Freaks and Geeks Rewind: Pilot

So after sifting through all of your summer suggestions (and, as feared, dismissing most of them) and getting great pleasure out of writing a blog post and a column about Judd Apatow, not to mention two different posts about canceled shows I watched on Netflix, I've come up with a more concrete summer plan for this blog. I'll still be writing about HBO's Sunday shows, and "Rescue Me" and the other usual suspects as they pop up, but rather than try to analyze shows I don't feel much passion for (i.e., "Big Love"), I'm going to revisit some old favorites starting on DVD, starting with "Freaks and Geeks."

Why "Freaks and Geeks"? Several reasons: 1)It's awesome; 2)It had a relatively short run, meaning I can knock out all 18 episodes before the summer's over (especially if I do them in chunks); 3)It's the exact kind of show I would have blogged about had I been doing this back in 1999; 4)It's awesome; 5)Maybe this will inspire some people (whether fans of the show or people who never saw it) to rent or buy the DVDs; 6)I was enough of a fanboy about this show that I'll have the occasional amusing anecdote (like how I helped write episode two, but not really at all); 7)Did I mention the awesomeness?

I had briefly toyed with the idea of writing the reviews as if it was the fall of '99 and I didn't know what was to come -- the way Edward Copeland is blogging about "Twin Peaks" season two -- but I didn't want to be prevented from discussing stuff down the line, however obliquely. (And if you've never seen the show before, I'll do my best not to spoil too much for you, but know that with this show, plot is basically besides the point.)

Anyway, I've watched the first three episodes in the last 48 hours and will hopefully have time to review at least "Beers and Weirs" before the weekend. (I won't have a lot of blogging time during press tour next month, so if I want to finish this project before Labor Day, I have to do an odd schedule.)

Discussion of the pilot to one of the best TV shows ever made coming up just as soon as I complain about my smushed Twinkie...

High school. My God. What a baffling, painful, hilarious, life-altering period in anyone's life -- and what a funny, sad, dead-on accurate job that Team "Freaks and Geeks" (headed by creator/writer Paul Feig, director Jake Kasdan and producer Judd Apatow) does of capturing it all. Even if your teenage years weren't exactly like one of the characters on this show (and confession time: I was probably a cross between Bill and Neal), even if you went to high school decades and hundreds of miles away from the Detroit suburbs, 1980, you're going to recognize people, incidents and behavior as you watch this show, and the laugh-to-cringe ratio is going to be informed entirely by whether you were a participant or an observer in each scene.

We start off with the show's "Touch of Evil" moment, a tracking shot acrosss the McKinley High athletic field, up into the bleachers for some overwrought relationship dialogue between a golden boy football player and his beautiful cheerleader girlfriend ("I love you so much, it scares me"), then down below the bleachers (as the soundtrack features a needle scratch and an abrupt shift into Van Halen's "Running with the Devil"), where we get our first glimpse of the male Freaks: Daniel Desario (James Franco), handsome, squinty, always with a story to tell (in this case about getting in trouble for wearing a Molly Hatchet t-shirt); Ken Miller (Seth Rogen), deadpan commenter on the misadventures of the other Freaks (in this case, he's annoyed because it was his shirt Daniel was wearing); and Nick Andopolis, pothead drummer constantly veering between mania and narcolepsy.

The soundtrack shifts to Kenny Loggins' "I'm Alright" -- which nerds everywhere know as the theme to "Caddyshack" -- as we pan over to a series of interlocking Bill Murray impressions being performed by our three Geeks: Sam Weir (John Francis Daley), smart, but way too small and sweet for the punishment he's going to suffer in high school; Neal Schweiber (Samm Levine), master impressionist, even if most of his references are old even for 1980; and Bill Haverchuck, tall, gawky, spacey, and the butt of everyone's jokes -- including his two best friends. The boys are threatened by the arrival of Sam-hating freshman bully Alan White (Chauncey Leopardi), only to be saved by Sam's sister Lindsay (Linda Cardellini), a former geek herself who's been edging into freak territory since the death of her grandmother. Alan runs from this glowering older girl in her faded Army jacket, but rather than be grateful for his sister's help, Sam complains about the humiliation of being saved by her. As the Geeks run off, Lindsay mutters, "I hate high school."

And there you have it. Less than five minutes, mostly one shot (or the careful illusion of one shot), and you've met most of the important characters, understand their worldview, their place in the high school pecking order, and you know for sure this won't be like any high school show ever made before. (With the possible exception of "Square Pegs," but I would argue that "Freaks and Geeks" is the show that the uneven and badly-dated "Square Pegs" wishes it could have been.)

I've been watching a lot of pilots lately, and what strikes me is how so many of them feel like rough sketches, at best, for what might be coming, where nearly everything in the "Freaks and Geeks" pilot comes fully-formed. It's been nearly a decade (sigh...), but I remember the experience of watching this episode the first time well enough to know that most of the changes between the version I saw in June and the one that aired in September were minor (some music changes) or actually took away from the clear establishment of a character (they had to cut a scene between Sam and Kim Kelly that I'll get back to in a moment).

By the end of the hour, we've met (with the exception of some of the parents) virtually every character of note from the lifetime of the series: Sam and Lindsay's old-fashioned parents Harold (Joe Flaherty) and Jean (Becky Ann Baker); Daniel's on-again, off-again bitch on wheels girlfriend Kim (Busy Philipps); aging hippie guidance counselor Jeff Rosso (Dave "Gruber" Allen); Sam's cheerleader crush Cindy Sanders (Natasha Melnick); Lindsay's pious ex-best friend Millie (Sarah Hagan); Harris (Lea Sheppard), a slightly older geek who tries to mentor Sam and friends; unhelpful teachers Mr. Kowchevsky (Steve Bannos) and Coach Fredricks (Thomas Wilson); and"special" student Eli (Ben Foster). (IMDb even lists Lizzy Caplan's Sara having been in the pilot, but either I didn't spot her or didn't remember what she looked like at the time.) Even some characters who don't appear at all are established, like a reference to Bill's mom being hot.

That's a lot of characters to introduce, let alone define, in less than 45 minutes, and yet Feig, Kasdan, Apatow and company do it. As soon as Eli popped up, for instance, I recognized not only him, but the different ways the other kids would treat him. (There's a great scene midway through where some kids are having fun by engaging him in a discussion of President Carter, but the line between laughing at and laughing with is so blurry that when Lindsay tries to clue Eli into what's really going on, it's clear she's made a bad choice even before she uses the word "retarded" and enrages poor Eli into running off and breaking his arm.) Obviously, I'm projecting somewhat based on what I know of the rest of the series -- that, say, Kim or Mr. Weir or even Coach Fredricks will be given more depth in later episodes -- but from the start all the characters felt like familiar types but not stereotypes.

Feig was, like me, a geek, and so the pilot's sensibilities tilt ever so slightly towards Sam and his pals instead of Lindsay's budding friendship with Daniel and company. There's a brilliant scene where Cindy brings Sam the jacket he left in another room -- having no doubt put no thought into the deed beyond, "Hey, isn't that Sam's jacket? I should probably get it for him." -- and Neal and Bill contort themselves into a logic that interprets this as proof that Cindy's in love with Sam. And the episode's centerpiece is the dodgeball game (pictured above), shot like the Normandy sequence from "Saving Private Ryan," with nearly as much carnage. (Neal takes a shot in the jewels twice.)

Still, there are some righteous scenes with the Freaks. The Kim/Sam scene, in which she humiliates him for the sin of making eye contact by pushing him against a locker and asking if he wants to kiss her, was deleted both for time and because NBC executives found it too mortifying even by the cringe-inducing standards of the rest of the pilot, but Busy Philipps is so damn scary in it that I wanted to run and hide, and I was on my couch. And Jason Segel got to give the first taste of his gangly overexuberance in the scene where Nick tries to cheer up Lindsay by introducing her to his ginormous, Neil Peart-inspired drum kit.

