Two Tivos To Paradise 01.05.07
Posted by Al Norton on 01.05.2007
The First Two Tivos Of 2007 Has The News And Views That You Grew To Love In 2006. It's Just U And UR News Tonight, So Click Here To Begin The Knowledge Transfer!
Two Tivos To Paradise
Hello, hello. Welcome to the first Two Tivos of 2007! Santa was quite good to me this year; my booty included the very awesome Superman box set (all five movies plus TONS of extras), the complete series sets of Firefly and The Job, Veronica Mars season 2, a portable DVD player to watch them all on, and lots of other none-TV related items. Spent a good portion of the vacation week at movie theaters, and I can highly recommend both The Pursuit of Happyness and We are Marshall. With all due respect to fellow 411mania writers Chad Webb and Tony Farinella, Rocky Balboa left me wanting more and different, as in more quality and a different movie; I was the target audience for this final chapter of the storied franchise and found it to be really quite bad, and not even entertainingly so.
I know it's been a couple of weeks since you got the Friday report, so let's dance; put on your red shoes and dance the news.
It's Not Your Brain It's Just The Flame That Burns Your Change To Keep You Insane
Television has not seen the likes of the next seven days, perhaps THE single biggest volume of debuting non-fiction programming ever:
Starveillance (E) Friday Grease: You're The One That I Want (NBC) Sunday I'm With Rolling Stone (MTV) Sunday Shooting Sizemore (VH-1) Sunday Ego Trip's The White Rapper Show (VH-1) Monday Gay, Straight, Or Taken (Lifetime) Monday I Love New York (VH-1) Monday Armed And Famous (CBS) Wednesday Rob And Amber: Against The Odds (Fox Reality) Thursday
And that's not to mention returning shows:
Nanny911 (Fox) Friday The Apprentice: LA (NBC) Sunday Hogan Knows Best (VH-1) Sunday Surreal Life: Fame Games Sunday Janice Dickenson Modeling Agency (Oxygen) Wednesday Tease (Oxygen) Wednesday Nashville Star (USA) Thursday
I am usually not much of a reality show guy but not only are two of these my co-TV Picks Of The Week (see below), I have Shooting Sizemore and I'm With Rolling Stone set to tivo at home as well, the former because that guy is a walking train wreck that I can't look away from, and the latter because I like shows where the prize is something tangible other than money (in this case a job writing for a magazine I have subscribed to since I was 10 years old). Much to the shock of many of my friends, I have little or no interest in Armed And Famous; since there is no real contest and none of the participants will be pursuing careers in law enforcement, the lack of a point comes to mind. I will also check out the debut of The White Rapper Show if for no other reason than the title commands at least one viewing.
Bobby's Driving Through The City Tonight, Through The Lights In A Hot New Rent-A-Car
Fox announced on Wednesday that The OC will finish its four season run with a series finale on February 22nd. The show became a pop culture phenomenon shortly after its 2003 debut, earning solid ratings as well as some critical praise, rare for a show of this genre, but things faded fast during its third year, which concluded with the death of a major character (Mischa Barton's Marissa Cooper) in an effort to shake things up. The writing was on the wall when Fox only ordered 18 new episodes last summer, and this season's far from stellar Nielsen's sealed the deal. Creator Josh Schwartz quickly shot down rumors that the show could switch networks for next season, saying it was time to move on.
The OC never did it for me, although I did appreciate Peter Gallagher getting steady work, so I have no real feelings on this other than to say it would have been a very bad decision for The CW to try and pick this show up. Passing on the chance to go on another Everwood rant, I'll just say that a network trying to establish its own identity does not need to pick up someone else's table scraps. I bet the finale draws some big numbers and may lead to some Monday Morning Quarterbacking, but as The CW learned with the whole 7th Heaven fiasco, viewers tuning in to see how a show ends do not translate into viewers sticking around for another round. Schwartz is wasting no time in moving on and will actually have a larger TV presence next season than he does now (see below).
Ask The Local Gentry And They Will Say It's Elementary
ABC has ordered a one hour pilot for a spin off of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, the 2005 feature film that starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and grossed over $180 million domestically. Written by Simon Kinberg, who also wrote the big screen version, the pilot picks up six months after the movie ends, as John and Jane Smith, paid assassins who pose as a regular married couple, have purchased a home in a new suburban neighborhood and are trying to blend in as they reestablish themselves. Doug Limon, the film's director, has signed on to shoot the pilot.
