Two Tivos To Paradise 10.17.08

Posted by Al Norton on 10.17.2008

Selma Hayek does 30 Rock, MTV gets a Britney documentary, David E Kelley runs his streak to 20 years, a breakdown of how Tivos effect TV ratings, Battlestar Galactica's return date, raves for Life On Mars, tons of news and notes, the TV Pick of the Week, and more, all in this week's edition of Two Tivos To Paradise!

Hello Friends. Not the best week for my Red Sox – at least not before last night - but I have no complaints about the rest of life, especially when it comes to the twins; Harry and Genevieve are growing like crazy and more and more I am told Harry looks like a mini-Al. Mrs. Tivo gave me the Bret Hart book for my birthday and while finding time to read is tough with two seven week olds in the house, the 100 pages I have read so far are excellent and easily the best I have read in the genre of pro wrestling memoirs.

Very excited for the commute to work now that Sirius & XM have merged and I can get Howard Stern on my XM. We had been a two satellite family, with the Sirius being in Mrs. Tivo's car, which meant my opportunities to hear about the goings on at Howard 100 were at a minimum. The added traffic when I leave after 8 am won't bother me at all now!

Want to take a minute to wish Mrs. Tivo a happy birthday today. She continues to be the MVP of my life.

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till its news.

She's So Fine, There's No Telling Where The Money Went
NBC announced that Selma Hayek will have a recurring role on 30 Rock this season as a love interest for Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy. This will be Hayek's first TV role since she did a stint on Ugly Betty's first season, a series on which she also serves as executive producer.

I wrote about this because Selma Hayek is among the most beautiful women alive, and demonstrated on Betty that she can be quite funny, but also because it gives me the chance to let you know I have seen the first two 30 Rock's of the season and they are simply phenomenal. The first episode involves Liz being interviewed by an adoption agency employee played by Emmy winner Megan Mullally and is a great reminder how just how much the show was missed during the summer hiatus. It also features the return of the genius that is Will Arnett. The second episode, which I will not give away a single part of, is in my mind the funniest episode in 30 Rock's history and is a lock to be their Emmy submission.

Great news for those of you chomping at the bit for the show's return – the season premiere will be available for viewing at NBC.com starting October 23rd, seven days before it hits the airwaves.

You Think I'm In Love, That I'm Sent From Above…I'm Not That Innocent
MTV will air Britney: For the Record on November 30th, a 90 minute documentary that follows pop star Britney Spears for three months as she recovered from rather public personal issues and prepped for a comeback. According to MTV, no subjects were off limits during the interviews that took place. Spears' new album, Circus, drops in stores two days after the documentary airs.

Clearly the US is not even close to having it's full of Ms. Spears. Her new song hit number 1 this week and the video for the single is among youtube's most watched clips. Truth be told, the only thing we love more than an overnight, out of nowhere success story is a cautionary fall from grace tale. And the only thing we love more than that is watching someone climb out of the abyss and back up to the top. Build them up, knock them down, watch them crawl their way back – it's the American way.

Britney has had a full life of ups and downs and she's still a few years short of 30. I don't want to make any excuses for the way she has lived her life but I will say that most of those doing the criticizing of her actions have no real idea what it's like to be her, wondering who likes her for her and who is trying to use her. And that's just her immediate family. I am firmly rooting for her to make it back, and could easily see her having a sitcom someday. Her performances on Will and Grace and the two How I Met Your Mother episodes showed some nice comic timing.

You Play With Words, You Play With Love, You Can Twist It Around, Baby That Ain't Enough
The numbers for DVR viewership from the first week of the TV season were released this past week, with the key results broken down below.

