Fox's Bones concludes its strike-shortened season
tonight, wrapping up the series' first attempt at a serialized story
line with the unveiling of the skeleton-collecting, cannibalistic
Gormogon killer and his apprentice. We caught up with exec-producer
Hart Hanson shortly after it was announced that, in the show's fourth
season, it would break from it's Monday-night pairing with House, moving
to Wednesdays in the fall and Fridays come January. While he's hopeful
that the Friday-night placement, meant to help build other shows,
won't happen, and accepted yet another schedule change, Hanson seemed
to crave a little stability. ("I would like them to be tossing all
their effort into making our show a huge hit instead of something
between a huge hit and a cult hit," he said.) Still, Hanson talked to
us about the finale and what went into the planning of this season,
answering some PopWatch questions along the way. (Sorry, guys, no word
on if/when David Boreanaz' Booth and Emily Deschanel's Bones will
finally hook up.) Read Hanson's (spoiler-free) remarks below, and check back with us tomorrow, after the big reveal, to
read more from Hanson on how they decided who the killer would be and
what it could mean for the show next year.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When the identities of the Gormogon killer and his apprentice (which we at PopWatch know) are revealed, are you concerned about the fan reaction? Hart Hanson: I'm counting on it. We're expecting a violent
reaction. When you make a change to a beloved ensemble cast, it's a
good thing and a bad thing. You lose someone but you've got to make
changes and keep it alive. The kiss of death is to keep adding
characters without making room for them because everyone is
underserviced.
Given that you had to rejigger the end of the season, are you happy with the resolution?
I think it works. We'll find out how it works. If
there hadn't been a strike, we would have had a few more Gormogon
stories and it would not have played out exactly the way it did play
out but the end result would have been the same. There would have been
people gone because of the Gormogon. It just would have played out in
different ways. Characters could have been killed for example. However,
one of the things we've found out is that on our show, despite the
murder and mayhem, we are fairly funny, and were we to kill people,
beloved characters, for example, having our regular characters live
with that would be more difficult than if they didn't die. So in that
respect, it worked out just fine for the series.
I was so charmed by this clip of Jenna Fischer gabbing with pregnant Angela Kinsey (from her "Adventures with Angela" vlog series on the official website for The Office), I had to share. In this installment, the costars hang out in a hotel room as Fischer recalls her NYC runway debut in a charity fashion show, and they both try to figure out the Heidi Klum supermodel strut:
Not only does this footage remind me how painfully long it's been since The Office has been on the air (remember, it's back April 10!), but it's an entertaining glimpse into the friendship between two actresses who so convincingly portray nemeses (for non-Office fans, Fischer plays receptionist Pam and Kinsey plays accountant Angela). In fact, the video makes me miss one of my favorite shows and my favorite girlfriends. I'm planning a June vacation with a close group of friends right now, and I actually think these down-to-earth chicks would fit right in with us. Although we don't glam it up with lip gloss when we're just hanging out, and there are more bottles around. But you know what I mean.
In the past, we've asked which famous men or women you PopWatchers would genuinely like to date, and now that it's that Spring Break time of year, let's dish about this: Which TV stars do you think you'd have the most fun going on vacation with, and where?
I don't really watch Grey's Anatomy all that much, and I've never seen a single minute of Private Practice. But after spending a night watching their respective casts belt out some Stephen Sondheim, Billie Holiday, Paul Simon and Woody Guthrie on stage at UCLA's Royce Hall, I'm kinda shocked creator and showrunner Shonda Rhimes hasn't cranked out at least one musical episode for each of her shows. I know I'd be the first to tune in, at least.
The crooning was for a benefit aiding the Grey's and Private Practice crew members who've felt the financial pinch during the writers' strike. (The night's title, naturally, was "Good Medicine.") And it was clearly a passion project; I was told the casts and their backing musicians had rehearsed over two days before the Feb. 29 show, and goodness did the hard work pay off in a fizzy and fun evening.
After the jump, I'll walk through the highlights from the show, including which actor showed off some surprising chops on the harmonica and which two stars didn't make it onto the stage.
Several years ago, after a friend of mine ran the Marine Corps Marathon (and I slipped on a banana peel in the finish area), she told me that the last two-tenths of a mile had been the hardest for her. She'd been so focused on getting to mile 26, she'd forgotten all about the .2, and had to force herself to mentally regroup. I wonder if we, the TV addicts, will experience a similar fate in regards to the writers' strike. Were we so focused on getting a deal signed that we didn't think about what would happen next: Will these final weeks until our DVRs are flooded with new episodes prove the most difficult?