I was set to use my standard, "sign me up" line for this story until I read a quite from Kinberg describing the show as being, "Married…With Children with guns." Now I am a pretty major Ed O'Neill fan (loved him as Popeye Doyle in the made for TV French ConnectionThe West Wing), and maybe history will be kind to the acting stylings of David Faustino, but MWC was not exactly sophisticated comedy, let along the type of writing I would think they would be trying to emulate with this series. All In The Family with guns could work, and I would sit down on the couch for Mad About You with guns, too. Hell, I'd even watch Dharma And Greg with guns. As far as casting goes, John Stamos would be an obvious but strong choice for Mr. Smith, and part of me thinks Tim Daly could pull it off as well, but I am assuming they might be going a bit younger, so that leaves me with a fourth straight week (excluding the year end special) of suggesting Dean Winters for a big TV role. Another thought might be the highly underrated Eric Close, whose talents are drastically underutilized on Without A Trace. Close has been a Two Tivos favorite since Now And Again, not too mention a small but pivotal role in Taken, and could be a break out star with the right vehicle. TVGuide.com writer Matt Webb Mitovich beat me to the Charisma Carpenter punch (that's the problem with writing a weekly column – people use your material before you go to press) so how about Indira Varma (3 LBs, Rome) as Mrs. Smith?
Like A Coin In Your Mint I Am Dented, And I'm Spent With High Treason
NBC kicked off pilot season with a bang this week, giving the green light to three high profile projects. Regular Two Tivos readers heard about David Eick's (Battlestar Galactica) plan to re-imagine The Bionic Woman for a new series a few month's back, and now he's got a "cast contingent" pilot order. Also getting a thumbs up was Fort Pit, about a real life NYPD precinct where "bad cops go to finish off their careers and young rookie cops with no pull go to start their careers,". Based on the real life stories of former NYPD office Rob Cea , it's produced by Denis Leary, Peter Tolan, and Jim Serpico, otherwise known as the creative trio behind Rescue Me. NBC's final rose was given to Chuck, the story of some 20something spies written by The OC's Josh Schwartz.
You had to know that a show with the buzz potential of The Bionic Woman was getting picked up. With rumors abounding that Starbuck may be getting killed off (I won't believe it until I see a tearful Lee Adama holding her lifeless body), my suggestion for Katee Sackhoff as the new Jamie Summers may start to hold more water. Considering how much I enjoyed the last time Apostle Productions (Leary, Tolan, and Serpico) did a cop comedy (see my above list of Christmas DVD's), I have high hopes for that project. Having never watched The OC, it's hard for me to say much about Chuck, which is being compared to Grosse Point Blank in terms of tone and subject matter, but people's whose opinions I trust (that means you Dave and Greg) say that at it's peak, the dialogue sparkled, so I will keep an open mind. Schwartz had a busy week as The CW picked up his adaptation of the popular teen book series Gossip Girl. Written with fellow OC alum Stephanie Savage, the series follows a group of New York high school students and their families as seen through the eyes of a blogger.
She Swears The Moon Don't Hang Quite As High As It Used To
JJ Abrams is negotiating with HBO to executive produce The Anatomy Of Hope, a pilot based on Dr Jerome Groopman's best selling book of the same name that tells the real life stories of patients dealing with serious illness. The show will focus specifically on people diagnosed with cancer, and Groopman and his wife, who serves on the board of Harvard Medical School, will act as consultants. Abrams, best known for creating Felicity, Alias, and Lost, may direct the project as well. This is the second time Groopman's work has been adapted for the small screen, the first being ABC's short lived Gideon's Crossing.
Any regular readers of The New Yorker are quite familiar with Groopman's writing, which is second to none in on the subject matter of medicine from the patients point of view. I am a huge fan, even going so far as to attend an Anatomy Of Hope book signing several years ago (Groopman lives in Brookline, MA, where I grew up and now work), so the combination of the source material, Abrams, and HBO has me salivating at the potential. If they can copy ABC by casting Andre Braugher as the lead in this new show I would be in absolute TV nirvana.
