It's a tradition as time-honored as Law & Order's "dun-duhn" and Horatio Caine's sunglasses: Every now and then, network crime procedurals and/or ensemble dramas like to shake up their casts to boost ratings and revitalize their plotting prospects. And the end of the 2007-2008 TV season will prove no exception: Gary Dourdan is leaving CSI; Diane Neal and Adam Beach are exiting Law & Order: SVU; and Khandi Alexander is fleeing the ridonk world of CSI: Miami. If that's not enough, Jesse L. Martin's final Law & Order episode airs Wednesday, and Maura Tierney, who's cutting way back on her ER workload, tells AOL Television that she's been (unsuccessfully) begging the writers of her long-running hospital drama to kill off her character before the series ends its run.
I, for one, am glad to hear Tierney's Abby won't be paying the ultimate price for drama, because, let's be honest here -- isn't it almost too easy for TV writers to enlist the Grim Reaper when it's time to write off a character? Wouldn't it be a greater (and more fulfilling) writing challenge for these scribes to tackle workplace exits the way they actually happen?
In fact, if SVU hasn't already decided the fate of Neal's ADA Casey Novak, how about this scenario? On a lazy Friday afternoon, Benson is catching up on some paperwork, when she hears the siren call of her email "ping," which turns out to be an announcement that Novak will be resigning in two weeks to pursue a lucrative gig at a private firm uptown. As Benson and Stabler spend the episode solving the latest "especially heinous" crime, they secretly plan a farewell pour for their coworker at a local pub. By episode's end, the beer begins to flow. Toasts are made. A few tears are shed. Somebody makes an awkward plea to move the festivities to a nearby karaoke joint. And scene!
There, now doesn't that sound like a fitting exit? Any other ideas for how the aforementioned actors can exit their series without ending up six feet under? By all means, get to brainstorming!
She was hilarious on Action, so memorable guest-starring on Six Feet Under, and now, Illeana Douglas is set to... host Celebrity Garage Sale on A&E? Seriously? With all the Cashmere Mafia/Lipstick Jungle/Dirty Sexy Money dramedies making their way to the air, not a single network exec thought to snag this versatile comedienne for a starring role? So go ahead and watch Douglas sift through Tom Arnold's trash if you want, but I'm going to rewatch the Action pilot (below the jump) to relive the moment her prostitute character gets dragged by a limo from her fur coat and takes liberties with poor Keanu Reeves. Good times!
Yesterday was my idea of the perfect Sunday, which means I spent my time glued to the couch, snacking on crackers and cheese, and catching up on a couple weeks' worth of backlogged TV shows. What stuck out for me — aside from the fact that Desperate Housewives has finally returned to its freshman-year level of hilarity, and that I can't seem to force myself to catch up on Heroes — was the number small, guest-starring roles that caught my attention. Three, in particular, stood out:
• Jordan Bridges (left) on Bionic Woman: The unsteady writing and acting on NBC's freshman series has been most vexing — and steady ratings declines since the show's debut indicate I'm not alone in my opinion — but Bridges' work as a teaching assistant with a hidden agenda seemed to shake series star Michelle Ryan out of her usual stupor, so much so that I barely noticed the absence of Katee Sackhoff (the true Bionic headliner). Granted, I'm probably swayed by Bridges' superfine looks (check out a behind the scenes video here), but the fact that he'll return in his role this Wednesday stopped me from removing Bionic from my series-recording list — despite the fact that last episode's climactic scene involved a Ryan using a cantaloupe to subdue a baddie. Seriously.
• Caroline Aaron (center) on Grey's Anatomy: Aaron's one of those super-familiar character actors who's appeared on everything from Ally McBeal to Curb Your Enthusiasm, but her brief, touching turn as a chatterbox with a tumor on her tongue got me wondering why producers from all the major networks aren't lighting up her agent's phone line with offers to make her a series regular on something — anything — that requires both comedic and dramatic chops.
Ah, Law & Order. Just when you think you've figured out exactly how the carefully choreographed plot will unfold, they come back from commercial break and hit you with another gravity-defying twist. It was only a month ago, after all, that PopWatch editor Gary Susman was begging NBC to put the long-running procedural out of its misery. Though it made my heart grow heavy, I had to agree; after 17 years of ups and downs, the L&O formula was undeniably showing its age. But hold on! All that changed last week, when the show's producers announced two significant cast updates that just might deliver enough of a jolt to turn this cliffhanger around.