According to an informal poll taken last night at my friend Sheila's birthday dinner, sometime during the second pitcher of sangria, the answer may very well be yes. We went around the table and talked about our lowest point during the strike, when we watched a program that we never would have sat through had the season progressed as usual, and those moments were all recent. Apparently, after Sheila blew through all five new episodes of In Treatment as soon as they appeared on HBO on Demand, she found herself turning to what many of you will consider the unthinkable: Two and a Half Men (pictured). Our friend Ian, it should be noted, involuntarily outed himself as having seen an episode when he joined us in singing the "Men, men, men, men, manly men..." theme song — which we did only to prove to the other side of the table how annoying it is. As in, I used to tape the show, and the song was the reason I stopped.
My friend Robb then attempted to top Sheila's confession by admitting that he's seen every episode of Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle, and had just watched a 1997 TV movie called Every 9 Seconds, starring Caroline in the City's Amy Pietz, on "one of the Lady Networks." His argument would've been stronger had he not added that Christopher Meloni, playing Gail O'Grady's abusive husband, appeared shirtless.
Your turn. What has been your low point during the strike, and how do you plan on making it through these final weeks? (A new episode of Bones airs April 14, friends. We can make it if we stick together. The center must hold.)
Some TV writers are finding it tough to get back into a regular groove now that the strike is finally resolved, even with weeks or months until their shows air again. So just imagine how the teams behind The Daily Show and The Colbert Report must have felt on Tuesday night, when they realized they'd have to hit the ground running and whip up a new episode in less than 24 hours! Last night, we got to see the first fruits of their labors. How'd they fare?
The writers' return was a real godsend for Jon Stewart, who'd been visibly flailing for a while now without anyone to keep him supplied with fresh schtick. Last night, he pulled off his funniest show in many weeks — even better than I remember him being in the dull fall months before the strike, to be honest. His pun-filled opening tribute to his scribes was both cute and clever. (No awkward space-filling pauses in sight!) But the Show really hit its stride with a smart, tightly scripted hatchet job on Sen. Arlen Specter — classic Daily material, and the kind of thing Stewart couldn't possibly have come up with off the top of his head:
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo screenwriter Harris Goldberg said he was thrilled his phone was ringing again as development executives checked in with him on an idled TV pilot and movie script he wrote. "After complete silence for three months, I got maybe six or seven calls from people saying, 'Let's go, let's get together, let's get the ball rolling,'" Goldberg said.
We wish Goldberg the best of luck, but also take this opportunity to remind everyone that it's okay to ease back into work. We'll be here.
With an end to the WGA strike imminent, TV fans who've spent the past few months away from the tube, interacting with friends and family (yeah, right — e-mail/IM at best) are scrambling to find out when their beloved scripted shows will return. But since networks don't have much time to make decisions on existing shows before the May announcement of the fall lineup, many of the series will only air four to eight new episodes — and most of them not until April or May. Many shows won't return this spring at all. EW.com is now keeping a regularly updated list. What does it all mean? One thing for sure: Jericho (pictured), which returns tonight with a seven-episode run, has a great shot at catching on this time around. Check out our Jericho sesaon 2 cheat sheet to feel somewhat informed before tuning in.
There must be a little-known proviso in the Writers Guild rules that permits striking TV writers to pen scenarios for shows other than their own in snarky magazine articles. So it is with New York magazine, which cross-assigned teams of writers from various strike-afflicted shows to dream up season-ending arcs for other strike-afflicted shows. (Hat tip to TV Barn and TV Tattle for the link.) The results aren't as funny as I'd have hoped, though I did enjoy the Simpsons crew's apocalyptic take on The Office. I'd still like to see what, say, Tina Fey's 30 Rock-ers could do with House or Heroes. How about you, PopWatchers? What TV writer swaps would you like to see?
After reading this Associated Press article about the two Oscars telecasts being planned — one if the writers' strike has ended, one if it hasn't — I'm torn. Academy president Sid Ganis said Plan B involves "history and packages of film and concepts that are not normally ones that we would have for the show if we were moving straight ahead." No one wants that. But then show producer Gil Cates, explaining why writers still shouldn't picket the Academy Awards, said, "This show, in my view, is really above politics.... It is wrong to treat the show as anything other than a gift from all the people who work in this business, really, to the exceptional talent and the community and the country."