But You Were Up To Your Old Tricks In Chapters Four Five And Six
All you need to know about the Nielsen's…We are still in rerun season, so not a lot of new numbers to talk about…NBC's Christmas Day NFL game was up 21% from last year, and was the highest rated Christmas day football game in 21 years…The annual showing of Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer ended up a very impressive 10th overall for the week…The CW bombed with their attempts to import Top Model: British Invasion…Identity's week long run on NBC started strong with 12.3 million viewers but each night lost numbers, finishing Friday with 7.8 million. No word yet on if NBC will bring this back as a weekly show later in the year…Being among the first series to air new episodes in 2007 helped both Tuesday night Law And Orders get big numbers, earning NBC a rare Tuesday night victory…Dateline did well in it's new Tuesday at 8:00 home…Not even the celebration of the birth of Jesus could stop Howie Mandell; Deal Or No Deal scored huge numbers with it's Christmas night airing. Who would have ever predicted his comeback? Is Stephen Furst sitting around waiting for his phone to ring?...Despite remarkably lackluster reviews, the premiere of Dirt scored solid numbers for FX; the 3.5 million total viewers represented the same as the 2003 debut of Nip/Tuck…Friday Night Lights scored it's third best totals ever, a good sign that this new time slot may become a permanent home. You think my making the Christmas week FNL marathon my Pick Of The Week had anything to do with the ratings spike?...The Knights Of Prosperity pulled in over 7 million viewers, which is not fantastic but a clear upgrade from Day Break
All The Young Dudes Carry The News
Industry Notes, Casting News, & Pilot Updates…The Queen of All-Things-Gossip in Hollywoodland these days, blogger extraodinaire Perez Hilton, has signed on for a guest spot on an upcoming episode of Dirt...Megan Mullally's daytime talk show has been cancelled after less than five months...Tiffani Thiessen will become a regular on What About Brian later this winter...Oscar De La Hoya is guesting on an upcoming episode of George Lopez…Nancy Travis has been cast in Bill Engvall's untitled comedy pilot for TBS…Fox's upcoming Drive has added Kevin Alejandro (Sleeper Cell) and Mircea Monroe to it's cast…pilot of the week goes to NBC's Life, which stars Damian Lewis (Band Of Brothers) as a man returning to the police force after spending years in jail for a crime he did not commit. Sarah Shahi (The L Word) co-stars as his partner…Bravo has renewed Top Chef for a third season…Fox likes Hell's Kitchen host Gordon Ramsay so much they have given him another show; Kitchen Nightmares finds him traveling around the country to try and straighten out restaurants that are in trouble…Mario Lopez has parlayed his Dancing With The Stars success into hosting duties on this year's Miss America pageant…USA has given an 11 episode commitment to Mary Sunshine, starring Mary McCormick as a federal marshal trying to balance her work in the witness relocation program with having a personal life. No word yet on the fate of To Love And Die In LA and Burn Notice, the network's other two big pilots…Showtime added another new show to it's already full development plate when they ordered a pilot for Alex Reymundo's Hick-Spanic. Based on his real life & stand out routine, it chronicles the former member of the Original Latin King Of Comedy's marriage to a blonde haired, blue eyed woman and their exploits while living in Kentucky surrounded by her family. Como se dice, Everybody Loves Ramon?