But "Freaks and Geeks" was always more than a collection of humiliations, prog rock tributes and dodgeballs to the groin. It was, at heart, a show about identity, how the hellfire of high school forges one for everybody, and how hard some people try to craft a new one for themselves. Late in the episode, Lindsay gets fed up with all of her father's "And you know what happened to him? He DIED!" speeches and storms off to her room. Sam follows to make sure she's okay -- and to get some advice on his impending fight with Alan -- and Lindsay explains the source of her newfound bitterness. She was the only person in the room when their grandmother died. As Grandma was going, Lindsay asked if she saw the light that everyone always talks about. Grandma, terrified, told her she saw nothing. "She was a good person all her life, and that's what she got," Lindsay -- who, by all accounts, was the dictionary definition of a goody two-shoes -- tells Sam. He's either too afraid of the implications or not quite mature enough to understand Lindsay's point, and he changes the subject back to the fight with Alan (which he'll miss thanks to Cindy Sanders, while Bill, Neal and Harris' sidekick Colin have a clumsy three-on-one brawl in his place).

The main plot of the episode, if it can be said to have one, centers on whether Sam and/or Lindsay will attend the Homecoming Dance. In the end, both do, Sam for the promise of a dance with Cindy, Lindsay because Mr. Rosso forces her as punishment for cutting class. In a rare moment of triumph and uplift for the series, we see Sam enter the dance to the slower opening bars of Styx's "Come Sail Away," looking nerdy but adorable in his blue blazer and grey slacks. He makes a beeline towards Cindy (as John Daley slays me with the way he plays Sam's terror and anticipation), gets her out onto the dance floor, then panics when the song shifts into the electric portion, since he doesn't know how to fast dance. After the previous 40+ minutes, we're cued to assume this will end in tears, but instead Cindy gets Sam to relax and do his own version of the White Man's Overbite. Lindsay, struck both by Sam's minor victory and a rare moment of wisdom from Mr. Rosso (who suggests that if being forced to attend a dance is the worst thing in her life, her life's pretty good), apologizes to Eli for the "retarded" incident, brings him to the center of the dance floor and is soon so overcome with joy that she even throws off the Army jacket for a few moments.

The original cut of the episode ended not on the shot of the Weir siblings dancing, but on a cut back to Mr. Rosso, who flashes that goofy grin and says to himself, painfully in earnest, "Some days, I've got the best job in the world." NBC wanted a less ironic note to end on, and for once, they were right. As I said in my column on Apatow's success in movies versus his failure in television, one of the key differences between his movies and his TV work is that his movie heroes get the girl in the end. "Freaks and Geeks" wouldn't have worked with Sam and Cindy as a happy couple (though they do date near the end of the series), but for this one shining moment, they're together on the dance floor, and they're happy -- and so, however briefly, is Lindsay. Without that moment of uplift -- which feels totally earned -- and the promise of similar moments down the line (say, the Freaks showing up to watch the Mathletes, or Bill's seven minutes in heaven with the cheerleader from the pilot's opening scene), I don't know that even the small handful of masochists like me who loved this show would have stuck around for long.

Damn. Now I want to go and watch the dance scene again. Back in a few.

Okay, I'm back. Still gets me, every time.

Some other thoughts on the pilot:

• It's funny how much certain characters' appearances changed over the course of 18 episodes. Nick and Ken in particular are far more clean-cut than they'd become, while Alan the bully has a period-appropriate hairstyle here, but ironically will come back in a few episodes sporting a buzz cut. (Presumably, the actor had to cut it for another role, and the writers have to hand-wave it away as the result of Alan getting head lice.)
  
• In an early scene on the smoking patio, Nick says he doesn't want to go to the Homecoming Dance because "You know they're going to play disco. Disco sucks! I hate disco!" Now, do you think Feig knew at the time that he'd be writing Nick into "Discos and Dragons" (based, as with so much of this show, on his own life experience), or was this just accidental ironic foreshadowing?
  
• Nick's drum kit, by the way, has ten cowbells. Is that enough to satisfy Bruce Dickinson, or would he need more?
• One more Nick note, and something I only just noticed when I was rewatching the dance scene a few minutes ago (no, the above was not a joke): Nick actually goes to the dance. You can see him sitting on the stage, wearing a sportscoat and smiling like he burned a few on the way over. Given that the episode had already set up Nick's thing for Lindsay, I'm surprised there's not some kind of deleted scene about her running into him there.
  
• Though the show overall did a great job at period accuracy, there would be occasional glitches, like the Nick/John Bonham stuff I'll get into when I discuss "Beers and Weirs," and Neal telling Sam to avoid Alan like Han Solo avoided Jabba the Hut. One problem: this takes place in the fall of 1980, months after die-hard nerds like Sam and Neal would have seen "Empire Strikes Back" and learned the futility of Han's avoidance strategy.

That's it for now. I'm likely going to be tied up for most of Wednesday, so talk amongst yourselves and I'll try to hit "Beers and Weirs" before the weekend. Click here to read the full post

It came from the Netflix queue!: Kitchen Confidential

My "Freaks and Geeks" DVDs returned in the mail today (thanks, Gayle!), but before I get to seriously analyzing, say, the impact of substituting "Running with the Devil" for "You Really Got Me," I want to say a few words about a more recent ratings casualty: "Kitchen Confidential." A few weeks ago, I Netflix'ed and wrote about the unaired episodes of "Kidnapped," and I'd like to do more of that over the summer, when the time and the appropriate title presents itself ("Day Break" seems an obvious candidate if/when it comes out, or if I feel motivated enough to watch the remaining episodes online).

That feels more fun to me than finding something to say about "The Closer" or "Heartland" (though you can read my pan of that in yesterday's column), or even "Big Love." I wrote a column a few years ago about how the TV-on-DVD phenomenon means you never have to watch shows you don't care about; it also means I don't have to blog about shows that make me ambivalent at best.

Anyway, on to "Kitchen Confidential," as I try to adapt the Pilot Watch format to this Netflix idea...

"Kitchen Confidential"
What it was about: A master chef who's also a recovering alcoholic and notorious womanizer and troublemaker is given one last chance to run his own restaurant. Adapted (loosely) from the life and memoirs of Anthony Bourdain
Who was in it: Bradley Cooper as "Jack" Bourdain, Owain Yeoman as his criminal second-in-command, Nicholas Brendon as the pastry chef, Bonnie Somerville as the owner's daughter/head waitress, John Francis Daley as a virginal rookie chef from Utah; Jamie King as the hot but ditzy hostess. In recurring roles: John Cho (who was supposed to be a regular but had movie commitments) as the fish expert, Frank Langella as the owner, Sam Pancake as a waiter and Erinn Hayes as another sous-chef.
Why it worked: It was no "Arrested Development" (which served as its lead-in and killed any chance it had of succeeding), but it had a confident, farcical tone that made it my second-favorite new sitcom of the fall '05 season (after "How I Met Your Mother" and ahead of early "My Name Is Earl" and "Everybody Hates Chris"). The writers took advantage of the fairly novel setting (for sitcoms, anyway) with storylines about stolen recipes, cooking school traumas and the tension between the wait staff and the kitchen staff when it comes to tipping. A very good cast; even though many were playing to type (Brendon as a geek, Daley as an even bigger geek, King as a hot ditz), they played those types well. At its heart, a show about a bunch of overgrown boys armed with knives, forks and blowtorches trying not to kill each other with same while making shockingly edible food.
Why it didn't: Again, it had "Arrested Development" as a lead-in. Creatively, though, there was definitely an HBO-Lite (or FX-Lite) feel to the show. Turn to a page of the real Bourdain's memoir at random, and odds are you'll find something more scandalous than what happened on the show. In particular, the decision to start with a sober Jack feels like something the network insisted on; the Owain Yeoman character is closer to what I imagine the producers would have done with their hero on cable. Cooper's also an acquired taste -- especially compared to how funny the real Bourdain is on his own shows or in his "Top Chef" cameos. I liked Cooper and bought him as this sleazebag chef; my wife and a lot of other critics didn't.
What happened post-cancellation: Since 13 episodes were produced and only four aired, most of the series -- including some of the funnier episodes (if you don't have a lot of time, I recommend "You Lose, I Win," "The Robbery" and "Teddy Takes Off") and and a lot of tinkering. With Cooper and Somerville's sexual chemistry non-existent, Hayes was brought in as Jack's occasional love interest (and, essentially, a female Jack). Late in the run, Langella turned over control of the restaurant to Somerville and gave Jack a swank apartment upstairs that no doubt would have been the center of lot of sexual hijinks. Click here to read the full post

Sunday night funnies (and weirdos)

Damn. Busy night of TV. It's the summertime, and yet there are five different shows I ostensibly follow, including one that's airing two episodes a week until Fox gets it the hell off its airwaves. Brief spoilers for, in order, "Entourage," "Flight of the Conchords," "Meadowlands" and "The Loop" coming up just as soon as I get fitted for prosthetic nose and mustache...