The shows with the largest total DVR audience :
Grey's Anatomy – 4.33 million
House – 3.82 million
Heroes – 3.23 million
The Office – 3.11 million
Fringe – 3.04 million
Desperate Housewives – 2.76 million
NCIS – 2.51 million
CSI: Miami – 2.14 million
Bones – 2.12 million
Two & ½ Men – 2.07 million

The shows with the largest % increase in total audience:
90210 – 45% increase
The Office – 39.9% increase
Heroes – 36.9% increase
Fringe – 25.9% increase
House – 35.4% increase
Privileged – 30% increase
Gossip Girl – 27.6% increase
America's Next Top Model – 26.9% increase
Prison Break – 26.7% increase
One Tree Hill – 26.3% increase

The shows with the largest % increase in the 18-49 demographic:
90210 – 27% increase
Privileged – 25% increase
Fringe – 20% increase
One Tree Hill – 20% increase
Heroes – 20% increase
House – 20% increase
The Office – 18% increase
Grey's Anatomy – 18% increase
Smallville – 18% increase
Lipstick Jungle – 17% increase

Privileged is the show that gets the biggest boost here as it's the one on these lists that is struggling the most. The CW seeing that it has a significantly larger audience than the Nielsen's portray with the audience they are specifically going after make it that much more likely to get a full season. Fans of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will be happy to know it finished 11th on the list of biggest % increase, good news for this high quality show that deserves many more episodes to continue telling its story.

Of note is the lack of CBS programming on these lists, with not a single show on either of the % increase top 10's. This is what happens when the majority of your programming is crime dramas; those shows skew much, much older, and DVR's are generally thought to be used by younger TV viewers. Shows like NCIS (currently the top rated scripted show on television) and CSI: Miami have large audiences to begin with, so there is bound to be some representation on the total viewers chart, but when was the last time they launched a drama series that had genuine buzz, let alone buzz with the under 30 crowd?

What should be somewhat alarming to all the networks is that the slight year-to-year increase in overall DVR viewership is dwarfed by the large drops in ratings most shows saw in their return this past September. It's easy for executives to simply blame the low numbers on DVR's but the truth is less people are watching network TV right now.

I Can't Keep Up With What's Been Going On, I Think My Heart Must Just Be Slowing Down
NBC gave a series commitment to a new legal drama from David E Kelley, meaning his streak of having a show he created (or co-created) on the air every season since 1989 will hit 20 . The untitled project, which focuses on a father and daughter who are lawyers, marks Kelley's first scripted NBC project since he wrote and executive produced Steven Bochco's LA Law in the 80's.

Let's run down Kelley's TV resume: after serving as a writer/executive producer on LA Law in the 80's, his first (co-)creation - Doogie Howser, MD - debuted in the fall of 1989, and was followed by Picket Fences, Snoops, Chicago Hope, Ally McBeal, Girls Club, The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire, The Practice, Boston Public, Boston Legal, and The Wedding Bells. Clearly some of these shows were bigger hits than others but we are talking about a guy whose shows have totaled 12 Emmy nominations for Best Comedy/Drama, including five wins. In 1999 he became the first – and only – person to have won the top awards in BOTH categories in the same year. He followed that up by have FIVE different shows on the air during the 1999-2000 season. The list of actors nominated for their work in his series would be too long for even me to list but suffice it to say that he is never at a loss for talent lining up to give voice to his words.

I haven't even mentioned he wrote the screenplay for From The Hip, one of the best bad movies of the 80's and perhaps Judd Nelson's finest work to date. All this professional success is matched by his personal life, where he and Michelle Pfeiffer have been married for 13 years.

No one in the history of TV writes legal dramas like Kelley and I am looking forward to his returning to writing scripts of a more serious nature. What he is still capable of was evident in this past Monday's Boston Legal (see more on that below).

