the sublime Ms. Towers could act the hell out of it all as she became the shining salvation of daytime drama that she deserves to be.
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
Earlier in his career, Ed was publicity director for the independent feature film production and distribution company Vestron Pictures, where he orchestrated publicity campaigns and produced electronic press kits for dozens of movies including the one and only Dirty Dancing. The fact that it is now referred to as a "classic" makes Ed feel old.
GUEST BLOG #8: Ed Martin Votes No On "American Idol" Format Changes
April 17, 2009 7:42 AM
Guest columnist Ed Martin, in his latest excellent missive for TV Worth Watching, vents his frustration about this season's format changes to Fox's American Idol. The fact that I agree with his completely only makes it that much more fun to present.
Here's his lead paragraph:
"Are the inmates running the asylum over at American Idol – a show that is far too important to millions of viewers, not to mention the business of television, to mess around with? It seems that with each passing week this show gives its loyal viewers something new to complain about."
For the full story, read on... and let us know what YOU think...
"Idol" Hands Are Ruining What Ain't Broke
By Ed Martin
Are the inmates running the asylum over at American Idol -- a show that is far too important to millions of viewers, not to mention the business of television, to mess around with? It seems that with each passing week this show gives its loyal viewers something new to complain about.
If I didn't know better, I would swear that Idol is suddenly being produced by people who have not been involved with it in any way during its first seven seasons. Topping the growing list of bad Idol moves this season is the Judges Save, which has proven to be the second-worst format tweak in the show's history (the first being those time-wasting viewer call-ins during Season 7).
The decision to make the contestants who receive the lowest number of votes each week sing once again in the hope that the judges might use a one-time-only opportunity to reverse the audience's decision, and then stand there and be told all over again that they still aren't good enough to continue, undercut the impact of the weekly painful eliminations that add so much drama to the show. The contestants were made to look awkward, and the judges made to look cruel, while the home audience was made to suffer a second time through the performances it enjoyed the least. It's been an epic failure all around.
This week we finally saw the Judges Save in action, as Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Kara DioGuardi seemingly ganged up on sensible Simon Cowell and forced him to save the talented but inconsistent Matt Giraud from the elimination viewers called for after his lame rendition of Bryan Adams' "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman" the night before. Surely some percentage of the people who contributed to the 36 million votes cast on Tuesday night wondered why they had bothered making those calls as they watched the week's least popular performer receive a reprieve.
Paula, Kara, the studio audience and Matt's fellow contestants almost blew the studio roof off with their near-nuclear euphoria over Matt's good fortune, so much so that the ominous follow-up reminder from Simon about the bitter backwash to come seemed to make little impact. (In fact, Paula charged the stage to congratulate Matt right after Simon spoke.)
"Guys, girls, I wouldn't be so quick to congratulate him," Simon cautioned. "No. 1, two people are going home next week now," he added, reminding them all that the rules of the Save call for a double whammy the week after it is used.
Then he really let them have it. "Second piece of bad news: Next week is Disco Week." Disco Week is never a good one for Idol contestants.
I like Matt. In fact, I would rather see Anoop Desai and Lil Rounds go home before him. Still, as jubilant as the audience and the contestants were when they learned that he had been saved, and even though Matt was moved to tears by it all, I have to say that as a viewer I felt robbed of what should have been a memorable moment this season -- the forced farewell of a talented contestant who just isn't good enough to outlast the others.
It didn't help that the Save came during a week in which the Idol producers made another mammoth blunder. Responding to all that furious complaining from critics and bloggers alike about last week's talent show running nine minutes too long, the producers this week decided on Tuesday that, in an effort to save time and keep the show moving, only two judges would critique each performance rather than all four.
If you agree with my assertion that Simon is the only judge worth listening to, then you'll agree that it was a stupid move by all concerned to cut his airtime in half. And since when is it so difficult to make time for comments from four judges? Past seasons of Idol have featured numerous outspoken guest judges in the mix, and I don't recall the show ever having so many production issues as a result.