God love Doug Ellin and those magnificent bastards at "Entourage." Not only did they finally give us a glimpse of Vincent Chase, working actor, but they threw in a Martin Landau-as-Bob Ryan shout-out! (For your poor people who missed it, Vince reveals that E has been reading Bob's autobiography -- titled, of course, "Is That Something You Might Be Interested In?" -- on the set of "Medelin.") That joke alone is going to buy this show, oh, at least two or three weeks of goodwill from me.

I wish they had stuck with the mockumentary format for the entire episode, as most of the best jokes (like Nicky Rubenstein trying to explain why he was bringing cocaine to Colombia) came out of that framework, while the bits that broke it (like the guys discussing the rules about who could and couldn't have sex with Sofia Vergara) could have easily been cut.

As for our first extended look at Vince acting, I thought they took the right approach, giving us just enough of a taste -- and in the middle of a movie that's supposed to be a mess -- that it doesn't matter how silly he looks in the Pablo Escobar make-up. All in all, not a bad start to season four, though I wish Ari could have been involved more somehow (maybe as part of the machinations to get Gaghan).

I have to say that I may already feel more affection for new lead-out show "Flight of the Conchords," but that's largely because I have a strange sense of humor. A character whose hobby is building a bicycle helmet that resembles his hairdo? A robot-themed music video featuring a "binary solo" where the guys sing nothing but 0's and 1's? Lyrics like "You're so beautiful, you could be an air hostess in the 60s" and "You could be a part-time model, but you'd still have to keep your regular job"? New Zealand's raging inferiority complex compared to Australia? That's my kinda show, even if I felt like the musical numbers upstaged the regular scenes in the premiere. (In other episodes, the reverse is true; of the four I've seen, none of them manages to get the balance just right.) "Tenacious D" aired during a period in my life when I didn't have HBO, so I can't do the obvious compare/contrast, but I'm definitely amused by the newbies.

My weirdness tolerance is different when it comes to dramas. When you're being weird for the sake of laughs, I'm happy, but weirdness for the sake of dramatic tension -- or, worse, weirdness for its own sake -- gets old with me in a hurry. So I'm not sure I'll make it to the end of the first season of "Meadowlands," with its elaborately-choreographed neighborhood dance numbers, its high-functioning autistic teenage fetishists, its deliberatey opaque flashbacks, psychotic cops, etc. But it's an interesting start; I'll give it a few weeks to see whether there's an actual show here or just a collection of randomness and homages to "The Prisoner" and David Lynch.

Two more episodes of "The Loop" to confirm my belief that this was a mercy cancellation. Still some funny stuff -- most of it involving Joy Osmanski, both with and without a Bedazzler -- but I watched both episodes blaming my lack of laughter on fatigue, and then I put on the "Robot Chicken" ode to "Star Wars" and laughed practically from start to finish. (It's an apples and oranges comparison, I know; I make it just to note that I was capable of laughter tonight, and "The Loop" really helped me achieve it.) Plus, I have no idea why they didn't just dump Sam's brother while they were canning the two roommates.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

John From Cincy: You're getting a little hard to follow

Spoilers for "John From Cincinnati" episode two coming up just as soon as I update my temblor insurance...

What an intriguing, frustrating show this is. I want to give it the same kind of deep analysis that "Sopranos," "Deadwood" and "The Wire" merit, and yet I can barely make heads or tails of it at times. There's obviously something about it that's compelling me to keep watching (and it's not just loyalty to Milch, as "Big Apple" lost me around here), yet I'm hard-pressed to explain why I'm watching, or what the hell this show is about.

In fact, I'm so flummoxed by the damn thing that I feel the need to go straight to the bullet-points, rather than attempting any kind of rigorous analysis. Maybe I'll be more in the flow in a few episodes time, but for now let's take it piecemeal:

• I'm not sure which irritates me more: the Luke Perry/Emily Rose long con that no one can be bothered to explain (shades of Wyatt Earp's "brilliant plan" that Milch never got around to telling us about on "Deadwood"), or the incoherent goings-on at the motel that lent this post its subject line. I don't know whether the motel stuff would be more or less appealing if the characters used plain English instead of Milchspeak; I have a sneaking feeling that the only vaguely interesting thing about Luis Guzman and company here is that they're hard to follow.
  
• And the extended "Deadwood" reunion continues. Last week gave us Jim "Ellsworth" Beaver as Vietnam Joe and, of course, Austin "Morgan Earp" Nichols as John. This week we have Dayton "Charlie Utter" Callie nearly unrecognizable as Steady Freddy, Butchie's Hawaii-based drug dealer; and Garret "Jack McCall/Francis Wolcott" Dillahunt as Dr. Smith, who's going to have a whole lot of 'splaining to do after he discovers what Zippy did to Shaun. Not that I expect "John" to get a second season, but it would be amusing, in an in-jokey way, for Dillahunt to come back as a new character sporting a new hairstyle (maybe one of Butchie's junkie pals?).
  
• Speaking of Zippy, is it coincidence that the bird can resurrect both itself and others at the same time that John and his magic pockets have arrived, or are the two phenomena related? Between the resurrection stuff and Cissy telling Dr. Smith that he'd get to crucify Shaun with more tests, this week would seem to put John's identity more in the Jesus column than the space alien column.
  
• Cissy and Mitch are, on paper, the main characters of this show (John's more of an inciting incident in human form than he is a character), yet it wasn't until their fight in the hospital that I really felt like I understood them, or like they were that important.
  

What did everybody else think? Are you enjoying/understanding this more than I am? Click here to read the full post

Pilot Watch 2007: ABC, Part 2

And so we come to the end of Pilot Watch '07. Unlike last year, most of the networks (except Fox) didn't bother sending out their mid-season stuff, so I haven't gotten a look at "Lipstick Mafia" or "Cashmere Jungle" (or whatever they're called) or "Swingtown." On the plus side, the only fall show I didn't get a pilot for was "Moonlight," and that's because they're starting over from scratch. (Watching the Shannon Lucio/non-David Greenwalt version would be as big a waste of time as watching Fox's "Wedding Album" a year ago, which got completely revamped into "The Wedding Bells.")

Thoughts on "Big Shots," "Dirty Sexy Money" and "Women's Murder Club" coming right up...

"Big Shots"
Who's in it: Dylan McDermott, Michael Vartan, Joshua Molina, Christopher Titus, Nia Long, Paige Turco, and more
What it's about: Four Master of the Universe types get together at the country club to play golf and get advice on handling the women in their lives
Pluses: Good to see all the leads employed (I was a big "Titus" fan), and McDermott and Titus play well against type.
Minuses: One of the guys actually utters the line "Men -- we're the new women," apparently to justify the amount of time the guys spend talking about relationships and their feelings. I'm already frustrated by a Niles-and-Maris-style running gag where Titus is forever complaining about his wife without us ever getting a good look at her.

