Archive: June 2009 (301-310 of 438)

Jun 9 2009 03:49 PM ET

'Ghost Whisperer' time jump: Discuss.

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Ghost Whisperer producers are pondering a five-year jump into the future next season, according to EW's resident scoop king, Michael Ausiello. The jump would allow Melinda and Jim's son, still in the womb in last month's season 4 finale, to suddenly be old enough to show us what Carl the Watcher meant when he said that the boy would be able to do "much, much more" than his mom (who sees and talks to dead people and helps them crossover after making me cry). Though I would miss the sight of Jim (David Conrad) carrying a baby — can we please get a montage? — I'm all for this. (1) Skipping ahead would let us avoid the muck of Melinda (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Jim, who died and stepped into the body of another man, dealing with the reactions to their quickie wedding. And by then, Jim, who'd just gotten into med school, will have started his residency. (Scrubs are almost as hot on a man as a baby.) (2) We know from Carl that there is a battle of good vs. evil afoot and that Melinda and Jim's son is "the key." There is nothing scarier than a creepy kid. I'm not saying that I want their child to turn evil. Just maybe for Sweeps.

I don't see a downside here. Do you?

Jun 9 2009 03:29 PM ET

'My Name Is Earl' could be saved by TBS...What else could network-trading rescue?

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My-name-is-earl_l TBS is in talks to pick up NBC’s recent castoff My Name Is Earl – hey, they have to make room for those prime-time Leno hours somehow! That news plus the fact that CBS is picking up NBC’s canceled Medium – not to mention ABC’s fair success with running also-formerly-of-NBC Scrubs — has me wishing we’d gotten this TV version of the NFL draft going sooner. Granted, the switch to cable in particular has a down side; namely, budgets can be smaller there. But I’d love to see ABC’s late, great Samantha Who? find a home on, say, Lifetime. (Good old Television for Women is, after all, slowly moving toward hip-ifying itself with Project Runway as well as sitcoms from the likes of Sherri Shepherd and Valerie Bertinelli), as well as underappreciated single-girl dramedies ABC’s Men in Trees and CBS’ The Ex List. Meanwhile, the CW’s Privileged could’ve lived a long, happy life on ABC Family. Speaking of which, maybe that net’s own Kyle XY would’ve done better on Sci Fi. (And as my colleague Marc Bernardin noted, Dollhouse, though spared the ax by Fox, might’ve been better off on cable, if only for creative reasons.)

What do you think, PopWatchers? What other TV draft trades would you like to see? Where would Dirty Sexy Money, Life, and Pushing Daisies go?

Jun 9 2009 03:25 PM ET

'Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List' premiere: Stalking the A-list

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Kathy-griffin-bette-midler_l Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List has always been funniest when its titular star is at her most pathetic — cluelessly hosting home-shopping programming, enduring countless local media appearances in a desperate attempt to sell concert tickets — so you'd think it might be problematic that as the brassy redhead heads into her fifth season, she's got two Emmys, widespread critical acclaim, and the ability to sell out concert halls across the nation. And that's why it's such a stroke of genius that Griffin is now focusing her attention on stalking true A-listers to learn the secrets of their success. I mean, what better way to downgrade your rising star than by placing it next to a real-live supernova?

Last night's Las Vegas encounter of the Bette Midler kind proved just how far Griffin has to go before she can upgrade her status to the penthouse suite — and hilariously so. Take that scene on the elevator, where Griffin asked Midler to hide her water-bottle label, to avoid any additional licensing expenses for the Bravo network. "If anyone's cable, you are," quipped Midler with a good-natured laugh that nonetheless summed up the differences in the two women's careers. Or how about that visit to Midler's Caesars Palace gift boutique, a far cry from Griffin's method of having her assistants tack her T-shirts to cork boards in the lobbies of the venues she plays. ("When I'm around you, I look like I have class," howled Midler.) Not to worry, D-List fans: Our gal may be flirting with an upgrade to C+ or B- status, but she's not too big for her reality-show britches.