As for that now-infamous nine-minute overrun, I feel that experienced producers should know how to bring a show in on time after seven successful years, just as smart network executives should know enough to add an additional half-hour to telecasts of the biggest show on television when they have so much good material with which to work. Any viewer could have told people in both camps that eight performances in 60 minutes minus all that time for commercials would be a tight fit.
But in my humble opinion, there was a little too much crabbing about this matter. I realize that DVRs are all the rage these days, but I think the Tuesday performance shows should be watched live for maximum effectiveness, especially by those all-important viewers who plan to vote. Further, DVR users have nobody but themselves to blame if they haven't learned by now to add at least an extra 10 minutes to programmed recordings of their favorite shows, because broadcast and cable networks alike are increasingly playing fast and loose with running times on their schedules.
The truth is, millions of people who watched that edition live did not miss Adam Lambert's outstanding rendition of Tears for Fears' "Mad World," or the rare spectacle of the usually immobile Simon Cowell rising to his feet afterward. For those who did miss it, it didn't take long for a clip to appear on YouTube and elsewhere.
It's a shame such stuff is happening this season, given the unusually high caliber overall of the contestants, including a couple who have already been eliminated. This is the most talented group to come along in years, and Adam Lambert is the most talked about young talent to appear on this show since Sanjaya Malakar. Of course, everyone was talking about Sanjaya's hair rather than his vocal ability, so that puts Adam on top.
In fact, the steady climb of Adam Lambert is the most exciting story Idol has given us since the ascension of Carrie Underwood (and, before her, Kelly Clarkson). That said, I can totally see Danny Gokey, Kris Allen or Allison Iraheta making their way to the Top 2, and it wouldn't shock me if any one of those three squeaked through with a win.
To continue with my griping -- which should probably be more good-natured than it is, because I am still a huge fan of this show -- it seems to me that the "stars" of Idol must share the blame for some of the recent bad buzz. From where I sit, host Ryan Seacrest has misplaced his youthful enthusiasm and now looks and acts like a business executive who unwittingly stumbled in the side door, found himself on a stage and decided to try his hand at something new.
Meantime, the judges' collective responses no longer carry much weight at all, and their on-camera behavior often deteriorates into a bizarre blend of silliness, confusion and apparent boredom. (I think the camera caught Randy on the verge of yawning during this week's results show.) The low point came a couple of weeks back, when 16-year-old Allison delivered yet another terrific performance only to discover that, while she was singing, Simon had been busily drawing a crayon mustache on Paula.
"Why did you do that?" young Allison asked, as if she were addressing two children who were lobbing spitballs during church.
"Who is the grown-up here?" I wondered, feeling bad for the kid.
Look, the judges only work at Idol a couple hours a week. (I know people who spend more time than that commuting to and from their jobs every day.) From what I hear, Simon, Paula, Randy and Kara are very well compensated for doing so. Is it asking too much for them to bring their A-game to the studio every Tuesday and Wednesday?
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
Earlier in his career, Ed was publicity director for the independent feature film production and distribution company Vestron Pictures, where he orchestrated publicity campaigns and produced electronic press kits for dozens of movies including the one and only Dirty Dancing. The fact that it is now referred to as a "classic" makes Ed feel old.
GUEST BLOG #5: Ed Martin on CBS Dimming Its "Guiding Light"
April 2, 2009 8:22 AM
Tonight NBC devotes three hours to a farewell to ER, the drama series it has presented in prime time for 15 years. Yesterday, CBS announced its intention to say goodbye to a daytime institution it has broadcast for nearly five times as long: Guiding Light, a soap opera that predates TV. Its potential imminent demise has prompted a passionate response from our new contributor Ed Martin, whose latest guest column begins like this:
"CBS made history today in a bad way. It cancelled Procter & Gamble Productions' classic soap opera Guiding Light, the longest running scripted franchise in the history of modern media!"
Click to read the full review -- or, to put it another way, to go towards the Light...
CBS Plans to Extinguish Its "Guiding Light"
By Ed Martin
CBS made history today in a bad way. It cancelled Procter & Gamble Productions' classic soap opera Guiding Light, the longest running scripted franchise in the history of modern media!