"Dirty Sexy Money"
Who's in it: Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh, Billy Baldwin, Samaire Armstrong, and more
What it's about: When the private attorney to a rich and powerful Kennedy-type clan called the Darlings dies under mysterious circumstances, the Darling patriarch (Sutherland) recruits the lawyer's do-gooder son (Krause) to come work for the family that dominated his childhood.
Pluses: It's a Greg Berlanti production, which means it has all the soapy elements you expect, but more smartly executed. Despite playing a character who could easily act like more of a self-righteous prig than Nate Fisher, Krause is very likable. Glenn Fitzgerald (who did a multi-episode stint on "Six Feet Under" as a young guy dying of cancer) is a lot of fun as the most obnoxious Darling -- who just so happens to be a man of the cloth.
Minuses: As the Darling sibling who's had a lifetime of semi-resolved sexual tension with Krause, Natalie Zea (a Rebecca Gayheart lookalike) doesn't seem as irresistible as the script is calling for. Most of the characters are very broad -- especially Armstrong as a Paris Hilton-type -- which is fine for a pilot where you're introducing a lot of characters, but no good going forward. (I trust Berlanti enough to not worry too much about this.)

"Women's Murder Club"
Who's in it: Angie Harmon, Laura Harris, Paula Newsome, Aubrey Dollar
What it's about: A San Francisco cop, prosecutor, medical examiner and reporter regularly get together to solve the really tough cases and provide relationship advice to each other. Based on the series of James Patterson novels.
Pluses: Where most of the season's other new cop shows like "Life" and "New Amsterdam" either treat the crimes as an afterthought or just can't be bothered to come up with a good one, former "Angel" writers Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain have written some decent mysteries (or at least adapted them well from Patterson's books). Harmon's well-cast enough as a self-destructive cop that it made me realize how badly Sam Waterston missed her. For what it's trying to do, this show does it well.
Minuses: What it's trying to do isn't something I'm terribly interested in. Click here to read the full post

How to succeed in show business without really changing, take two

So, as I mentioned Wednesday, I decided to turn the Judd Apatow idea into a full-blown column, and Judd was cool enough to hop on the phone with me on a few hour's notice.

For more than a decade in television, Judd Apatow's work defined noble failure. The people who actually watched the shows he wrote and produced -- including "The Ben Stiller Show," "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" -- became obsessed with them, and still speak of them in hushed tones implying a religious experience. But the ratings were never good and most of his shows died after a single season.

Now he's the movie business's King of Comedy, the man with the golden funny bone, writer/director of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" and producer of more than a half-dozen other comedies set to come out over the next year and a half. The words "Judd" and "Apatow" may be the easiest way to get a movie greenlit at the moment.

So what changed? What is Apatow doing differently as the man who gave you Steve Carell's chest-waxing and Katherine Heigl's full-frontal baby delivery than he did as the poster boy for BrilliantButCanceled.com?

Maybe nothing.

"I learned a lot from the TV work," Apatow says by phone while driving from meeting to meeting, "but I'm basically trying to do the same thing."

To read the full thing, click here. Meanwhile, my "Freaks and Geeks" DVDs have been located and are allegedly in transit to my home, so hopefully I'll be able to start blogging on that soon.

Click here to read the full post

Summertime new

Today's column splits three ways, with reviews of HBO's "Flight of the Conchords" (which grew on me to the point where I can't get some of the songs out of my head), the "Entourage" premiere (which does, in fact, show Vince at work), and Showtime's "Meadowlands" (which I think is just weird for weirdness' sake but is at least entertainingly weird). Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me: Andy, I don't want your giant box of porn!

Spoilers for the "Rescue Me" season premiere coming up just as soon as I go rescue some cats...

Boy, I hope the Exposition Fairy got paid overtime for that one, because this felt like an entire episode spent on characters telling us what's happened in the nine months since the fire. So let's sum up: Garrity has longer hair and hate's Maggie's porn (in the funniest parts of the episode), Chief is skinnier and not dead, Tommy's living with Janet and the baby and not dead (and trying to get in touch with his feminine side by watching Oprah and listening to Dr. Laura), Sheila is still insane and not dead, Franco's girlfriend's retarded brother is still easy comic relief, Lou's having more sex than he can handle with (Ex) Sister Theresa, and Chief Pechre is still loathed by all. Oh, and a woman who looks like Jennifer Esposito has spent the last nine months trying to get 80-year-old Tommy Gavin to go on a date with her, even though he's brushing her off at every turn in addition to the problems inherent in being Tommy Gavin.

The episode's spine is the arson investigation, which I have a hard time caring about since it's attached to that stupid cliffhanger in particular and Tommy and Sheila's relationship in general. I think I would like this show a lot better if Tommy never had to deal with another woman again -- except maybe his daughters, as I'm still not burned out on him panicking about Colleen's sex life -- and as with the cliffhanger (which even Leary admitted at the time was bogus), we know that Tommy's not going to lose his job or go to jail. Leary did some nice work in the monologue scenes, but I just don't care.

"Rescue Me" has always had a sloppy feel to it, with subplots and running gags coming and going at random, but this episode felt particularly disjointed. The next couple are a little better in this regard (and also funnier), but the show's gone from one of my must-sees to something I watch because it's summer and not much is on.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Pilot Watch: ABC, Part 1

In between my recent brushes with celebrity, I was pleased to see the arrival of the ABC pilots. I've watched four of them so far, and rather than wait until I've had time to view them all, I'm just going to hit those four: the much-anticipated "Pushing Daisies," plus the sitcoms "Carpoolers," "Cavemen" and "Sam I Am."

It's been a little bit since the last Pilot Watch, so I'll put the disclaimer in full: These are not reviews, just first impressions. I know that many things can and will change between now and September, from recasting to rewriting to complete overhaul. This is just how I responded to these pilots at first glance.

"Pushing Daisies"
Who's in it: Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth, Swoosie Kurtz and the voice of Jim Dale
What it's about: A pie-maker has the ability to bring living things back from the dead by touching them, but with several strings attached: if he touches them again, they die for good, and if he doesn't touch them again within 60 seconds of resurrecting them, someone else nearby will die in their place. While working alongside a private eye who's found a way to make money off the pie-maker's power, he resurrects his childhood sweetheart and has to face a lifetime of never touching her.
Pluses: I was never as enthralled with previous Bryan Fuller-produced series like "Wonderfalls" and "Dead Like Me" as a lot of my critical bretheren, but this one really clicked for me. Pace (the brother on "Wonderfalls" and the co-star of the underrated Showtime romantic tragedy "Soldier's Girl") has the right mix of quirk and reserve for the material, Friel makes the resurrected girlfriend's matter-of-factness seems sensible and appealing. The production design, the direction of Barry Sonnenfeld (the visually richest thing he's done since the Addams Family movies, if not since he was DP for the Coen brothers), and the narration of Dale (voice of the amazing Harry Potter audiobooks) all combine with Fuller's off-beat writing to create what's far and away my favorite pilot of the season.
Minuses: If you thought Fuller's previous shows were a bit too twee, this won't change your mind. Both visually and tonally, it's going to be damn difficult to replicate the feel of the pilot on a weekly basis.

"Carpoolers"
Who's in it: Fred Goss, Jerry O'Connell, Faith Ford, Jerry Minor, T.J. Miller and Tim Peper
What it's about: Four guys of varying backgrounds commute together to their jobs at a nearby office park.
Pluses: I quite like Minor (the one on the left in the photo) as the repressed nerd who usually winds up driving the carpool, as well as Miller, who plays the man-child son of Goss and Ford's characters and spends the entire pilot wandering around in a ratty bathrobe and tighty-whities.
Minuses: I've never been in a carpool myself (I hate the environment too much for that), but these guys seem to talk about their feelings an awful lot more than I ever do with my best male friends, let alone three quasi-strangers with whom I share nothing but geographic proximity.