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Jun 9 2009 01:37 PM ET

Mark-Paul Gosselaar does Fallon interview as Zack Morris, commits to reunion

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Filed under: About Last Night, Television and tagged: ,

We knew Raising the Bar's Mark-Paul Gosselaar was a good sport when he came into EW for a meet-and-greet last year, faced a room full of entertainment junkies reenacting scenes from Saved by the Bell (okay, that was just Tim Stack), and fed Annie Barrett cupcakes. But doing an entire interview on last night's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon as a grown-up Zack Morris gives new meaning to the term. (Maybe he was game because he got to perform Zack Attack's "Friends Forever" with the Roots? UPDATE: That was one of Gosselaar's conditions. He talks all about the appearance here.) The big news — other than that Zack never upgraded his cell phone and Fallon does an excellent "time out" — is that Gosselaar committed to Fallon's Saved by the Bell reunion and announced that Elizabeth Berkley is also in. That just leaves Tiffani Thiessen and Dustin Diamond, who's supposed to be penning a tell-all about the show. (Mario Lopez, Lark Voorhies, and Dennis Haskins had already RSVP'd yes.) Are we excited about this idea now?

More Mark-Paul Gosselaar:
Mark-Paul Gosselaar takes the EW Pop Culture Personality Test
Gallery: Mark-Paul Gosselaar looks back at 10 roles

Jun 9 2009 12:00 PM ET

Must List poll: What's the Must book of the summer?

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Leave the towel, cooler and sunscreen behind. All you really need with you at the beach this summer is a good book (actually on second thought, definitely bring the sunscreen.) If you desperately need a break from crowded theaters or some time away from the TV, it might just be time to crack open a book. So which lit are you most looking forward to unwinding with? Will you rush out on to be tantalized by Jed Mercurio's American Adulterer or does Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire (a follow-up to his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) pique your interest? Will it be more lighthearted fare like Richard Russo's very beach-y That Old Cape Magic or In Her Shoes' scribe Jennifer Weiner's latest venture into chick lit with Best Friends Forever? Or do none of these hold a citronella candle to Pat Conroy's latest South of Broad? Vote in our poll below and let us know which book will be by your side this summer!

Jun 9 2009 11:00 AM ET

'Nurse Jackie' premiere: So, what'd you think?

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Nurse_jackie_lAfter weeks of buzz and excitement, Nurse Jackie finally premiered last night, and as expected, star Edie Falco was, you know, excellent, and the show clearly has the balls to make her character interesting. She’s a no-nonsense ER nurse with a pill-popping problem. Somewhat unfortunately, everyone else on the show could be swapped in from an episode of ER, Grey’s, St. Elsewhere, Nurses, Chicago Hope, Green Wing, or the upcoming Mercy: the hotshot doctor is an incompetent jerk, and the new nurse is super naive. How totally unlike other hospital shows!

Showtime is touting Jackie as a “dark comedy,” but I didn’t get that aspect of it at all; it played more like House or Dexter to me than anything humorous. Yeah, there are some shenanigans — an inappropriate boob-grab, a casual Heimlich maneuvering — but I’d call the show a stylized drama before I’d call it a comedy.

Complaints aside, I can’t wait to see more episodes. There’s a lot of potential here, and as the show grows into its voice a bit more, it could be great, especially with Falco getting so much screen time. EW TV critic Ken Tucker seems to agree with me: “With Falco front and center, you don’t really care if Nurse Jackie gets silly, as with the patient whose cat attacked his scrotum (er, eek). You just want to keep on watching Jackie snort and snicker her way through another day and make it home with a tired smile.” (Check out the rest of Ken’s review.)

Did you watch last night? What’d you think? Did it feel like a “dark comedy” or more like a drama? Or maybe we’ve just had enough hospital dramas for one lifetime?

Ken Tucker’s review: ‘Nurse Jackie’

Jun 9 2009 05:11 AM ET

Chris Harrison blogs 'The Bachelorette': Episode 4

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Harrison I’d like to start off by apologizing, I know the comments section of this blog was a mess last week (hence the quadruple posts). I’m told by the EW geek squad that it’s been taken care of. If not, next week I will be mailing each of you a personal hard copy of this blog…although, then it would just be a letter and not a blog.

It seems we have a consensus on Wes and his magical guitar. To have a man play guitar and sing to you is cool. The way Wes is doing it…not so much. DaynaJ may have had the best idea this week: “Dave beats up Juan with Wes’ guitar.” Damn, why couldn’t our producers have come up with that gem? Many of you have asked how Jillian pins the roses on the guys so easily. First, our fantastic art department puts these killer vampire clips on the back of the roses. It makes it pretty easy for Jilli to just slide them on the guys. We do practice several times before the first rose ceremony that first night, just to make sure she’s got it down.