I have during the last ten years written many times about Guiding Light for Jack Myers Reports and other publications, and whenever possible I used those platforms to remind executives at CBS and P&G that it isn't simply another soap opera -- it's an American institution, and a national treasure at that.
Everyone reading this column has a relative, living or deceased, who either listened to Guiding Light during its run on radio beginning in 1937, or watched it since it transitioned to television in 1952. Its former cast members include James Earl Jones and Calista Flockhart, Kevin Bacon and James Lipton. Some of our parents can actually say that they first enjoyed this show on radio with their parents and still follow it on TV.
It isn't sufficient to refer to this achievement as rare. This is a success story unparalleled in the history of modern media. Think about this: With few exceptions (most notoriously the marathon daily news coverage of the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial), Guiding Light has been in continuous daily production through eight decades! The durability of this franchise makes it way too significant to fall victim to the current recession, when desperate short-term thinking and a sudden scarcity of valuable thought-leadership are making everything worse for all of us.
I understand that these are tough times for soap operas, which are threatening to drop like ducks from the sky during hunting season. Critics blame the storylines, networks cite the numbers, and everybody loses. With a uniquely American success story as noteworthy as Guiding Light the latest to be shot down, it's time for everyone to halt their respective declarations of self-fulfilling damnation and acknowledge what is really going on, and what should happen next.
First, the numbers: With all due respect to the fine folks at Nielsen, daytime audience measurement is, at its very best, irrefutably flawed. We're told that ratings for every soap have been in precipitous decline since the mid-Nineties, but you cannot go anywhere in this country (or dozens of others) and not find people who watch at least one soap opera with some degree of regularity.
The very idea that viewership for soap operas would decline in direct proportion to the ever-expanding increase in viewing options is utter bull****. If there had been mobile viewing devices in the Sixties, millions of people would have watched Dark Shadows on the go, and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of breathless tweens and teens would not have had to run home from school every day to see the latest installment in the supernatural saga of the Collins family.
And just imagine how much larger the record-holding audience for General Hospital would have been during the fabled Luke and Laura years if young people from grade school to grad school could have watched it on their own terms! We didn't even have VCRs back then!
Second, the storytelling: Yes, there is room for improvement on every soap opera, though I would argue that CBS' Young and the Restless and As the World Turns and ABC's One Life to Live are currently more exciting than they have been in years. As for Guiding Light, its production model was completely redesigned early last year, to mixed results. (P&G saved a lot of money, but the end product looked cheap, at least at the start. There have been improvements since that time.)
Sadly, the show's storytelling hasn't really improved. I'm not going to go into specifics about what should or should not have been done with every character and storyline, but I think it is fair to say that Guiding Light hasn't been as sexy or youthful or suspenseful as it was in the early years of this decade, and that it has lost some of its edge.
Recently, neither veteran Guiding Light viewers nor those all-important young newcomers have been particularly well served. But it is possible to have it both ways. Just check out As the World Turns, which is also produced by P&G and happens to be the second-longest running scripted series in television history.
Rare is the episode of ATWT that does not include dynamic appearances by long-time veteran cast members in their beloved roles, and yet the stories it tells about its younger characters are almost as forward thinking and contemporary as those on MTV's The Real World: Brooklyn, currently the best drama about young people on TV. This is especially true of the tumultuous romance of teens Noah Mayer and Luke Snyder, daytime’s first male super-couple and one of the most popular soap couples in every industry survey, especially among young women.
Many fans are following the story of Luke and Noah on YouTube and elsewhere online, where their scenes are lifted from the rest of the show and repackaged as sequential video clips. (There are almost 300 at present.) Might the networks consider separating out specific stories from all the soaps in this manner on their own Web sites? Would advertisers respond accordingly? This is one small out-of-the-box possibility for the future of soap viewing and packaging, but there must be soaps with which to do so!
Which brings me back to Guiding Light: Are there out-of-the-box opportunities for this venerable property that might rescue it from CBS' death grip? If not, there ought to be. Here's one: How about turning it into a primetime series that runs once a week, 52 weeks a year? I like to think CBS of all networks could pull this off: This mighty broadcaster was once home to Dallas, the most successful primetime serial in television history.