"Cavemen"
Who's in it:Bill English, Nick Kroll, Dash Mihok, Kaitlin Doubleday and John Heard
What it's about: Spin-off of the Geico commercials, about three twentysomething cavemen struggling with prejudice in 21st century Atlanta.
Pluses: Mihok (who you might remember from "Felicity," or the Leo/Claire "Romeo and Juliet"), as the requisite dim-bulb, shows some physical comedy chops, particularly in a dance number at a cowboy-themed country club party. In the right hands, this could be that interesting satire of race relations that Steve McPherson was bragging about at the upfront. After expecting to cringe throughout the entire 21 minutes, I never really did.
Minuses: Didn't laugh much, either. The 21 minutes just kinda came and went with almost no reaction from me, good or bad.

"Sam I Am"
Who's in it: Christina Applegate, Jean Smart, Kevin Dunn, Melissa McCarthy, Barry Watson, Jennifer Esposito, Tim Russ
What it's about: A woman wakes up from an eight-day coma with no memory of who she is, and gradually discovers that she was a very nasty person pre-coma.
Pluses: As she showed in "Anchorman," Applegate has grown up to be a really polished, likable comedienne. The "Regarding Henry"-style plot ("Regarding Henrietta?") has potential, and there's a very funny moment where it's realized, when Sam -- having just discovered she's a recovering alcoholic -- attends an AA meeting and can't decide what to sample from the coffee/pastry table.
Minuses: With the exception of Watson (as Sam's boyfriend) and Russ (as her doorman), the supporting characters feel way too broad. As with "Cavemen," I largely sat through the pilot, not responding to any of it. Click here to read the full post

Funny Sopranos link

I think the 15 Minutes of Fame Tour has finally come to a halt, but I thought some of you might get a kick out of Emmy-winning blogger Ken Levine's take on what "The Sopranos" finale would have been like if it was a network show.

When I get done with the Apatow story, I'll try to wrap up my take on the first few ABC pilots I watched. Click here to read the full post

How to succeed in show business without really changing

How much do I love Judd Apatow right now? So much that, after seeing the awesomeness that was "Knocked Up," I'm thinking I want to spend a good chunk of this summer rewatching "Freaks and Geeks" and maybe blogging about each episode as if the show were airing today (ala Edward Copeland's faux-realtime bloggging of "Twin Peaks" season two). I feel a lot more inspired to do that than to watch "Pirate Master" or that ABC celebrity NASCAR show. Who's with me?

Now all I have to do is track down the friend I loaned my DVDs to, or failing that, put it in my Netflix queue.

I'm coming too late to the "Knocked Up" discussion to offer anything new and insightful about the movie itself -- like everyone else, I agree that it's a little too long, and like everyone else, I can't decide what parts to cut (the Vegas trip seems easiest, but that would mean losing Paul Rudd's bit with the chairs) -- but what really interests me is the notion that Apatow's managed to become this hugely successful movie person while essentially doing the same thing that made him a legendary failure on network television.

I was originally going to do a quick blog post on the subject, but have instead decided to do a longer column on it, probably for this Sunday. I have my own theories on the subject, and I'm hopefully going to talk with the man himself later today (if he has time in between running the various Balkan states of his comedy empire), but I was wondering if any longtime fans of "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" (or, going back further, "Larry Sanders" or "The Ben Stiller Show") have any thoughts. Has there been a fundamental shift in what he does? Is it just a matter of being able to do R-rated content? Has the audience changed? Click here to read the full post

If PBS doesn't interview me, who will?

The 15 Minutes of Fame Tour skids into public television tonight, as I'm set to be on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, probably around 6:40 Eastern (UPDATE: Check your local listings, as I'm reminded that in the NY/NJ area, the NewsHour airs from 7 to 8), but I've been warned my timeslot might get moved around. Click here to read the full post

Morning odds 'n sods

So, I'm assuming the 15 minutes of fame are over, though all the interest in the Chase interview might extend it for another few hours. To update from yesterday, I was mistaken when I said I was on "All Things Considered." It was "Morning Edition," and you can listen to the segment (about spoilers, taped last week) by clicking here. The "CBS Evening News" appearance turned out to be about 15 seconds (a commentary on the 15 minutes theory?) My return appearance to "Countdown," which went well, isn't up on YouTube as far as I know, but if anyone finds it, feel free to post the link.

In between all my famewhoring yesterday, I apparently wrote an entire column about the new season of "Rescue Me," but I really don't remember doing it, and don't think it's a particularly well-argued bit of criticism. Short version, to spare you from reading it: the comedy bits are still very funny (save the stuff with Tommy dealing with all his women), but the only dramatic bits that are working at the moment involve Jack McGee. We'll go into more detail tomorrow night.

Finally, "Big Love" came back last night, and though I promised to be more diligent in blogging on it this year than last, I just don't have the mental energy this morning (plus, as I said in my column last week, I still feel like the show is holding me at a remove, or maybe it's just that I dislike Bill Henrickson so much). Feel free to comment, and I'll chime in with my thoughts on your thoughts. Or if you want someone who actually put some thought into a review, check out Todd VanDerWerff's review over at The House Next Door. Click here to read the full post

The Sopranos: David Chase speaks

I'm glad David Chase is a man of his word. He's bugged out to Paris and trying to avoid doing any post-"Sopranos" finale press, but he promised me months ago that he would talk to me the day after the finale, and he stuck to that -- not that he was willing to explain much about the "Don't stop--" scene:

What do you do when your TV world ends? You go to dinner, then keep quiet. Sunday night, "Sopranos" creator David Chase took his wife out for dinner in France, where he's fled to avoid "all the Monday morning quarterbacking" about the show's finale. After this exclusive interview, agreed to well before the season began, he intends to go into radio silence, letting the work -- especially the controversial final scene -- speak for itself.

"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," he says of the final scene.

"No one was trying to be audacious, honest to god," he adds. "We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people's minds, or thinking, 'Wow, this'll (tick) them off.' People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them."

You can read the full interview at NJ.com, but feel free to comment here. Click here to read the full post

My 15 minutes of fame not done ticking just yet

I've been slammed all day with media requests: lotta radio interviews (including a piece I taped last week for "Morning Edition" that finally aired this morning (you can check it out here on NPR's website), plus a visit to "The Jim Rome Show"), a possible return appearance on tonight's "Countdown" (albeit without Keith Olbermann, who's off today, and there's still a chance I may get bumped), and a taped segment at my desk for tonight's "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric." (UPDATE: Which turned out to be for all of 15 seconds. Woo-hoo!)

I wouldn't be stunned if the calls keep coming for a bit tomorrow, but I don't know how actual celebrities get any work done. I'm trying to write three different stories for tomorrow (including more on Sopranos, a Rescue Me review and something else), and every five seconds the phone rings. It's such a hard, hard life! (Right now I imagine every reader of this blog rubbing their thumb and forefingers together in imitation of the world's smallest violin.)

If any other appearances pop up, I'll update this post. And if you've somehow already seen or heard me once today, you should be good, as all the questions and most of my answers have been the same. On the plus side, the CBS segment will give you a glimpse of my glamorous, immaculate workspace. Click here to read the full post

John From Cincinnati: End is near, beginning is here

Countdown to the "Sopranos" finale has eaten virtually all my time and mental energy this week, so in lieu of a new "John From Cincinnati" post, I'm going to paste in the relevant portions of Friday's Star-Ledger column, then leave things open for you guys to discuss what is a very strange, sometimes fascinating, sometimes frustrating show.

"John" carries a double burden. Not only is it following the finale of one of the most revered shows in TV history (will anyone be in the mood for a new drama right after "Sopranos" ends?), but it's been accused, however unfairly, as being responsible for killing another all-time great.

"John from Cincinnati," you see, is The Show That Killed "Deadwood," since HBO claimed producer Milch was so excited to do his new show that he didn't have time for the old one. The truth is closer to "John" being a convenient alibi for the cancellation of the expensive, modestly- rated "Deadwood," but when the legend becomes fact, we print the legend.

"John" would have to be at least the equal of "Deadwood," if not better, to overcome its early reputation, and it's not. It's an odd little show, often more David Lynch than David Milch, and after three episodes I'm still not sure I understand it all.