The country, Mr. Cates? Maybe leave me out of this one. Perhaps you genuinely believe that Oscar night is for we, the people, but I don't think the masses are on the minds of the nominees. (Nor should they be.) The fact is: Even though I'm someone who would really love to sit down with her favorite meal and a Xerox of her office Oscar pool ballot, as usual, on Feb. 24, my life would go on if the Academy Awards didn't. I survived without tuning into the Golden Globes debacle thanks to the season premiere of Rock of Love 2.
So, here's my question: Will you watch the Plan B telecast, if it comes to that? This is the Oscars, not the Golden Globes, so we should have a real host — poor Jon Stewart, as far as we know — instead of Billy Bush. Watching him feel our pain post-packages could be somewhat enjoyable.
NBC recently cut back its order for pilot-season scripts. Bad idea! I know we're in the middle of a writer's strike, but the network's upcoming My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad (hosted by Dan Cortese, pictured) and America's Favorite Mom sound unspeakably jank. At this rate, folks are going to be forced to sit around the table and talk to each other at dinnertime. And then what? Reading? Doing cross-stitch? Abandoning indoor plumbing for outhouses?
That said, with a few tweaks, I think these concepts can be saved. As it stands, My Dad will pit fathers and their children against each other in "stunt-driven challenges." But why not make these papas prove their worth in the most grueling and important tests of all? If I produced My Dad, I'd have contestants face off against each other as they attempt to do the following:
• Change a poopy diaper on a surly toddler with a severe rash. • Navigate a crowded Wal-Mart toy aisle on Black Friday with three kids — without any temper tantrums, and without making a purchase. • Help a teenager with her trigonometry homework. (Pythago-who?)
Similarly, America's Favorite Mom could be must-see TV if it's pulled from the clutches of Today, and turns its focus to mothers as they try to:
• Give a guilt trip about missing Cousin Susie's baby shower • Conjure up new, fascinating and paranoid scenarios in which their kids' lives could be in peril. (Fasten your seatbelts!) • Awkwardly have "the talk" with their teenage sons or daughters.
What other challenges would you like to see on My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad and/or America's Favorite Mom? Don't leave these decisions in the hands of network suits!
If you've gotten the latest issue of EW, you now have "67 tips to beat the entertainment dry spell" during the writers' strike. But I'm here to offer you another one: Watch sports.
How radical of an idea is it? You tell me. I have some colleagues who refuse to see sports as entertainment — and some who refuse to watch sports, period. I asked Deadwood's Timothy Olyphant, who's been moonlighting as a sports reporter for LA's Indie 103.1 FM morning show for the last two years, why he's a fan. "I'm sure the writers will come picket my house," he joked, "but the reason I like sports is because it's unscripted. That's always been the reason to watch sports. You can't make that sh-- up."
So let's settle this once and for all: Do you watch sports? And if so, which ones?
You know I'm alway pushing the PBR (Professional Bull Riders), which you can catch on the weekends on VERSUS. (Olyphant, by the way, approves. Deadwood creator David Milch hired a bunch of cowboys to hang around the set because they had the right vibe. "They get drunk. They get in fights. And they tell terribly inappropriate jokes," Olyphant said, before sharing one punch line we can't print. "I just like knowing that when you're watching a guy get thrown around, that's his day.") If that doesn't sell you, maybe Travis Briscoe's recent record-tying ride on Copperhead Slinger (below) will:
When my colleague Annie Barrett (pictured) told me she'd be going to Conan O'Brien's EW cover shoot to film a few behind-the-scenes videos for EW.com, I was jealous. But not for the reason you think.
I can't believe Annie got to play with a chimp. A CHIMP! He combed her hair; she kissed him. Seriously. It hurts.
Annie can't understand my pain. (Even though she bonded with Louie, pictured on her lap, she claims she's afraid of animals.) But I know I'm not alone. If you had to choose between five minutes with Conan or five minutes with Louie, who would you pick? I enjoy Conan, but I just think I have a better chance of running into him someday.
Hey PopWatchers, if you run out of Law & Orders, SVUs, and Criminal Intents, never fear: A hit parade of veteran actors from the Law & Order franchise and Homicide have a little teaser for you. They’ve joined forces to video-blog their solidarity with the WGA in this hilarious cautionary tale about the dangers of improv-ing your way through even the most formulaic and prolific television medium on prime time today: the crime procedural.