If a pumped up version of the current GL couldn't cut it, how about one in which the detectives and police officers on its canvas are moved to the forefront, thereby turning it into an ongoing serial filled with elements of CBS' successful procedural crime dramas? If that isn't an option, a customized primetime version of GL could be produced for a basic cable network.
I realize we will all survive without Guiding Light. But does it have to die? I can't help wondering: Has the franchise truly run its course, or did it simply fall victim to the mindsets of current executives at CBS and P&G? They're holding history in their hands. Can they handle it?
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
Earlier in his career, Ed was publicity director for the independent feature film production and distribution company Vestron Pictures, where he orchestrated publicity campaigns and produced electronic press kits for dozens of movies including the one and only Dirty Dancing. The fact that it is now referred to as a "classic" makes Ed feel old.
GUEST BLOG #4: Ed Martin on FX's "Damages" Season Finale
March 31, 2009 11:16 AM
Here's another guest blog, featuring one of our new contributors, Ed Martin. This time he takes on the season finale of FX's Damages, with a specificity, and an enthusiasm, that make him so much fun to read.
Some sample lines: "The wait between the penultimate episode of the season and a revelatory season finale can be electrifying in itself ... kind of like that slow climb to the high point of a roller coaster."
And: "The highest compliment I can pay any dramatic television series is to say that watching it evokes fond memories of sitting in movie theaters in the Seventies and watching the dozens of modern American classics that graced the big screen during that decade..."
The full review follows. Thanks again, Ed.
"Damages" Sublime Second Season Reaches Shocking Conclusion
By Ed Martin
One of the things I enjoy most about the experience of watching episodic television on its own terms is the feeling of breathless anticipation generated by the run up to a sizzling season finale. This can happen with a reality series (as we saw with the Battle of the Davids last year on American Idol), sitcoms (Friends comes immediately to mind) and most especially serialized or semi-serialized dramas (think 24 or the recently concluded Battlestar Galactica).
When you watch every episode of a series throughout an entire season on the nights they debut and wait a full seven days (or more) between them, the show becomes an exciting part of your life for an extended time...
(This can also happen when watching via DVR or the Internet, but only if something like the seven-day wait is self-administered. Racing through consecutive episodes is fun, but it's a completely different experience.) Watched in the traditional way -- with the viewer taking whatever small amounts of new information he is offered every seven days and then being made to wait for more, obsessing over what he has seen while wondering what will come next -- a serialized show will tighten its grip as the need to see how it all turns out thrillingly intensifies.
After several months of this, the wait between the penultimate episode of the season and a revelatory season finale can be electrifying in itself ... kind of like that slow climb to the high point of a roller coaster.
That's where I am this week as the extended ninety-minute season finale of FX's legal thriller Damages approaches (Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET). In recent months we have seen the White House under siege by bloodthirsty terrorists on 24 and humanity cascading toward its final fate on Battlestar Galactica, but during that time the twisting, turning tangle of death and deceit on Damages has been every bit as gripping.
As was true the first time around, the complex drama of Damages' sophomore season has been consistently heightened by frequent flashes into the future that allow us to see how the story will end, or appear to end, which makes the experience of watching this show twice as exciting (and, perhaps, twice as challenging). We aren't simply watching a riveting story play out. We're wondering how it is going to get to the designated climax, and what kind of shocks and surprises will follow that. It's sort of like watching Lost, but not as trippy.
The narrative flashpoints so far have revealed the reviled, high-powered litigator Patty Hewes, played to stone cold perfection by Glenn Close, held at gunpoint by young attorney Ellen Parsons, who was taken under Patty's wing in season one and is convinced Patty tried to have her killed (this after Patty's fiance was murdered, leaving her understandably freaked).
We have seen Ellen fire her gun twice, seemingly in Patty's direction, and Patty later stumble out of Ellen's hotel room, her faced bloodied as if she has indeed been shot, with Ellen nowhere in sight.
But what exactly has happened, or will happen?
Ellen (played by Rose Byrne) may have shot Patty -- or someone else in the room. Or she may have simply intended to terrorize her evil employer and someone else is responsible for Patty's injuries. All we know for certain is that one should never assume anything about Damages, which is best experienced without any knowledge as to what may happen next.
