The regular 2007-2008 season has come to its end, I'm about 90 percent caught up with my DVR backlog, and Friday was apparently the deadline for TV shows to submit their sample episodes for Emmy consideration. This, of course, means it's time for my annual rant about Vanessa (L. Yeah) Williams deserving an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her role as Wilhelmina Slater on Ugly Betty blog post about which actors and series deserve a little love when the Emmy nominations are revealed on July 17.
My wish list starts with Damages' Zeljko Ivanek (left), whose heartbreaking portrayal of a morally dubious, sexually conflicted attorney might get overlooked by Emmy voters, considering his FX series last aired in October and featured standout performances by a couple of bigger names — Glenn Close and Ted Danson -- who seem more likely to get kudos. But seriously, I'm calling 911 and reporting a felony crime if Ivanek's name doesn't get included for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama. Similarly, much deserved recognition for the aforementioned (and absolutely sublime) Ms. Williams and headliner America Ferrera on Ugly Betty might lead to a snub for Ana Ortiz (right), despite the fact that her season 2 work as Hilda Suarez went from heartbreaking to hilarious and back — often in the course of a single scene — and even though her reaction shots are among the best in primetime.
Also on my dream nominations list: the consistently gripping Battlestar Galactica for Best Drama (it's time to do the right thing, Emmy voters!); Chandra Wilson, whose mix of brass and brains makes Grey's Anatomy bearable even in its most indulgent moments; Jake Weber, the quiet balance to Patricia Arquette's more ballyhooed genius on Medium; Lost's Yunjin Kim (for that helicopter scene alone); and Mia Wasikowska for HBO's In Treatment (I'm only a few episodes in, but my word, she's tremendous, as you can see in the clip I've embedded after the jump).
Okay, your turn: Which actors, writers, and shows deserve Emmy
nominations? Speak now, or forfeit the right to gripe when the Academy
of Television Arts and Sciences inevitably gets it wrong next month.
If I had a superpower, I'd make everyone realize Medium is one of the best-written and most inventive dramas on television. Patricia Arquette, on the other hand, would settle for "total world domination."
Heeeeey, how’s it goin’? (Or, for the four of you still speaking in LOLCat-ese, “O, hai!”) It’s been awhile, yeah? Me, I’ve just been doing what I do, y’know — got a new couch (love!), new haircut (do not want!), and spent way too much money at a clothing chain named for third-world dictatorships. But you! You haven’t changed a bit in the (what’s it been?) month since we last saw each other. Whatever you’re doing, you should bottle it.
So yay, Medium’s back — with an episode directed by Patricia Arquette’s brother David, no less — and it’s about damn time. To celebrate, I’m boozing it up with a Wyder’s peach cider, made by our neighbors to the north (it really is true what they say — they are so very nice). But before I could enjoy my fruity buzz, there was Allison’s Dream of Random Exposition and — crap — another kiddie-in-peril scenario. Anybody else get the sinking feeling that as long as Cynthia Keener (Anjelica Huston) is in our lives, Medium will continue to be tot-torture-of-the-week fare?
Oh well, at least this has a nice twist: The kidnap victim in question is deaf, so Allison woke up unable to hear. The doctor said it was some sort of sudden-onset condition, but we all know it’s psych(ic)-somatic, just like that time she had "I Will Survive" stuck in her head until she solved the case. Full disclosure: I’m hearing impaired (though far from deaf), so I kinda sympathized. Especially when she missed conversational cues. Especially when people started barking at her (honey, if she can't hear her own damn screams, how do you figure she's gonna hear yours?). But especially when Allison told Joe over the phone, “If you’re there: Sweet dreams, sleep tight, and know that I love you. And if you’re not there: Sweet dreams, sleep tight, and know that I love you.” See, now that she can’t hear, all of Allison’s other senses are heightened — especially her sense of ooey gooey luuuuuv.