The short version (relatively): in the town of Imperial Beach, Calif., lives the Yost family, a legendary surfing clan. Mitch Yost (Bruce Greenwood) was a star in the '70s who retired after a knee injury, and now finds himself floating a few inches off the ground at random intervals. Son Butchie (Brian Van Holt) revolutionized the sport -- or so we're told, since the few glimpses we get of him on a board don't make him look substantially different or better than anyone else -- be fore becoming a heroin junkie. That left the care of Butchie's son Shaun (Greyson Fletcher) to Mitch and wife Cissy (Rebecca DeMornay).

Into the middle of the Yosts and their extended circle of friends and family -- which includes retired cop Bill (Ed O'Neill), motel manager Ramon (Luis Guzman), attorney Meyer Dickstein (Willie Garson) and shady surfing promoter Linc (Luke Perry) -- enters the title character (Austin Nichols), a childlike stranger with magic pockets and other unusual abilities who's either supposed to be Jesus Christ or an alien, I'm not sure which. There's also a resurrecting parakeet that has the power to heal others. It's that kind of show.

In the early going, the hints about John's identity lead more to the Christ theory: the series' initials; John introducing himself by saying, "The end is near"; his briefly granting a friend psychic powers by instructing her to "see God," plus the fact that surfing and levitation are two different ways to walk on water. But the character as written seems more like Jeff Bridges in "Starman," a quiet innocent learning how to be human by adopting the speech patterns of those around him. (Almost everything he says is quoting another character.)

As with "Deadwood," the focus is on a community at the edge of civilization (Imperial Beach is the at the extreme southwest corner of the continental U.S.), filled with people incapable of functioning anyplace else. The dialogue is in Milch's familiar curlicue blend of the sacred and the profane -- in one of the more printable moments, Bill exclaims, "I tell you, I don't know anymore if I'm on foot or horseback, or if a bird's alive or dead." -- and many of the actors are members of Milch's traveling repertory company. (O'Neill was the star of the short-lived CBS cop show "Big Apple," Guzman and Garson both had recurring roles on "NYPD Blue," and "Deadwood" regulars Jim Beaver, Dayton Callie and Garret Dillahunt all pop up in small roles.)

But where "Deadwood" had a clear sense of purpose and several indelible characters (notably Ian McShane's ruthless saloon keeper Al Swearengen) right from the jump, "John" takes a laid- back approach to its early episodes, wandering from character to character without bothering to explain what they're about or why you should care. Guzman's and Garson's characters start out as a kind of Greek chorus, then get sucked into what feels like an entirely separate story involving a gay lottery winner and a haunted motel room. (Again, it's that kind of show.)

Six months ago, HBO screened a "John" trailer for critics. Afterwards, a few of us gathered around Milch, and he asked us what we thought of it.

"I'm not sure I understood it," said one.

"That's okay," he assured her. "You're not supposed to."

Milch is a genius, but with genius comes eccentricity, and "John" feels like far too eccentric a show to launch on the heels of the "Sopranos" farewell.

What did everybody else think?

Click here to read the full post

Sopranos Rewind: Made in America

Don't stop... until you go over to NJ.com to read my very spoiler-y thoughts on "The Sopranos" series finale. And, no, your cable was not malfunctioning at 10:01. Click here to read the full post

The Loop: Hockey monkey in drag

"The Loop" began its Summer Burn-Off Theatre run tonight with two episodes, and fortunately I watched both of these episodes a few weeks ago, pre-"Sopranos" finale frenzy. Spoilers coming up just as soon as I put my Tusk of Aag up for eBay bid...

I dealt with a lot of my issues about the new season in my column from earlier this week, but I'll expand on a few points:

• I was all in favor of dropping the hottie roommates in favor of more time for Philip Baker Hall and Mimi Rogers and Joy Osmanski (aka Sam's assistant Darcy), but I feel like what's happened is that the scripts are structured the same as before, with the roommates' roles being reassigned at random to Hall and Rogers. While I have no problem hearing Hall deliver lines like, "I've done things you can't even draw!," it makes the show feel more sitcommy to have Russ and Meryl suddenly acting as Sam's wingmen.
  
• Also sitcommy: the resolution of the smashed car subplot in the second episode. Once I realized the show was going to That Place where Sam would start smashing up the car that Russ bought him, I had to mute it for about 30 seconds, just because I felt so bad about the show doing something so predictable and conventional. (If it turns out there was some kind of final twist near the end of the scene, I apologize.)
  
• While the show's still filthy -- witness Sam getting the Tusk of Aag stuck in a very uncomfortable place -- it feels like a dumber, lazier level of filth, as opposed to the hand job or dog proctology gags from season one that were so beautifully set up.
  
• Was there some kind of market research that showed that fans (all five of us) wanted more of Derek The Douche? Was he Peter Liguori's favorite character? I'm baffled by his regular prominence.

On the plus side, there were still some funny gags. Philip Baker Hall's delivery of "You'll be staying in a youth hostel! I hope you like rape!" was a thing of wonder, so vicious and enthusiastic. (And it's that level of venom that distinguishes Russ from primetime's other Politically Incorrect Geezer Bosses; I love Bob Kelso, but even he never goes quite that far.) Bret Harrison's continued willingness to sacrifice his dignity is admirable -- "The Office" recently did its own gender-confused ladies' pantsuit gag, but this was a much more ridiculous outfit, and yet so Icelandic -- and I'm intrigued by the not-so-subtle hints that Darcy has a thing for Sam.

It's still an amusing show, but I liked it better last year (and even then it was a very uneven comedy). I'm of course letting myself be influenced by having seen Harrison in the pilot for "Reaper," which is awesome, but I think by the time this Burn-Off Theatre run ends (and I'll be stunned if all 10 episodes air) and "Reaper" debuts in the fall, we'll all be okay with how things went down.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

MeTube

Some kind soul put my "Countdown" interview (complete with Keith Olbermann having some fun in split screen) up on YouTube. Enjoy it before the copyright police freak out and take it down. Click here to read the full post

Still more me on TV, take two

So, as I said in the previous entry, got bumped from MSNBC afternoons because of wall-to-wall Paris Hilton coverage (didja know she wore sweats to her hearing?), but now I'm scheduled to be a guest at the tail end of tonight's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," also on MSNBC. I don't think I'll be on before 8:50, and probably closer to 8:55, so it won't be much longer than the Glenn Beck thing on Monday.

UPDATE: And God help me I hope this is the last one, but I'm now told that I'll be on closer to 8:40 or 8:45, as Paris Hilton continues to wreak havoc with all corners of MSNBC's schedule. Click here to read the full post

Still more me on TV

In case you missed me on Glenn Beck, or if you just can't get enough of my unmistakable star quality on camera, I'm supposed to do a live spot on MSNBC this afternoon, sometime between 2:30 and 3 p.m. Eastern -- discussing, of course, "Sopranos."

This week (and maybe into next) is obviously my Constitutionally-mandated 15 minutes of fame. Thus far, though, no paparazzi have chased me, and I haven't been romantically linked to Paris, Lindsay or Britney, so I suppose that's a plus.

UPDATE: Looks like I tempted fate by mentioning American's skankheart I just got a call saying I've been bumped for more round-the-clock Paris coverage. Ah, well.

UPDATE #1: Okay, this day gets stranger and stranger. Now I may wind up on MSNBC after all, but in primetime, as a guest on the tail end of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." If this does happen, I'll post a note later. Click here to read the full post

Life after Tony

Today's (long) column previews "John From Cincinnati" and "Big Love," both of which I have mixed feelings about:

Can HBO replace Tony Soprano with a levitating surfer? How about a hardware salesman with three wives?

Sunday night shortly after 10 (depending on how much pre-"So pranos" padding we get at 9), the pay cable giant enters Year One A.A. (After Anthony) with the debut of "John from Cincinnati," a new surfing drama from "Deadwood" creator David Milch. The next night, "Big Love" begins its second season, as well as HBO's second attempt to colonize Monday primetime. ("Six Feet Under" tried briefly a few years ago and moved back to Sundays within weeks.) Each show is interesting in its own way, but both illustrate the challenge HBO is going to have filling Tony and Paulie's large white shoes.