Our dynamic crime-fighting duo — self-described as “impossibly hot” — is Dean Winters and Kathryn Erbe, who amble around the set trying to determine their surroundings (a library), casually assess the vic (a woman in a red dress, gunshot wound to the head), guzzle the goods from a nearby craft services truck, and get their grubby hands on every possible piece of evidence in the room. Erbe puts on her Detective Eames hat half-cocked, as she draws on her years of Dick Wolf-ian experience to try to chip away at the case, while wielding what looks like a candle snuffer. Or is it a tire iron? It certainly ain’t the murder weapon. If only they’d push D’Onofrio out of the way so we can see more of Erbe’s sardonic wit on Criminal Intent, then maybe the runt of the Law & Order litter would get reinstated at NBC. (Remember how sinister and creepy she was on Oz
as the femme fatale death-row inmate Shirley Bellinger? I still
have nightmares.)
Strike or no strike, producers of the Oscar show are determined that there will be an awards telecast as scheduled on Feb. 24. Variety reports that the Academy is making unspecified contingency plans for an alternate show in the hopes of avoiding a debacle like the Golden Globes laundry list-reading that NBC had to air this week, but it's not clear what form that alternate show would take, or what steps producers are taking to keep the show entertaining in case of an embargo on Guild-written patter and stars' likely refusal to cross a picket line. Here are my suggestions; add yours below.
• Hire the American Idol judges to evaluate each performance before opening the envelopes.I'd like to know whether Randy thought Cate Blanchett's Bob Dylan was a little pitchy.
• Have host Jon Stewart (pictured) improvise like he's been doing on The A Daily Show. He can interview the seat-fillers and the accountants who tally the votes.
• Follow the Globes' example and make the show available to whoever wants to broadcast it, so that it won't be an ABC-exclusive event, the writers won't picket, and stars will be able to come. Sorry, ABC, but you're going to get screwed out of millions in ad dollars no matter what happens, so you might as well bite the bullet on this one.
• I never imagined I'd say this, but hire back choreographer Debbie Allen, stat!
CBS' impending new reality-TV slate may have made Mandi die inside, but another of the network's mid-strike decisions is a good one: CBS will air episodes of Showtime's Dexter (pictured) beginning Feb. 17. And thats not the only cable-to-broadcast move brought upon by the current dearth of scripted series. NBC plans to air full seasons of USA's Monk and Psych starting March 2, and studios are shopping other cable series, like The Closer, Nip/Tuck, and Mad Men for placement on major network TV.
Though it kind pains me to imagine a heavily edited version of Dexter, sans blood/gore and everyone's favorite aspect of premium channel series — the swearing! — I'm all for the cable shows getting the chance to find larger audiences on network TV. I guess this sounds lazy, but when I page through my DVR listings for the week, I rarely depart the "Channels 2-10" region unless I've made a specific note to do so. I've missed most episodes of plenty of great cable series this way. What about you? Will having small-time cable shows on the major nets make you more likely to watch them? Or would you rather have these shows stay put in all their unedited glory?
Upon hearing that The Two Coreys (Feldman and Haim, top) will get a second season on A&E while the boys work on their tumultuous friendship, my pal Eva had an idea that might actually get me to watch it: Stick them in a house with the gals from Oxygen's Bad Girls Club (below). Wouldn't you love to see their reaction to Tanisha (second from right) threatening them with, "I'd go to jail for you"? ('Cause you know she would.)
Eva's secretly hoping that shows will venture into crossover territory if the writers' strike continues and producers run out of ideas. Anyone else have a pitch for a very special reality ratings booster?
Finally. Now that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are back (catch Ken Tucker's review of their performances here), we can add 'em to the O'Brien-Letterman mix and make a fair and balanced decision about who has the best-looking new facial hair on late-night TV. This is important! Stewart went with a traditional Strike Unibrow to show solidarity with writers and also Sam the Eagle. I give it one "ha"; points knocked off for mediocre color-blending. He could have gone at that thing with some Jolene. Colbert emerged at the end of A Daily Show looking like a prominent pilgrim community leader. His devotion to beard-growing is impressive and awesome. Still, I have to give PopWatch's prestigious Best Strike Facial Hair award to Conan O'Brien. You guys can't argue with me here, and not just because Letterman shaved his stubble on air last night. Conan just looks hot. He shouldn't shave it. Someone will have to console me with this doll if/when he does.
If you somehow missed Conan singing "Sabotage" in the voice of Edith Bunker while his production crew plays Rock Band, squeal it with him after the jump. And here is a creepy picture of a little boy dressed as a pilgrim. You're welcome!
With people wondering what the WGA strike is going to do to the Oscars now that it's scuttled the Golden Globes, geeks like me have a far more pressing concern: If the strike lasts through July, what'll happen to the San Diego Comic-Con?