So stop reading here if you haven't been watching and plan to do so on DVD, because the following sentence gives away some of what has happened so far.
With Damages already renewed for a third season, it would seem that the widespread carnage of the current storyline -- during which Patty has grown increasingly suspicious of Ellen, learned that the FBI is working to bring her down, seen her happy marriage literally shatter around her and lost her beloved uncle and right-hand man Pete -- has rocked her world so significantly as to set the stage for a total narrative overhaul next year.
The highest compliment I can pay any dramatic television series is to say that watching it evokes fond memories of sitting in movie theaters in the Seventies and watching the dozens of modern American classics that graced the big screen during that decade, when literate, thought-provoking, timely stories were powered by performances that were extraordinary in their complex realism. I can certainly say this about Damages.
As strong as its stories are, they are taken to greater levels by the magnificent actors on hand, most especially Glenn Close, who was honored with an Emmy for her first turn as Patty and will likely be singled out a second time (if only for the scene in which a significant witness turns against her on the stand and Patty storms out of the courthouse, her face locked in an expression of deafening silent rage).
If this season of Damages had been conceived as a theatrical film (which it very well could have been, and a damn fine one at that), co-stars William Hurt (as Daniel Purcell, the man from Patty's past at the center of one of the toughest cases of her career), Marcia Gay Harden (as opposing counsel Claire Maddox), Ted Danson (as lethal former billionaire Arthur Frobisher), Michael Nouri (as Patty's husband Phil Grey) and John Doman (as Walter Kendrick, the sinister CEO at the center of the evil-doing) would all deserve award consideration.
So would long-time Saturday Night Live funny guy Darrell Hammond, a revelation here as a killer for hire known as The Deacon. He's as slimy as he is scary and he makes my skin crawl. He won't soon be forgotten.
The characters on Damages may be wealthier and more powerful than most of us, but that doesn't make it impossible to sympathize with them, at least some of the time. One doesn't have to live as they do to experience personal and professional crises: Dishonest employers, cheating spouses and deceitful acquaintances lurk in the shadows at every economic level.
Of course, if you can't identify or sympathize with them, there is much to enjoy in the satisfying spectacle of watching rich bastards suffer. After all, most of them are involved in the legal process. As Murphy Brown once quipped, "Why did the lion chew on elephant droppings? He had just eaten a lawyer and was trying to get the taste out of his mouth!"
Enough said.
----
Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
Earlier in his career, Ed was publicity director for the independent feature film production and distribution company Vestron Pictures, where he orchestrated publicity campaigns and produced electronic press kits for dozens of movies including the one and only Dirty Dancing. The fact that it is now referred to as a "classic" makes Ed feel old.
GUEST BLOG #2: Welcome Another New Contributor, with a Spoiler-Free 'Battlestar' Preview -- Ed Martin
March 19, 2009 5:15 PM
As part of the imminent (well, semi-imminent) expansion of TV WORTH WATCHING, here's another sneak peek at a new contributor. This time it's Ed Martin, who offers, in turn, a sneak peek at Sci Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica finale.
I'm thrilled to have Ed on board -- I love his writing. And, like the other TV critics and analysts already here, or soon to arrive, I'm impressed by his experience and reputation as much as his taste and writing style. Please welcome Ed, and send a comment, before and/or after you see the finale. (And compare his BSG take to that of resident TVWW critic Diane Werts, which you can read HERE.) When it comes to reputable, entertaining, informative opinions, the more, the merrier... and Ed's starts with his account of the New York critics' screening...
"Battlestar Galactica" Finale
Is One for the Ages
By Ed Martin
As critics and reporters settled in Monday afternoon for a preview screening in New York City of tonight's [Friday's] super-sized Battlestar Galactica finale (a full two hours and eleven minutes starting at 9 p.m. ET), executive producer Ronald D. Moore asked everyone in the room to raise their right hands and repeat after him, "I swear not to reveal any of the spoilers I see here tonight."