Enough with the mush, though, because this episode was really about hard truths.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and with a nod to our gallery of Pop Culture's Best Couples, let's all name the TV character we'd actually date. Here are the rules:
1. Hosts of any kind are disqualified. The relationship you're creating is real; your better half must be fictional.
2. You can't change anything about your partner — other than that he or she will no longer have the hots for the show love interest, obviously.
3. You must explain why you'd make a good match, so when other PopWatchers want to steal your pick, they know what they're up against.
After the jump: Three of the TV heartthrobs who made our cut, and why.
From the desk of Alynda Wheat:
I don’t know when it occurred to me — maybe that time Hiro’s waitress honey got whacked on Heroes, or when Superman realized he was kind of a deadbeat dad — but it’s true: Superpowers don’t improve your life, they only complicate it.
Otherwise Allison and Joe wouldn’t be rushing toward the Cliffs of Despair as if the Dread Pirate Roberts were on their tail. (Sorry, I seem to be speaking in pop-culture allusions. Might be the fact that I’m about as high on cold medicine as you’re legally allowed to be without ending up on the Suspected Meth Dealers watch list.) We knew it as soon as Joe made it clear that he really wanted the job with the Family Ties dad (curse you, Robitussin!), he wasn’t going to end the episode employed. Something would go awry, feelings would get hurt, lines crossed.
It started, as usual, with the DRE (Dream of Random Exposition): Couple in a hotel room, Paris, judging by the 500-euros-a-night view of the Eiffel Tower. All of a sudden, the wife snapped, did a Norman Mailer (with a corkscrew instead of fork) on her creepily patronizing husband, startling Allison enough to wake her up. The next morning we surveyed the usual Dubois routine, realized that when Bridgette says “rather” it rhymes with father, not blather, and decided we love her more today than yesterday.
I had my fingers crossed for you, PopWatchers. Last week some of y’all were a tad spazzed about an incident we’ll refer to as The Boy in the Box. Gruesome it was, so I'd hoped this week would be better, that there’d be nothing deeply objectionable involving children or violence or sex—nothing like, say, a barely pubescent girl getting dream-raped by a freak playing a twisted version of Bad Cop. But clearly, I don’t run nothin’.
Maybe Medium is trying to work out some, forgive the expression, kinks (this is, after all, the network that gave us 14,572 iterations of Dateline's To Catch a Predator). Or maybe this is what the show figures it has to do to keep up with the likes of Criminal Minds and Law & Order: SVU. Whatev. All I’m saying is that it looks like we’re in for a seriously dark season 4, so get your minds right.
The creepy clown started it. Somehow you just knew when that harlequin popped up in the toy aisle that all that went asunder last season would not be magically repaired—not immediately, anyway. Joe and Allison would still be unemployed, Davalos and Scanlon would still be on the bubble, and all hell wouldn’t be done breaking loose. The kiddie-luring clown basically said so.
Then Ariel started lip-synching to the Sound of Music, and that confirmed it. (Sorry, sorry, sorry, I’ll explain my Ariel issues later. Right now, a boy's been kidnapped.) If you missed Medium’s fourth season opener last night, a little boy shopping with his dad broke faith with all natural instinct and went toward a creepy clown. Just before you can say “that’s always a bad idea,” he was snatched by some freak who liked to dance, hadn’t updated his music collection since the Sugar Hill Gang, and had a predilection for putting his “toys” in shiny plastic packaging. Of course, Allison sees all—in her way.
Fortunately for her, there’s a new outlet for her gifts since she’s been outed as a psychic, and dropped from the DA’s office.
Attention, TV lovers: The dreaded "bubble season" is upon us, and networks are scrutinizing their lineups, trying to decide which existing series to pick up for the fall season, and which to bag up and toss in the dumpster. A story in today's Variety notes that the following series are still awaiting their fates, and that ratings from the coming weeks could be a deciding factor: ABC's Men in Trees, Six Degrees, What About Brian (UGH! Cancel it!), The Knights of Prosperity, According to Jim, and George Lopez; CBS' Jericho, The Class, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Close to Home, and Rules of Engagement; Fox's The War at Home, 'Til Death, Standoff, and newcomers The Winner and The Wedding Bells; the CW's Veronica Mars, All of Us, and 7th Heaven; and NBC's 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, Medium, Crossing Jordan, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. (I'd count Scrubs, too, but if NBC doesn't pick it up for the 2007-2008 season, it appears ABC will.)