People Say I'm Crazy Doing What I'm Doing. Well, They Give Me All Kinds Of Warnings To Save Me From Ruin
What's flashed before my eyes the last seven days…Mrs. Tivo and I celebrated New Year's Eve by watching the tweener phenomenon known as High School Musical. Wonderfully cheesy fun and it's easy to see why it hit so big. I wonder if Disney is kicking themselves for not releasing it in theaters first…Finally finished watching all six hours of The Lost Room, and found myself asking, "that's it?" The major non-ending seemed to be hinting at turning it into a weekly series but minus Peter Krause and Juliana Margulies, which could work better than the mini-series did as the best part was the supporting cast; Roger Bart, Peter Jacobson, Margaret Cho, and Jason Antoon were the scene stealing highlights of this otherwise boring event…The lesbian dating/poker episode of 30 Rock was a riot, and made great use of the entire cast…No new episodes of Battlestar Galactica for me to rave about this week but no less a pop culture savant than Howard Stern joined the cult, becoming a big fan over his winter vacation and returning to the air on Tuesday morning to sing the show's praises…This week's Law And Order: Criminal Intent was seemingly their take on the movie Crash, with all sorts of stereotypes put under the looking glass to pretty solid effect. Chris Noth is never going to win any awards but I don't think there is another actor on TV as comfortable with their role as he is playing Mike Logan…Not sure if Brian Dennehy is suffering from a lack of big screen offers these days but his appearance on Law And Order: SVU was his second TV guest spot in recent memory, the other being playing Tom's back-from-the-dead Father on The 4400 this past summer. Even when the SVU script wilted in the last act, Dennehy was never anything less than riveting…The series premier of FX's Dirt was particularly unimpressive; why do directors feel the need to reinvent the TV wheel? I get it; you are talented and want to show off your film school techniques, but how about focusing on the story? Actually, considering how little of one there was, maybe it was a good decision to try and distract with colors and angles. Only Ian Hart as a schizophrenic paparazzi photographer stood out. I will give it another shot but it needs to get a lot better fast to earn season pass status…Living up to hype is very, very difficult, and still I found myself loving The Knights Of Prosperity. Laugh out loud funny jokes, quality pop culture references, great casting, and likeable characters are a pretty solid recipe for sitcom success…My positive feelings sharply declined at 9:30, when In Case Of Emergency came on my TV. Very similar to The Class in terms of story, the producers forgot the key ingredient that makes The Class stand out – heart. With the exception of Jonathan Silverman's high strung greeting card writer ("we're all whores" was the line of the night), no one I saw on screen evenly remotely resembled anyone I had ever met, let alone someone I might care about. It's pretty sad statement when Jonathan Silverman is the highlight of a show…
TV Pick Of The Week
Regular Two Tivos readers first heard about NBC's new reality show, Grease: You're The One That I Want back at the beginning of August, and also got the scoop on the changes planned for The Apprentice: LA in early September. I write this to toot my own horn and also as a lead-in to NBC's Sunday night reality block premier being the TV Pick Of The Week. YTWTIW kicks off with a 90 minute casting special (similar to the first week of American Idol), narrowing the 1000's of auditioners down to 12 potential Danny's and 12 wanna-be Sandy's. This just in – Olivia Newton John will appear in the first two installments! I guess they are saving Jeff Conaway for sweeps. In the issue of complete disclosure, I played Kinickie in a second grade production of Grease. The Donald celebrates moving to the opposite coast with his own 90 minute debut, introducing the world to the new cast of hopefuls as well as to the various changes that have been made to The Apprentice formula. Combined it should make for a fun evening of TV viewing, and that's what we here at Two Tivos To Paradise are all about!
Two Tivos To Paradise, Weekly Update 30 Days, The 4400, The Apprentice, Battlestar Galactica, Best Week Ever, Big Love, Bones, Boston Legal, Brothers And Sisters, Celebrity Paranormal Project, The Class, Criss Angel Mindfreak, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Dead Zone, Desperate Housewives, Entourage, Extras, Eureka, Everybody Hates Chris, Fast Inc, Ghost Hunters, Grey's Anatomy, Hex, Heroes, The Hills, House, How I Met Your Mother, Jericho, Justice, King Of Cars, Knights Of Prosperity, Laguna Beach, Last Comic Standing, Law And Order, Law And Order: Criminal Intent, Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, Life On Mars, Lost, Medium, My Name Is Earl, The New Adventures Of Old Christine, The Nine, Nip/Tuck, The Office, One Tree Hill, Project Runway, Psych, Real Sports, Real Time With Bill Maher, Rescue Me, Saturday Night Live, Scrubs, Shark, The Sopranos, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, Supernatural, Two-A-Days, Top Chef, Ugly Betty, Veronica Mars. Additions :Knights Of Prosperity Deletions :None
Here ends another edition of Two Tivos To Paradise. As always, your feedback is welcome, whether it be to disagree with someone I wrote or to tell me good stuff you've been watching, there is nothing I like more than hearing from my readers! Last week's year-in-review set a record for emails, most of which were positive and all of which were entertaining. It's oddly reassuring to check my tivo "To Do" list and see all my returning favorites, a reminder that February Sweeps is right around the corner. I will be back next week with a big "What I've Been Watching" section as well as the usual smorgasbord of TV and TV related items. Check 411Mania.com daily for the latest news reports, and pinky swear that you'll meet me back here next Friday!