He further requested that those of us planning to write about it refrain from posting our columns until today and, in addition, not expose any details until after the official telecast. He didn't mention any time zone restrictions, so expect the Internet to explode at 11:12 p.m. ET
For those of you who live in central, mountain or west coast zones, keep your computers off and stay away from your mobile devices until after you experience it, because even the most spoiler-happy viewer will later agree that the many pleasures to be had watching BSG reach its endpoint are best enjoyed without advance knowledge of anything that is going to happen.
I have a lot to say about the show, but I don't want to violate Moore's trust, so I'll be as explicit as I can while remaining as vague as possible. The BSG finale is so unexpectedly powerful in so many different ways that it may turn out to be the scripted television event of 2009. I find it hard to believe that anything will come along to unseat it, but the year is still young.
Further, it belongs on the short list of unforgettable series finales that are passionately discussed for years after they are first seen. (What a great decade this is turning out to be for outstanding series finales, from Six Feet Under and The West Wing to The Sopranos and The Shield, and now BSG.)
Watching the BSG finale in that screening room, I had to repeatedly remind myself that it was "only" a television show, not because the screen was so big but because everything about the episode itself was so frakkin' cinematic. The special effects were dazzling, the action scenes thrilling, the suspense unrelenting (especially one battle sequence involving little Hera).
The emotional payoffs came fast and furious' many so massive they would easily flood a movie theater. Best of all, the long-established intimate relationships between many of the characters were further intensified throughout.
Post-show blogs will be bursting with detailed descriptions of the many shocks and surprises in this production, extraordinary even by BSG's own high standards, and their comment sections will be overflowing with uncommonly thoughtful praise. I suspect there will be a handful of complaints, as well, because while the finale (as teased in on-air promos) does reveal the "truth" about what has or has not been going on throughout the run of this franchise, it doesn't necessarily answer every single question its most ardent fans may have going in.
In fact, it arguably raises a couple of new ones and leaves them hanging. But it all felt quite right. We can't know everything! (It would take all the mystery out of life, as Monty Python might say.)
Admittedly, the full BSG journey hasn't been an easy one for me. There were times when the story became so dark and violent that I wanted to turn away or stop watching altogether, but I never did -- until a sequence in an episode during the first half of this final season upset me so much that I had to take a break. (I recorded the episodes that followed, but I waited a while to catch up.) The events in that sequence struck me as so horrific on so many levels that I was forced to re-evaluate my interest in and loyalty to the show. Such is the unapologetic power of BSG.
I can't identify the sequence, because it comes back into play in a big way during tonight's show, and there will be no spoilers here. I bring it up in this admittedly obscure fashion because the way this past plot turn is worked back into the narrative perfectly illustrates the storytelling genius that has characterized BSG from the beginning.
It is one of many reminders that every single element of this sweeping saga, no matter how disturbing, has had a specific purpose in the meticulous master plan of executive producers David Eick and Ronald Moore. I still hate what happened in that fateful sequence, but I can accept the horror of what I saw then based on what I know now. You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.
When the final credits roll, most of the faithful (and I use that word deliberately) should feel completely satisfied -- and how often does that happen when a TV series comes to an end? You may, in fact, be eager to pull out your DVDs and watch the entire saga all over again, because the ramifications of the final revelations (and there are several) will make everything you have already seen seem different, if not new.
Such is the thrill of a grand story well told; one that, when it ends, leaves you thinking as much about yourself and the world you live in as any of its characters and the places they inhabit.
[NOTE: The BSG finale repeats next Friday, Mar. 27, at 7 p.m. ET.]
----
Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
Earlier in his career, Ed was publicity director for the independent feature film production and distribution company Vestron Pictures, where he orchestrated publicity campaigns and produced electronic press kits for dozens of movies including the one and only Dirty Dancing. The fact that it is now referred to as a "classic" makes Ed feel old.
Ed Martin is a media critic whose columns appear at JackMyers.com, MediaBizBloggers.com and The Huffington Post. He is the former senior editor of Inside Media and has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide. The first five shows on Ed's all-time top-ten list are, in order, I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family and two from the BBC, Skins and Coupling. The remaining five shows are in constant flux, but they usually include Green Acres, The Twilight Zone and The Sopranos.
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