I'm freaking out, PopWatchers — and so are my two overburdened DVRs! As you know, we're coming to the end of upfronts week, where all the networks announce their fall lineups, including which new series they've greenlit, and which old ones they've canceled. The hard part for me is that, in the wake of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC's presentations, it looks like most of my regular fare is returning (yay, Medium!), and there are quite a few freshman shows that look promising, too. Indeed, scads of my favorite actors — Merrin Dungey, Jonny Lee Miller, Mädchen Amick, to name a few — are going to be vying for my attention come September. Still, of all the stars returning to TV this coming fall, I'm probably most excited about Six Feet Under alumna Lauren Ambrose (pictured), who's been keeping a pretty low profile since her series awesomely brilliant final episode back in 2005. The way Ambrose made Claire both maddening and sympathetic, and the way she brought out the humor in the show's dark, complex scripts, always made me wonder why she wasn't a much bigger star. Now that she's pairing up with Parker Posey and Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino on The Return of Jezebel James, maybe she'll get her chance. It's just too bad I'm gonna have to wait till midseason to see it!
Anyhow, after the jump, check out my partial list of the actors headlining the big four's new fall and midseason slates — if you want to see clips, ABC, NBC, and CBS, and have streaming video — and then weigh in on which star's return is the most welcome — and why.
TV Tattle points out an interesting article in New York declaring How I Met Your Mother ''the most catchphrase-happy show on TV.'' Which got me thinking about the TV quotes I loved (and quoted) the most in 2005. With all respect to Britney, can you handle my truth? Here's my top 5:
5- ''Suit up!'' --Barney (Neil Patrick Harris, left), How I Met Your Mother
4- ''We're going to have to take the boy.'' --Creepy, bearded ''Others'' guy, Lost
3- ''Narm!'' --Nate Fisher, Six Feet Under
2- ''Hell to the no!'' --Whitney Houston, Being Bobby Brown
1- ''I don't need to see that!'' --Valerie Cherish, The Comeback
I don't know about you guys, but as Bobby and Whitney once said, ''They work, they work for me. They work, they work for me.'' Have I missed any of your favorites? Or should I have rearranged the order? Weigh in now.
How does Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball plan to follow up his groundbreaking HBO series? ''I was ready to do something a little lighter in tone than Six Feet,'' he tells the Hollywood Reporter. ''Five years of staring into the abyss was enough.'' Of course, Ball's idea of ''lighter'' sounds relative; his new HBO series will still involve characters intimately familiar with coffins. It's going to be based on Charlaine Harris' series of Southern Vampire books, about humans and bloodsuckers living together in rural Louisiana. ''The books are funny, scary, sexy, romantic, bizarre and really fun,'' Ball says. Uh, okay -- I'm just glad HBO has greenlit a new series that doesn't take place in Los Angeles.
Via Stereogum comes this link to the most macabre merchandise item of the week. If you have a Six Feet Under fan on your gift list, this should tide them over until that Season Five DVD comes out. Plus, it's the perfect thing to wear when you're suddenly attacked by an aneurysm and you can't manage to tell anyone you have a numb arm.
I'm in the ''bargaining'' phase of my Six Feet Under mourning period, which means I've decided that if I can't have any more new episodes of HBO's addictive funeral home series, then the entire cast must be dispersed to existing series immediately. Here's where I'd put 'em all:
-Frances Conroy (Ruth Fisher) as a steely police detective on Law & Order (tell me she wouldn't be more interesting than Dennis Farina)
-Lauren Ambrose (Claire Fisher) as Rory's slacker new boss on Gilmore Girls
-Peter Krause (Nate Fisher) as a vaguely unhinged love interest for Portia de Rossi on Arrested Development; after all, Krause says he's aching to do something lighter.