But You Were Up To Your Old Tricks In Chapters Four Five And Six
All you need to know about the Nielsen's for the last week…The season premiere of South Park was up 23% from last year and was the highest rated fall debut for the show since 1999. That spike helped lead out The Sarah Silverman Show post a record high for total audience…23 million tuned into the season premiere of CSI on Thursday, more than enough to win the night's total viewers match up. Only 11.6 million stayed around to check out the 11th Hour premiere, which are obviously not great audience retention numbers…Much like last year, Grey's Anatomy topped CSI in demos, and helped Life on Mars tie for the top rated series premiere of the fall in those demos…My Name Is Earl showed gains from last week, and new lead out Kath and Kim topped it ever so slightly. The Office was down from it's premiere but up over last season's average…SNL Weekend Update Primetime was NBC's most watched show of the night with just over 10 million…The Ex List dropped 17% from last week's disappointing debut and held on to barely 60% of it's Ghost Whisperer lead in…Smackdown gave MyNetworkTV it's largest audience ever, up 10% from last week's debut…As usual, Desperate Housewives was Sunday's most watched show with 15.3 million but Fox, with an NFL overrun leading into Game 3 of the NLCS, won the night…All of CBS Sunday night shows dropped from last week, showing just how much power a late running NFL game has (last week had one, this week didn't)…The 7.3 million who tuned into My Own Worst Enemy were several million short of what NBC was hoping for…Worst Week showed growth for the second week in a row, meaning the series is now off of life support…After three weeks of low numbers, Heroes jumped 8%...It's all in how you look at it when it comes to Eli Stone's return on Tuesday; the network wants you to know it was the second most watched episode in series history, while the contrarians would point out it was down 45% from last season's Thursday night series debut. Finishing up an up note, the audience was 44% larger than it's season finale last spring…NCIS continues to flat out rake, with its 17.9 million strong audience being tops for the night. The demos for the show were the best since last November…Despite NCIS hitting those highs, lead out The Mentalist showed a slight drop in it's third outing…House was Tuesday's most watched show in the key demos…The Christine-Gary 8:00 hour for CBS performed quite well on Wednesday night. Actually, the entire hour of primetime programming was on the upswing, with Pushing Daisies picking up 13% from last week and Knight Rider adding 100,00 new viewers, too…

All The Young Dudes Carry The News
Industry News, Notes, and Hot Rumors…Friday January 16th is the date that Battlestar Galactica kicks off the second half of it's final season on Sci Fi…D.L. Hughley will host a weekly series on CNN starting later this month that features the comedian giving his take on current events as well as doing interviews with both the people making the news and those in the media who cover them. The untitled show will air Saturdays at 10 pm…The End of Steve, the dark comedy written by Matthew Perry (who also plays the lead) and Peter Tolan that you read about here months ago, had it's pilot picked up by Showtime…Will Arnett has signed a development deal with Fox that gives him total control in choosing writers, producers, and directors to work with him on projects as well as over the content of those projects…The Mentalist received a full season pick up…There are rumors that CBS will have a quick trigger finger if The Ex List doesn't pick things up on Friday nights, replacing it with reruns (I mean "encore performances") of The Mentalist…Fox ordered two more Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' scripts, a very positive sign for the show's future (at least for this season's future)…Knight Rider got a four script order…Danielle Panabaker, last seen as Shark's daughter, will do a multi-episode arc on Eli Stone…Josh Henderson has joined the cast of 90210. Henderson is best know as Edie's nephew who dated Julie on Desperate Housewives…Mark Burnett is developing a new version of This Is Your Life…Youtube is now running full episodes of show's from the CBS production library, like Star Trek, 90210, MacGyver, and The Young And The Restless. There will be commercials that run at the beginning, middle, and end of the episodes…The Cartoon Network is producing new Pink Panther episodes, targeting next spring for a debut…MRC, the production company that airs Valentine on Easy Money on The CW on Sunday nights, halted production on both shows for at least a month. The existing scripts will be completed before things shut down, and the idea is that the time off will give producers and writers more time to work on the direction of each show…Paul Rudd and three alumni from the Veronica Mars production team (including the omnipresent Rob Thomas) are teaming up for Party Down, a new comedy for Starz about Hollywood wannabes who make ends meet working in catering. Rudd met his production partners while doing a memorable guest turn on VM's final season…ABC ordered for more Eli Stone scripts, a very good sign considering they did so before the premiere aired on Tuesday…Amy Pietz, who was nominated for a Norty for her work on the criminally under watched Aliens In America, has been cast as the lead in the Lifetime pilot The Amazing Mrs. Novak, about a supermarket manager who somehow becomes Governor of New Jersey…NBC is developing a remake of Jason and the Argonauts that would be filmed entirely with green screen technology…CBS and Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Productions are teaming up to develop three pilots, with their deal guaranteeing that at least one of them will make it to series. The first up is a drama series written by William Monahan, who won an Oscar for The Departed…Fox has signed Mean Girls director Mark Waters to helm the pilot for Eva Adams, an adaptation of a Argentinean telanova about a womanizer who is turned into woman by cosmic karma…Amy Sedaris had a big week, signing a development deal with 20th Century Fox for a sitcom and getting a two part guest spot on The Closer as Fritz' sister…The red hot Jonas Brothers will play a halftime set during the Cowboys-Seahawks Thanksgiving day game on Fox…Jason Priestly will appear on an November sweeps episode of My Name Is Earl…Anna Paquin, currently receiving major exposure on HBO's True Blood, will star in the CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, The Irena Sendler Story, which documents the true story of a Polish woman who is credited with saving the lives of thousands of Jewish children during World War II… Ashton Kutcher is shopping Beauty and the Geek to multiple networks, with an announcement about a new home for the show expected as early as next week…