Let me dive into this week’s episode by saying, in my mind, this seasonreally starts now. As you could probably tell, the goofy fun and gamesare over and things have now taken a very serious turn. From here onout this is a fantastic roller coaster ride that I really can’t comparewith any other season we’ve had. The guys were extremely relieved to betold they would be leaving the bunk house and never returning. This isthe first season ever where three weeks in we’ve left our main houseand never returned again. We do have one more rose ceremony in LosAngeles later on but it’s not at this house. Personally, I loved thetravel and felt like it really fit for this season. Jillian loved beingback home in Vancouver. It gave her a little more confidence and anextra spring in her step being on her home turf. Jilli had a thing forKiptyn since the moment he stepped out of the limo. She told me howgorgeous she thought he was on night one. Their one-on-one date inVancouver couldn’t have gone better in her eyes.

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Jun 8 2009 10:50 PM ET

Start mentally preparing for 'Weeds' right now

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No, I do not mean "go smoke a bowl." That's illegal. Instead, enroll in Justin Kirk's University of Andy for a few minutes. "Reach your climax today!" Speaking of which, don't miss How to Satisfy a Woman. And, not speaking of which, How to Survive a Bear Attack. Actually, all of the lessons are hilarious. Just go there. Get your degree already.

You can also blaze through season 4 in the amount of time it takes to hit your bong. It's so weird that Showtime's making it super easy for stoners to watch this show. Anyone else excited for Weeds tonight at 10 ET? Leave your thoughts about the season 5 premiere in the comments if you can even make it over to your keyboard. You pothead.

Jun 8 2009 10:47 PM ET

'Obsessed': Am I the only one watching this show?

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I've been a big fan of Intervention from the get-go — I mean, I'm not above making the "I'm addicted to this show" joke, but honest to goodness, I think Intervention de-sensationalizes addiction and gives the audience meaningful insights into and contexts for substance abuse and recovery. So I was weirdly excited when A&E launched its new docuseries Obsessed, which follows people as they enter cognitive behavioral therapy to cope with OCD.

I have not been disappointed! Obsessed has found some surprising presentations of OCD — say, Helen, the woman who "routinely" puts on the clothes her father was wearing when he died in a car crash among other compulsions — but all four people in the two episodes that have aired so far have made huge, huge progress in a mere 12 weeks of therapy. "I don't want to live," sobs Helen at the beginning of the episode, but after a few months of treatment, she's conquered her fear of driving on the highway, has visited her parents' graves for the first time, and has learned how to have a pretty normal life.Tonight's episode follows Rick, who exercises compulsively, and Nidia, whose obsessive cleanliness has landed her in the hospital twice.

According to one of the doctors on the show, the premise of therapy is to give people tools to deal with the problem. "That's the nature of OCD — we can't control our thoughts, but we can control our response to them." That's pretty good advice, OCD or no OCD.

Have you been watching Obsessed, PopWatchers? Do you like it as much as I do?

Jun 8 2009 10:32 PM ET

Apple's latest iPhone: What can't it do?!

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IPhone-3gs_l Here at Apple's keynote address for the Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Francisco, Mac-olytes eagerly gobbled up every bit of information on new laptops and the upcoming Snow Leopard operating system. What everyone in the audience really came to hear about, however, was the not-so-secret update to the iPhone 3G. Apple didn't disappoint the prognosticators and officially revealed the iPhone 3G S. The "S" is for speed but it might as well stand for Swiss Army Knife because this gadget is loaded with so many gee-whiz features, it's getting extremely difficult to keep track of everything it — and all of the 50,000 apps that you can download from Apple's App Store — can do. The key features that the 3G S brings to the table include faster circuitry (resulting in snappier web browsing and application launching), an upgraded 3 megapixel still camera, a video camera, and a digital compass. The new toy goes on sale next week (June 19; $199 and $299 for the 16 GB and 32 GB versions, respectively).

If you're still content with your existing iPhone, a software update available on June 17 will teach it some new tricks (over 100 new features in all according to Apple). Two of these are ones that a lot of iPhone users have been clamoring for since the first one came out almost 2 years ago, namely cut and paste text and the ability to use MMS to send photos to your friends. I never missed either of these things, but anecdotally I can say I'm in the minority. What I do miss is having a state-of-the-art phone (I've patiently hung onto my original, first generation iPhone). Come next week, I'll finally upgrade.

What about you, PopWatchers? Does the iPhone 3G S excite you or are you sticking with your existing phone?

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