-Rachel Griffiths (Brenda Chenowith) as a surly efficiency expert brought in to slash costs in the offices of Without a Trace
-Freddy Rodriguez (Federico Diaz) as an irritating middle manager on The Office
-Justina Machado (Vanessa Diaz) as Gabrielle's scheming little sister on Desperate Housewives
-Michael C. Hall (David Fisher) as a cantankerous new neighbor of Reba's
-Mathew St. Patrick (Keith Charles) as an investigator who butts heads with Horatio on CSI: Miami -- that is if St. Patrick's new series, Reunion, doesn't catch on in the ratings
-James Cromwell (George Sibley) as a mysterious science teacher on Veronica Mars
And, yes, though I know she's only a recurring player on Six Feet Under, I'd still send the delightful Joanna Cassidy (Margaret Chenowith) directly to The O.C. A good soap can't have too many alpha bitches, and frankly, Brenda's mom would leave that Julie Cooper tart shaking in her Manolos.
How would you distribute Six Feet's MVPs in the primetime draft? Make like a network exec and post your wish list now.
I was so emotionally spent after watching last night's terrific series finale of Six Feet Under that I barely had time to ponder the burning questions raised in the closing montage of death sequences. Thankfully, a second viewing of the episode, plus HBO's obituaries of the show's central characters, lay some of those uncertainties to rest.
Did Maggie's trip to the doctor's office signify she was pregnant with Nate's baby? Probably not. As many of our TV Watch readers pointed out this morning, as a pharmaceutical rep, it wouldn't have been unusual for the Quaker seductress to make office calls, especially since she appeared to have brought along a large, black suitcase on wheels. What's more, Ruth's obituary lists only four surviving grandkids: Maya, Willa, Anthony, and Durrell, meaning Maggie would have had to lose or abort her fetus, or keep the birth of Nate's love child a secret for some 20 years.
Who was the man sitting with a pregnant-looking Brenda at David and Keith's wedding? Sorry to disappoint fans of Brenda's submissive ex, Joe (Justin Theroux), but the Lady Chenowith's death notice leads us to believe it was spouse Daniel Nathanson, father of her third child, Forrest.
Did either Anthony or Durrell turn out to be gay? It sure looked that way after seeing the front row of guests at Claire and Ted's wedding, where David appeared to be flanked by his two sons, one of whom was holding hands with a handsome Asian man.
Who was sitting next to David at the moment he died? My best guess is Raoul Martinez, listed in David's obituary as his partner, a man who apparently encouraged the funeral director's artistic side. I was particularly tickled to read that upon his retirement, David ''went on to perform in dozens of local theater productions, including Weill and Brecht's Threepenny Opera, Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and as Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol.'' Priceless.
Was that Lauren Ambrose playing glassy eyed, ethereal Claire at age 102? According to an HBO rep, yes!
What the heck was that haunting song playing during the final sequence? That would be Sia's ''Breathe Me,'' which appears on the soundtrack, Six Feet Under Volume 2 - Everything Ends.
We may never know whether Claire bought or rented the hybrid-looking vehicle that took her to New York, or if Brenda and Billy were visiting a ''Star Wars'' space colony when the former died in 2051, but I've got enough answers that I'm confident I can achieve closure over the end of one of my favorite series. Have you got any questions you need to lay to rest? Post 'em here.
Six Feet Under got its last rites on Monday, with HBO airing a best-of clip show to help prepare us all for this week's series finale. I've got my Kleenex all stocked up, especially since we all know series creator Alan Ball isn't a stickler for happy endings. He tells the New York Post (registration required), in fact, that ''there was a lot of resistance in the writers' room to Nate dying'' earlier this season, but he couldn't see another way.
Yet while Nate's death made sense to me from a dramatic standpoint, I wonder if viewers' rocky relationship with the maddening Fisher clan will be the only thing that dies come Sunday night? After all, when we last saw Brenda, she was delivering her daughter two months early and shouting, ''Is my baby okay?'' to eerie silence from the hospital staff. And Keith and David's relationship looked headed for life support, too, thanks to the latter's emotional breakdown following his brother's death.
To which I say, ''Hell to the no!'' If David and Keith split up, or Brenda's baby dies, in the series finale, I am seriously going to pretend it never happened. Hey, I did it when Carrie ridiculously ended up with Mr. Big on the Sex and the City finale, so I've got plenty of practice. And if denial is one of the stages of grief, there's no rule saying I can't stay stuck there.