Turns Out Not Where But Who You're With That Really Matters
The top thing I watched since the last column went to press AKA The Best Of What's Around…I was fairly sure I was going to enjoy the US version of Life on Mars after seeing the cast and then reading that the pilot was almost a scene-for-scene remake of the first episode of the original BBC version, but that still didn't prepare me for me how much I loved the premiere. I knew I was hooked when the shot of the Twin Towers still standing tall in 1973 took my breath away. Jason O'Mara played his confusion perfectly, and while Harvey Keitel could probably play this part in his sleep, well let's just say he's approaching Walkenian levels here, and I mean that as a compliment. Words can not do justice to Michael Imperioli's moustache.

Considering how high my expectations were going in, it's all the more impressive that Life on Mars had me season passing it during the first commercial break. Now the big questions is, can they keep it up?!?!?

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…Giving the Best of What's Around award was tough this week since Life's Not For Nothing episode was perhaps the best in the show's short history, ranking behind only last season's Farthingale. What makes Damian Lewis' performance so good is the way you never doubt the anger/darkness that rises to the surface on occasion. Donal Logue is as blissfully out of synch with his co-stars as anyone since Harry Connick Jr. joined Will and Grace, and despite being in the minority on the latter, I mean that in a good way…One of the keys to Grey's Anatomy's success has always been it's casting, especially for the "patient of the week" roles. In another's hands, the man with the seven year headache might have been forgettable but with the great Daniel J Travanti playing the part, it hit serious emotional levels. I dare you to try and convince me you watched his speech to Yang about his level of pain with a dry eye…The In The Beginning episode of Supernatural from last week was very impressive, a great job of visiting the show's mythology without compromising any of it. Mitch Pilleggi was great as Sam and Dean's Grandfather (sort of), and is on a nice 2008 run with his recurring roles on Brothers and Sisters as well as Sons of Anarchy…Not sure what the Desperate Housewives writers were thinking this week but three of the four main character's did really despicable things this past Sunday, ranging from Brie feeding her vegetarian grandson a hot dog to Susan laying her hands on Gabby's daughter, and worst of all was Lynette, not only breaking Tom's bass guitar but allowing him to blame their daughter, including a scene where he was clearing go upstairs to punish her. I know the show is a dark comedy but this was crossing the line to me…David Arquette's Sweet Johnny was a fantastic edition to the group of Camden County residents My Name Is Earl has introduced us to over the years. This season has been tremendously funny…Comedian Dana Gould was the MVP of this week's Real Time with Bill Maher, showing an ability to mix comedy and politics in a way that didn't seem at all forced…One Tree Hill is clearly resetting itself a bit right now, creating some new storylines for the year while allowing the reprocutions of the violence of the first few episodes to continue to play out…Tom Amandes, one of my favorite TV character actors, did great work on Private Practice this past week, even if his long hair was a bit distracting. He also showed up in his recurring part on Eli Stone…To call this Monday's Boston Legal the best episode of the season could be damning with faint praise but I also think it was one of the more interesting episodes in series history. Focusing on just two regular characters (Alan and Denny are the only two Crane, Poole, and Schmidt attorneys who appear on screen) and one storyline it gave the show a focus it has lacked recently. Great work done by James Spader, William Shatner, and guest stars