"The Sopranos" was the perfect ratings storm for HBO: a blend of highbrow and lowbrow, of equal parts male and female appeal, a market researcher's fan tasy project. Come for the whacking and vulgar humor, stay for the relationships and dream analysis!

Neither "John from Cincinnati" nor "Big Love" can offer that. In better times for the channel, when "Sopranos" was younger and "Sex and the City" still existed, there wouldn't be pressure on it to be all things to all people. But come Sunday around 10, HBO's going to need a new flagship, and I don't see either of these dramas being it.

To read the full thing, click here. Click here to read the full post

The spoiler policy. Once more.

With the "Sopranos" finale only a few days away, I thought it a good time to once again express my policy on spoilers:

This site is a spoiler-free zone. Obviously, there are spoilers about things that have already aired -- and warnings to protect people who watch TV on their own schedule in these days -- but my posts and the comments that follow are not meant to spoil anything that hasn't aired yet.

I don't care what kind of juicy rumor you heard on the radio, or read on another site, or heard from you best friend's cousin who works for craft services at Silvercup Studios or whatever. DO NOT POST ANY KIND OF SPOILER, OR EVEN RUMOR ABOUT A SPOILER, HERE. I'm just going to delete it as soon as I see it, so there won't be any discussion of what you wrote, and you'll just be annoying me, your normally friendly host.

We all clear on this? Click here to read the full post

Great moments in Ledger/Sopranos history

Inspired by my buddy Phil, here's a little pictorial ode to the odd relationship between "The Sopranos" and the paper that employs me.

"Pilot" (Season one): Tony's first trip down to the end of the driveway to pick up the paper, which would become a season-opening tradition. Both the Ledger and Tony look very different these days.

"The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti" (Season one): Christopher is so excited to learn that his name was mentioned in a Star-Ledger article about the mob that he steals every copy from a vending machine.

"Two Tonys" (Season five): The first season to open with Tony not living at the McMansion, and what better way to illustrate it than with the paper lying untouched at the base of the driveway until Meadow runs it over with her car?

"Mayham" (Season six): Silvio, serving as acting boss during Tony's coma, has a bathroom reading session interrupted by Paulie and Vito.

"Mr. & Mrs. John Sacramoni Request..." (Season six): This is more of a tabloid-style headline than anything we usually do, but it's really funny, and it's also the most visually accurate recreation of a Ledger page that they did over the years. Click here to read the full post

Spider-Man, nutty fans and 'Jericho'

Today's column looks at the implications of CBS resurrecting "Jericho" after being harassed by fans for the last month:

Okay, "Jericho" fans. You just demonstrated your great power. But are you ready for the great responsibility that comes with it?

Late yesterday, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler posted a message on the CBS.com message board an nouncing she had ordered an ab breviated seven-episode second season of the canceled post-apocalyptic Midwestern drama. The decision came only after CBS' offices were deluged with phone calls, e-mails, and tons and tons of nuts. This last was in reference to a character in the season finale saying "Nuts!" to an offer to surrender, which was in turn a reference to Gen. Anthony McAuliffe's response to a similar demand from the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. (At the end of her message, Tassler asked, "Please stop sending us nuts.")

Fans have mounted similar campaigns on behalf of low-rated shows that were either canceled or on the verge of cancellation, but they rarely have much impact -- especially now that the Internet makes organizing "save our show" campaigns so easy.

Even when network executives are occasionally swayed -- as, say, WB suits were when "Roswell" fans deluged them with bottles of Tabasco near the end of the first season -- the Nielsen ratings rarely go up to reflect the passion of the hard-core fans. ("Roswell" struggled after renewal, was canceled by the WB and then picked up by UPN for one more season as part of a business deal to acquire "Buffy the Vampire Slayer.") About the only show that had a long run after a fan campaign brought it back from the dead: CBS' "Cagney & Lacey," and that happened nearly a quarter-century ago.

To read the full thing, click here. Click here to read the full post

The Sopranos: Top 10

As part of our paper's quest to outdo the rest of the world in "Sopranos" finale coverage, I was asked to put together a list of the ten best episodes. As I say in the introduction to the column, I was half-inclined to just pick all eight of this season's episodes, grab two random ones from season one and be done with it, but in the end I decided to put slightly more thought into it. Here's the list, in chronological order (and if you want some minor justification for why, say, "Amour Fou" makes it and "Pine Barrens" doesn't, click the above link):

• "College"
• "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano"
• "Amour Fou"
• "Whoever Did This"
• "Whitecaps"
• "Irregular Around the Margins"
• "Join the Club"
• "Mr. & Mrs. John Sacramoni Request..."
• "The Second Coming"
• "The Blue Comet"

Honorable mention: "Pine Barrens," "Long-Term Parking," "Isabella," "Funhouse," "The Weight," "Members Only," "The Knight in White Satin Armor," "University," "Soprano Home Movies" and the rest of this current season.

Now feel free to tell me why I'm an idiot. Click here to read the full post

The Shield: No scheisse, Shane

Spoilers for "The Shield" season finale coming up just as soon as I find an attractive but age-appropriate female colleague to mentor...

Sigh... Franka's come and gone and without a single "Scheisse." Last July, I was helping Shawn Ryan procrastinate by seeking advice for my impending baldness (like Vic Mackey, Shawn sports the Mr. Clean look) when talk turned to Franka Potente's upcoming guest stint on the show.

"She's going to say 'scheisse' at some point, right?" I asked Shawn and fellow producer Chick Eglee, noting how wonderfully that particular bit of Germanic profanity has sounded coming out of her mouth in nearly every film role to date. Shawn and Chick looked at each other, smiled and said, "She is now!"

Alas, my contribution to the creative process turned out not to be, and I'm actually okay with it. The character Franka wound up with was far colder and craftier than she's played in the likes of "Run Lola Run" and "The Bourne Identity," and it might have felt dissonant for her to start cussing, just for the sake of an in-joke.

But enough about me (though at some point I'll bore people with stories of my futile quest to have my name put up on the "Homicide" Board, or maybe start regurgiating "I made Turk dance!" stories). How 'bout that finale? Or should we even be calling it a finale? As I mentioned in yesterday's column (scroll down to "Jumping Ahead"), I feel like the season essentially ended with The Confrontation in episode six. The four episodes since have been like a prologue for the final season, with the Shane/Vic drama backburnered in favor of setting up Shane's problems with the Armenians and Vic's plan to keep his job.

One of my fears when I got done watching the first six episodes was that Shawn and company would try to stretch out this storyline into the final season and drain all the tension they had built up since the season premiere. And, to an extent, I feel that's been true. The writers haven't cheated, but the brother against brother dynamic was more riveting when it wasn't being expanded to include the stuff with the Armenians and Cruz.

Now, these last four episodes have been very good, especially the finale, which had Shane going into major damage control mode to stave off Franka's assassination attempts and Vic going off the reservation in a major way to keep his job. (Jumping into the consultant's car as it was pulling away just to beat the guy up? Damn.) They just don't live up to, say, the season premiere, Vic killing Guardo, or The Confrontation.

But let's dwell on what worked in isolation, which most of the episode did. Shane's learned plenty of bad stuff from Vic over the years, but it only seems fair that he's picked up the useful things, too, like Vic's ability to come out on top even in situations where the odds are hopelessly stacked against him. His move with Franka's daddy, for instance, was reminiscent of Vic taking on a roomful of Byz Lats with only a single bullet in his gun. And yet Shane has a natural gift to find himself in a major hole and then keep digging. Bad enough that he got into business with the Armenians at all, worse that he told Franka that Vic and Ronnie robbed the money train, but then to cast his lot with yet another Armenian? Not since Homer Simpson managed to cause a nuclear meltdown in a training simulator that contained no nuclear material have I witnessed such mind-boggling, dangerous stupidity on my television. Shane deserves every bit of misery he has coming to him next season, and I'm struggling to figure out a scenario that doesn't end with him dead, probably sacrificing himself to save Vic and/or Mara and Jackson (a "noble" death that will be too little, too late).

