On the plus side, the new showrunner, David Rosenthal is... umm... eccentric. An excerpt from a 2001 profile of him in the New York Observer (the full story is behind a paywall):
Today, some people think David Rosenthal is crazy. It has been nearly a year since Mr. Rosenthal, 33, left his marriage and abandoned Hollywood, leaving barely a trace. He estranged himself from close friends and colleagues, moved into posh hotels and gave away a million dollars to young women, some of whom he barely knew. He wrote an angry play called Love, which contains an extraordinary amount of cursing. Love also details Mr. Rosenthal's feelings about faith, monogamy and his desire to have intercourse with the supermodel Heidi Klum. Mr. Rosenthal said that after he sent a copy of the play to his father, his father took him to a mental hospital, where Mr. Rosenthal was kept for 48 hours.So this may skip past comptence altogether and go someplace very bizarre. Who knows?
AS-P, the true voice of the Gilmores, will most certainly be missed.
ReplyDeleteThe Dick Wolf years of "The West Wing" were nothing compared to the heyday of the Sorkin years. (Which also happened to be the Rob Lowe years...Josh Malina never quite filled his shoes.)
Wrong TV tycoon, highbrow--John Wells took over. It's my view that the biggest problem with Sorkin's deparature is that he left the show on a teetering precipice with the 25th Amendment storyline. I'm not sure even he could have written the show out of that corner, and the hangover from that mess lasted the better part of Season 5, though TWW dramatically improved about halfway through Season 6 and has been good to excellent this year. (And based on spoilers, "GG" may be teetering in a similar way at season's end.)
ReplyDeleteI had a couple of friends who saw "Love" during its very brief run in NYC. "Not good" would be a charitable assessment of their views. IIRC, the first act was entirely an (extremely graphic) monologue from "David" about how much he wanted to "f**k" Ms. Klum/
A lot of this season has been pretty unwatchable for me, because neither the writers nor the actors have been able to work their ways around the Graham/Patterson antipathy, which seems to have infected the entire cast. The lack of Bledel/Czuchry chemistry only makes things worse. The April storyline is a disaster on the level of TWW's 25th Amendment debacle, and needs to be put out of our misery. If they don't fix these central problems, it doesn't really matter who will be running the show next season. The only solace for me this year has been enjoying once again the great performances of Weil, Agena, Kubota, Truesdale, Bishop, and Herrmann.
ReplyDeleteAmy and Daniel will definitely be missed. To me, they are the heart and soul of "Gilmore Girls" and their absence for the vast majority of the middle part of this current season has already hurt the show(http://televisionary.blogspot.com/2006/04/gilmore-girls-creator-sherman.html).
ReplyDeleteI shudder to think what things will be like next season without their very capable hands at the rudder.
Jace
http://televisionary.blogspot.com
Doh! My bad Matt!
ReplyDeleteBut I totally have to disagree with you about this season of TWW, which yes, I know was acclaimed to be one of its best, but I couldn't have cared less about the Santos & Vinnick campaign trail.
ps: Vinnick should have won!
I loved every second of the campaign.
ReplyDeleteGG ~ nothing written in the future could be as bad as this season on this show. Let Lauren and Scott interact and you get heat. Keep them apart with this stupid storyline and you get boring. Enough doom and gloom, let's have a realistic story about two people in love.
Actually, I think the April storyline places an interesting issue at front for Luke--what is more important for Luke: his love for family/tradition or his love for Lorelai? Also, the mirroring (to an extent) of April as mini-Rory has some interesting materials.
ReplyDeleteAnd if rumors are to be believed, Graham and Patterson aren't on the best of terms off-camera, which may have been a cause of this season's storylines. The show has also generally been lacking in Paris and Richard and Emily this season, which are bad things.
Oh, I've worked with D. Rosenthal, and he's nuts. Good luck to GG. I guess it'll be a trainwreck worth watching next year.
ReplyDelete"And if rumors are to be believed, Graham and Patterson aren't on the best of terms off-camera, which may have been a cause of this season's storylines."
ReplyDeleteI have heard the same rumors for years, and although I know they are just speculation if they are true it makes me angry. I don't care if you don't like your fellow castmate. It's your JOB to act with them. Anything else is just unacceptable to me. Look at poor Sophia Bush -- she has to show up at the One Tree Hill set every day and see her cheating soon-to-be ex-husband Chad Michael Murray, and then pretend to be in love with him on camera! And she does it with grace. That's a true professional.
Sorry for the rant, but after hearing so many rumors about how Graham and Patterson hate each other, I just can't take it anymore. :) Also, my frustration with this season of GG is reaching a breaking point. I don't know what these "spoilers" are (and I don't want to know -- I like to be surprised) but if they are as bad as everyone who knows is implying I am going to be devastated, because I adore that show.
And Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd hated each other, and Debra Winger and Richard Gere despised each other more than any screen couple in the history of movies, and yet they worked together (and got great results).
ReplyDeleteIf the rumor is true, I have to wonder how much of this forced separation is a result of demands from the actors, and how much was Amy and Daniel deciding to avoid a messy day on set.
Either way, you deal with it. The show has been building up to this coupling since the very end of the pilot, and if the only reason it's on the rocks right now is because the actors don't get along, tough. Suck it up, hose 'em down if they get too hostile and film the show as intended.
Y'know... I'm not as worried about this transition as I would have been if it happened, say, two years ago. GG has been going downhill all year, and even the show's most loyal viewers (like me... I've been watching since season two) are starting to throw up their hands in exasperation.
ReplyDeleteThe last episode showed exactly what's wrong with the show by giving us a taste of what was right about it; all the scenes that revolved around Lane's wedding were GG at its quirky, bantery best. Then, after Lorelai saw the picture of Rory with April, we went back into Sourpussville, really killing the light mood of the episode.