Kyle Secor and Ally Walker. Denny's antics were much funnier this week since they were the side dish and not the main attraction…Speaking of Ally Walker, she showed up again on Sons of Anarchy, a show I am finding a pleasure to watch, and contrasting her there with her performance on BL will show you how talented an actress she really is…The Hall and Oates segment on Weekend Update was my favorite part of SNL's Thursday night debut…Loved everyone's reaction to Jim and Pam's engagement on The Office this week; very few shows are better at keeping everyone in character. I felt Dwight's pain as Jim purposely butchered the description of Battlestar Galactica…It's not a good sign for Valentine's future that the couple of the week were significantly more interesting than any of the regular characters…Two episodes in and I am ready to season pass Easy Money. While the ratings are so low that that it's doubtful they will last a full season, I am thinking that the show will be remembered as the launching pad for Jeff Hephner, who is easily the most interesting new leading man of the TV season…Any episode of Entourage that brings back Martin Landau's Bob Ryan is more than worth the viewing time investment…I must admit to being a little disappointed with Ugly Betty this season in that they put Daniel back in charge of Mode two episodes in instead of building it up and making it more of a triumph. That being said, the plot twist at the end of last week about Daniel, Jr's parentage, was one I did not see coming…LOVED Barney in old man make up on this week's How I Met Your Mother, and the interventions were a riot. I know it's doing better in the ratings but when this show hits syndication and people realize just what they've been missing, I predict even better numbers…I don't have the same issues with the Rebecca-Justin pairing on Brothers and Sisters that some do, perhaps because I recognize that the characters aren't siblings, and only thought they were for a relatively (pun intended) short period of time. It's not like Tommy and Kitty found out they didn't share DNA and started going at it. Dave Annabelle continues to be my favorite of this large and talented cast, giving an incredibly natural performance week in, week out…Plenty of folks on the internet are debating whether or not Don's California vacation was but a dream, similar to Tony's Kevin Finnerty escape on The Sopranos, but what is not debatable is just how amazing Mad Men is. Best second season of a series ever? Discuss…Toughest Race In The World was an hour long advertisement for HDTV mixed in with some pretty interesting personal stories. I am hooked…Also pulling me in after just one outing was The Chef Jeff Project. CJ may get a little over the top sometimes (most of the time…all of the time) but the mix of unintentional humor and genuine compassion make for a delicious hour of TV…Sigourney Weaver was fantastic on Eli Stone's premiere, and I thought so even before it was revealed she was playing God. Didn't see that one coming at all…Sports Soup was good but a little obscure. How come no real clips from the MLB playoffs or any of the NFL games from Sunday? Are they not able to get permission from the leagues? If that's the case, and they won't be able to show any high/lowlights from the biggies, the rotation of racing and outdoors series will get old fast…

TV Pick Of The Week
I was a big fan of the 2004 movie Crash, which won multiple Oscars, including Best Picture. Regular TTTP readers know I am always predisposed to enjoy works that look to examine the concepts of identity, the roles we play in the lives of others, and the responsibilities that come with those roles, and Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco's script was all about that and more. But liking the movie as much as I did made me more than a bit apprehensive about moving the project to the small screen, even though the longer form would provide perhaps even more room to explore the human condition.