Is there any potential Six Feet Under storyline you won't be able to accept? C'mon now, just let it out.
If you found yourself dissatisfied with Nate's backward momentum on this season of Six Feet Under -- marrying Brenda then falling out of love with her, getting her pregnant then cheating with Maggie -- well, you're not alone. Peter Krause (left), the actor who's portrayed Nate for five seasons, tells TV Guide he ''started to get frustrated with what I call the Wile E. Coyote-Road Runner Syndrome. You see the same thing happen over and over again without any real forward progress or momentum.'' Then again, now that Nate's dead and there's three episodes remaining, there's still time for him to quit his whining and crack a smile. It could happen.
WARNING: THIS ITEM CONTAINS SPOILERS -- SORT OF.
How do you promote a TV series without giving away the big surprise that its main character is about to cheat on his wife, then promptly kick the bucket? In the case of HBO's Six Feet Under, very, very carefully. When the network sent out synopses of the series' July episodes to TV reporters, the description of the scene in which Nate and Maggie skip church read, in part, ''Nate seeks peace through Maggie's faith.'' Um, yeah, sure -- if by "seeks peace," you mean "sleeps with" and by "faith" you mean "hooker panties."
In a later press release, HBO kept its cards hidden by including ambiguously worded descriptions of Nate's appearances in each of Six Feet Under's remaining episodes. Although now that we know his character didn't survive that cerebral hemorrhage, it's clear that when HBO says that ''Nate urges Brenda to embrace a taboo'' on Aug. 14, he'll be doing it from beyond the grave.
This, of course, raises the question of whether or not any of the other members of the Fisher clan will die before the season finale. Could Keith's ''embarrassing self-discovery on the job'' on Aug. 7 be testicular cancer? When ''Billy attends to his sister '' on Aug. 14, will he use a butcher's knife? As ''Claire drives into her future'' on Aug. 21, could she be headed for a brick wall at 90 miles per hour? Only the sneaky HBO publicity department knows for sure.
SPOILER ALERT: If you don't like the idea of possible spoilers, please don't read this item. Seriously.
While Six Feet Under's ratings may be slipping in the show's final season, Internet and watercooler buzz is building about how the show's writers plan to wrap up the story of the morbidly fascinating Fisher clan when HBO closes the coffin lid on the series Aug. 21.
Here's what I've heard (take it with a grain of salt):
1) Either a major or recurring character is marked for death.
2) A terribly sad event will occur sometime during the season.
3) We'll see how each of the major characters dies before the series finale.
While Nate's ''Numb arm!'' and collapse at the end of last night's episode make him the odds-on favorite to kick the bucket next, not everyone is convinced he's the unlucky one.
HBO passed on coming attractions last night, so we'll all have to wait until next week. While I think Nate's story arc has run its course, and the show might benefit from his passing, I wouldn't count out a return appearance by unhinged Billy putting at least one other character in harm's way.
How do you think Six Feet Under will end? And more importantly, how would you like it to end?
If, like me, you sit down to watch television with a pad of paper, a pencil, and the razor-sharp eye of a geek with no life, you might have noticed that Ruth, George, and his daughter Maggie were watching a particularly mawkish movie on last night's episode of Six Feet Under. Lloyd Bridges flashed onscreen, and I thought I heard the same dewy voice that narrated the 1987 cult classic Flowers in the Attic. (Can I get a shout-out to Louise Fletcher for picking up a small child by her ears? Anyone?)
Alas, with the help of my trusty TiVo remote and the wonders of IMDB.com, I discovered that the Fishers were not watching Flowers, but The Other Woman, a 1995 CBS TV movie that sounds like a proto-Stepmom: Jill Eikenberry plays Tessa, a cancer-stricken mother of two who takes her ex-husband's hot new trophy wife (Laura Leighton) on a cross-country trip to her father's ranch with her three daughters in tow, all in the name of smoothing things over before she kicks the bucket.
Sadly, I've never seen this film -- and a quick search of EW's
archives reveals that we didn't even bother to review (or even mention)
it when it first aired. Who out there has seen it? Anybody want to tell
us if it's good, bad, or just plain deliciously horrible?