Meanwhile, I'm just picturing the Don LaFontaine-narrated trailer for the final season: "Vic Mackey was a tough cop who didn't like to play by the rules. David Aceveda was a politician willing to do anything to rise in power. In a world where Mexican diplomats get their arms cut off and then drive around with suitcases filled with cash, these two men have no choice but to clean up a very dirty town. Together again for the first -- and the last -- time, they are... THE SHIELD!"

What? Sorry, moving on...

They've played the "reluctant allies" card with Vic and Aceveda a time or twelve already, but it feels appropriate that the two central characters of season one will be working together in the final season. Aceveda's been pushed to the show's margins since he got that City Council seat, and I like the rhythm that Chiklis and Martinez have together, even if I can't for the life of me figure out how Cruz could have gotten hold of the cell phone picture, especially when the original story made a huge point about how the two rapists were too stupid to know how to send the pictures around.

Two parts of the finale that felt like part of season six proper and not teasers for season seven: Hiatt getting bounced as Strike Team leader so he can go star in David Greenwalt's new vampire detective show (that won't be anything like his old vampire detective show), and Dutch's pursuit of Tina. I raised an eyebrow when Tina claimed that Dutch had a shot and should have taken it before Hiatt made his move, but I'm glad the story didn't wind up with the two of them together. He tried the whole mentoring-as-seduction thing with Dani a long time ago (maybe back in season one?), so it felt right that he would return to her when the Tina thing blew up in his face. Some very nice work by Jay Karnes and Catherine Dent in the scene with Miracle Joe's nephew, and especially in the locker room after. These two have consistently gotten raw deals from the other characters on the show; it was nice that they could have this moment together, wherever it winds up leading next year.

So what did everybody else think? Are you with me that the season peaked too soon with Vic and Shane? How do you expect this mess to resolve itself next year? Will Cruz wind up working with the Armenians? Will Dutch tell Dani about his history with kitty cats? Will we ever again hear word one about Julian's personal life and inner struggle? And if the writers decide to bring back Franka, can they please, for the love of all that is good and decent, have her say my favorite foreign curse word? Click here to read the full post

Entourage: What do I do for the next 17 years?' Do I become a fluffer?

Between dealing with "Sopranos" finale logistics, a four-hour break in the middle of the day to tape a four-minute TV talking head segment (which, in case you missed the update below, probably won't come until around the mid-point of the show, if not later), and my fatigue from staying up late last night to write the latest Sopranos Rewind, I have about three working brain cells left, so some really brief "Entourage" spoilers coming right up...

The largely underwhelming third season comes to a close -- with the fourth season due to follow in two weeks, thanks to HBO's weirdo scheduling -- on a fairly funny note. Debi Mazar finally made an appearance and was funnier in her two minutes than everything Kevin Connolly and Jerry Ferrara have done all season combined. The visit to Walsh's porn set was vintage "It's not TV, it's HBO"-style comedy, with all the Fellini-meets-Dirk-Diggler background details (I laughed especially hard at the couple going at it poolside over Walsh's shoulder), and Drama's real estate dilemma was amusing, if 100% predictable.

I have a screener of the first two episodes of season four somewhere in my satchel, and if I don't fall asleep next to my daughter sometime around 8 p.m., I'm going to watch them. I want to see whether we'll finally get a glimpse of Vince under actual working conditions after the show had the "Queens Boulevard" and "Aquaman" shoots take place off-camera. There's a risk, though, of undermining the show even further if we realize that, just as the allegedly funny "Studio 60" sketches aren't funny at all, Vince doesn't really have the talent or charisma that the show has been boasting about for the last three years. The brief snippets we saw of "Queens Boulevard," for instance, looked like an overbaked parody of a bad Scorsese imitator; can "Medellin" possibly live up to billing, or will the writers finally use the new season as an opportunity to show something significant going wrong in Vince's career?

What did everybody else think? And what do you want to see in the new batch of episodes? Click here to read the full post

More Me TV

I'm going on "The Glenn Beck Show" tonight (with guest host Michael Smerconish) to talk a little "Sopranos." It airs at 7 and 9 p.m. Eastern.

UPDATE: It's a pretty short segment (under five minutes) that I'm told will come maybe halfway through the show, maybe a bit later. I'm the fourth or fifth guest -- and one of the preceding ones is Glenn Beck himself, oddly enough. Try not to mock me too much for my struggle to look into the camera while Smerconish's face is on a monitor a few inches below that. Click here to read the full post

'Loop' link

Today's column is a two-fer, with a review of the Summer Burn-Off Theatre run of "The Loop" (allegedly set to begin on Sunday, but, as mentioned below, I'll believe that when I see it), and a brief preview of tomorrow night's "Shield" finale:

The next time someone at Fox complains about my annual mockery of the net work's unreliable new schedule announcement, I'm going to say, "Then what about 'The Loop'?"

A year ago, the three-tiered schedule for the 2006-07 season that Fox announced had "The Loop," a comedy about a young guy named Sam trying to balance his ambitious career with an age- appropriate level of partying, re turning in the spring and airing after the "American Idol" results show. But when spring and the results show came, it was " 'Til Death" that got the plum timeslot. "The Loop," meanwhile, got consigned to Summer Burn-Off Theatre status, and star Bret Harrison moved on to "Reaper," a new show on the CW's fall schedule. So much for schedul ing.

And even the summer schedule has been written in crayon. The show was set to come back this coming Sunday, then got pushed up to tomorrow night, and then, shortly before this column went to press, got pushed back to Sunday at 8:30 and 9:30 again. (If you care, you may just want to record all of Fox primetime for the next week just to make sure you don't miss it.)

To read the full thing, click here.

Click here to read the full post

Sopranos Rewind: The Blue Comet

I ain't saying nothing here for fear of spoiling one of the best -- and certainly one of the busiest -- episodes in the history of "The Sopranos." Just go read my thoughts over at NJ.com and comment here. Click here to read the full post

Studio 60: The bitter aftertaste

Spoilers for the latest "Studio 60" coming up just as soon as I figure out how Sorkin and company could have possibly squandered Jenna Fischer's presence by failing to put her in a scene, even for five seconds, opposite Lucy Davis...

Last week's show was a budget-saver, minus the three leads and so self-contained that it could be aired at any point in the season (according to the production number, it was shot near the end of the season). So this episode was the real continuation of where we left off back in February, and even though I disliked almost all of it, I'm having a problem working up the passion to bash it. At this point -- especially when you have episodes like this that were clearly written after the real "Studio 60" ratings went into freefall and all the critics turned on Sorkin -- it'd be like kicking a dead horse, beating a sick puppy, or whatever cliche you want to choose.

That said, while the problems are the same as usual -- Danny is a smug, obnoxious hypocrite; the sketches are terrible; Mary the lawyer has even less chemistry with Matt than Harriet does (though I'm glad Sorkin can write irrational female stalkers as well as he does irrational male ones), etc. -- what's interesting (if predictable) was the part that worked: the last three or four minutes with Tom and his brother, which was so dramatically effective I almost resisted the urge to make a joke about how he was captured while STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN!

Almost everything was just right -- Nate Corddry's performance, the editing, the use of silence and point of view shots, etc. -- except the show they were being used on. Simply put, this storyline feels like it has no place on a show set backstage at a latenight sketch comedy series, even if it's supposed to be a dramatic treatment of that world. This felt like Sorkin, under siege from the network, the critics and the fans, retreating back to familiar territory, even if it doesn't fit at all with what he's been trying to do.

The ratings actually took a minute uptick from last week's showing (from horrific to just putrid), so maybe the final episodes will all see the light of day -- especially if Ben Silverman is too busy making big-picture changes to care about the summer schedule. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post