The producers of the show, a group which includes Haggis, Moresco, and film co-star Don Cheadle, were way ahead of me when they hired Glen Mazzara as their showrunner; with a resume that includes writing and producing stints with The Shield and Life, this was a guy who knew how to tell layered, character driven stories. Mazzara then turned around and littered his writing staff with alumni from The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, and The Shield. They topped it off by getting no less a presence than Dennis Hopper to play one of the showier roles in the series (there are no characters that cross over between the movie and TV show).

I didn't get the opportunity to preview the back-to-back episodes that Starz is showing tonight starting at 10 pm but I've got in tivo'd in and can't wait. Don't miss the series premiere of Crash, tonight on Starz.

Other noteworthy programming of the next seven days…

*NBC's two hour premiere of Crusoe airs tonight at 8 pm. An adaptation of the classic Daniel Defoe story of two men struggling to survive after being shipwrecked on an island, this is a big budget series that the network is really counting on to be a hit.

*Oprah's E True Hollywood Story airs tonight at 9 pm. How did she only get an hour?!?!

*Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling debuts Saturday at 8 pm on CMT. If I have to tell you anything about this show, you are not going to watch.

*Four of America's greatest living songwriters – John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, and Joe Ely – share the stage on Austin City Limits Saturday night (check your local PBS stations for times).

*Lifetime's Living Proof, a star studded movie that tells the real life story of a Dr (played by Harry Connick, Jr.) who fights to get a breast cancer treatment approved, premieres Saturday at 9 pm.

*The very talented Nicole Sullivan gets a shot at TV stardom when her new Lifetime sitcom Rita Rocks airs every night next week at 8:30 pm.

*Katie Holmes goes all Velma Kelly on Eli Stone's ass this Tuesday at 9 pm in the first of several appearances this season.

*Unless you have been living in a cave - in which case you probably don't have the internet to read my column – you know that season two of Frank TV hits the airwaves Tuesday at 11 pm on TBS.

Two Tivos To Paradise, Weekly Update
30 Days, 30 Rock, The Academy, American Idol, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Antique Roadshow, The Apprentice, Battlestar Galactica, Best Week Ever, Big Love, Bones, Boston Legal, Breaking Bad, Brothers And Sisters, Burn Notice, Chuck, The Closer, Criss Angel Mindfreak, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Deadliest Catch, Desperate Housewives, Destination Truth, Dirty Sexy Money, The Dish, Entourage, Eureka, Everybody Hates Chris, Flipping Out, Ghost Hunters, Gossip Girl, Grey's Anatomy, Heroes, The Hills, House, How I Met Your Mother, I Want To Work For Diddy, Last Comic Standing, Last Restaurant Standing, Law And Order, Law And Order: Criminal Intent, Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, Lost, Mad Men, Make Me A Supermodel, Medium, The Middleman, My Name Is Earl, The New Adventures Of Old Christine, Next Food Network Star, Nip/Tuck, The Office, One Tree Hill, Private Practice, Project Runway, Primevil, Pushing Daisies, Psych, Real Time With Bill Maher, Reaper, Rescue Me, The Riches, Rules Of Engagement, Run's House, Samantha Who?, The Sarah Jane Chronicles, Saturday Night Live, Scrubs, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Shear Genius, Skins, So You Think You Can Dance?, Sons of Anarchy, The Soup, Step It Up and Dance, Supernatural, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Top Chef, Top Design, Torchwood, Ugly Betty

People Love You When They Know You're Leaving Soon
Here ends another edition of Two Tivos To Paradise. We'll be back next week with a rundown of the TV headlines as well as whatever else that crosses my mind. Don't forget to go to www.willdailey.com every Monday to read the Dailey Weekly, a pop culture chat with singer/songwriter Will Dailey.

Feedback is encouraged at [e-mail] as well via the comments section below.

Sources for this week's column include Daily Variety, Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, and Hollywood Reporter (plus the web sites for those publications) as well as Aintit.cool.com.