There are at least four or five series on the list that are currently on my DVR rotation, but I thought it would be fun to force myself (and all of you) to use this blog item to argue for the renewal of one show — and one show only. So with apologies to Tina Fey and Anne Heche, here goes my pitch:
Day Break, Shmay Break! The premiere I'm most excited about tonight is the third-season opener of NBC's wickedly creative Medium. I like to think of it as the creepy little drama that could. It doesn't get the ratings of CSI, even though its crimes are often more creative. It doesn't get the buzz of Lost, even though it's frequently just as gripping and innovative. And it does family drama as well (and as realistically -- see the rumpled clothes and messy kitchen counters) as any show on the airwaves.
Now, according to the folks at Sci Fi Wire, series creator Glenn Gordon Caron is fulfilling a long-running ambition by infusing tonight's episode with 2-D animation techniques, and better still, they'll be used during the dream sequences of my favorite child actor, Maria Lark (quirky middle kid Bridgette). Let's just hope Emmy-winning star Patricia Arquette's decision to pull a Felicity (see her stark new bob, pictured) -- and the show's new time slot -- don't result in a ratings dip. Who's joining me to watch Medium tonight and ensure that doesn't happen?
Happy 06/06/06, everybody! On a day when more alarmist folks would have you contemplating the dangers of getting barcode tattoos across your foreheads, I'm going a more positive route and focusing on the children. (Like many other philosophers, I believe that they are our future, after all.)
So let's discuss: There's terrifying-adorable Seamus ''Damien'' Davey-Fitzpatrick trying to do for The Omen franchise what Christian Bale did for Batman. There's Baby Bob getting sacked by Quiznos. (Whatever happened to his marginally successful CBS sitcom, by the by? Was it cancelled on account of creative shame? And when will we see the first of the inevitable ''Whither Baby Bob?'' headlines?) There's even a lengthy New York Times piece looking at a Hollywood apartment complex catering to families of child actors. (Egads!)
And then, there's Medium's Maria Lark (pictured, at right), my pick as the most talented child actor in the business today. Sure, it's hard to say for sure if she's just naturally offbeat and adorable, or if she's brilliantly (and effortlessly) channeling a character with said qualities, but either way, she fills me with inexplicable delight whenever she's on the screen. I predict an Emmy in that kid's future, for real.
And what about you, PopWatchers? Who's your pick for Hollywood's most talented tot? I eagerly await your response -- unless of course it's the bewildering Welch's grape juice girl. I don't need to hear that!
Watching last night's particularly riveting episode of Medium, in which Patricia Arquette's Allison Dubois gets Gloria Gaynor's ''I Will Survive'' stuck in her head, one scene in particular got lodged in my noggin -- and it made me realize there's no show on network TV that better depicts the details of modern family life.
As Allison's family heads out of the house for a weekend trip to Salt Lake City, her husband Joe (Jake Weber) frantically rushes through their cluttered house to close the shades and check the windows. On its own, not a particularly Big Moment, but to me, a perfect example of the way NBC's supernatural procedural acknowledges the inherent drama in watching working parents grapple with three kids, hectic careers, and their own romantic relationship.
That theme is carried into the series' wardrobe and sets, too. Allison is one of the few middle-class characters on network TV who takes a bottled water with her in the car, and doesn't sport sexy, designer pantsuits; in fact, she and Jake sleep in -- gasp! -- dumpy T-shirts. And I especially love the way Allison and Jake are constantly squeezing in their conversations as they make breakfast for the kids or brush their teeth before bed.
Are there any other shows on TV that reflect what you see happening in your own homes -- even if they sometimes feature conversations with the dead? Shout back, PopWatch style!