What effect does [the writers, actors and, potentially, directors guild strikes] have on the San Diego Con, which has increasingly become a showcase for movies and TV shows? Sure, producers and PR people will still hold panels in Hall H to preview new product. But don’t the fans go to these panels to see the actors and the “star” directors and writers? [snip] In other words, just how many of the 100,000 plus attendees at Comic-Con come for the media other than comics? We may find out this year.
And Sanderson's right. Comic-Con is gonna get slammed this year, one way or the other. Even if the strike is over by the third week of July, the TV season's shot to hell and if production doesn't start toot sweet, next season will follow suit. And TV is a big part of what pushes the media stuff at Comic-Con: Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Lost—even perennials like Babylon 5 and Buck Rogers still draw modest crowds.
But what would Comic-Con look like without the casts and crews of flicks like Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince, Watchmen, Star Trek, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Spirit, The Wolfman, Land of the Lost, and G.I. Joe—all of which could be expected to strut their stuff in San Diego?
How will Hollywood court the viral-geek demographic without this monster of an event, which has eclipsed everything else in the landscape? My gods, could there actually be a San Diego Comic-Con where the big draw is...comics?
Political-satire junkies received two doses of methadone last night with the returns of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Which is to say, it wasn’t the pure stuff, and, given how long the writers' strike has endured and how long it may continue, the shows’ entertainment seemed at times created to simulate the old product and ween you off of the hardcore--oh, I’m going to drop this metaphor; you get the idea. Forced by a no-win situation to return to the air, Stewart and Colbert gave us a good taste of what’s to come, for the foreseeable, writer-free future. And one of them fared significantly better than the other.
Stewart maintained that his show’s title was now a misnomer; it’s not truly The Daily Show without his writing staff, he said, it’s “A Daily Show.” There were some bright flashes during Stewart’s half-hour—hearing him blithely refer to Mike Huckabee as “the guy who doesn’t believe in evolution” was a bracing tonic; it’s the kind of blunt phraseology I’d been yearning for some network-news anchor or pundit or even late-night network host to utter these past few weeks, but of course it’s the kind of thing only these Comedy Central guys have the nerve to deliver. And it warmed my heart when Stewart mourned a country that “has to settle for this fare”—and the screen showed a picture from NBC’s moronic American Gladiators.
Stewart did two segments with a professor of labor relations from Cornell, but the questions didn’t have the zing of prepared material. When he asked Prof. Ron Seeber, “Do most negotiations end with a hug?” the teacher shot him a sour, reproving look that reminded us that Stewart was being forced to rely too often on his fallback position, that of the smirky college-boy. Stewart was frequently better than that, but…
Boy, did The Colbert Report blow The—’scuse me, A—Daily Show away. That’s because Stephen Colbert could rely on his fallback position, one that by (un)happy circumstance suits the strike period perfectly: The ultra-loony-conservative Colbert persona enables its creator to show his solidarity with the Writers Guild by making the other side’s arguments seem, well, loony.
Colbert did one punchy segment with liberal-turned-Republican-turned-contrarian pundit Andrew Sullivan (the priceless moment: when Sullivan said “we” are sick of red and blues states in this country, Colbert shot back, “’We?’ Do you have a mouse in your pocket?”). Colbert’s rhetoric—“I have always been anti-labor; I have always been anti-union”—was (and this a paradox he long ago brought to perfection) carefully calibrated over-the-top stuff.
The host made superb use of campaign news footage to poke fun at Barack Obama’s followers, characterizing one shaggy young background supporter as looking like “the lead singer of the Spin Doctors” and asserting that, in general, Obama has a “legalize-hemp organization behind him.”
Colbert even managed to pull off something close to an emotion he and his character usually avoid like the plague: poignance. That was when he had his producer show us quiet shots of the blank teleprompters that would usually be teeming with his writers’ witty words.
All in all, it was great to have both these guys back, even if there were times when they each made clear they didn’t want to be, under these conditions.
Which of the late-night shows did you watch last night? Me, I watched all of 'em. And when I offered to PopWatch-blog them, I do believe this was the first assignment about which an editor said to me, "Oh, I think that's too much work!" (You're a kind one, Mr. Slezak — the very opposite of a grinch.) But, hell, I had planned to DVR and watch them all anyway, so why not toss out some opinions and then see what you thought? As once-regular David Letterman guest Marv Albert used to say, let's go to the videotape. (Speaking of, there's a video compiling highlights of all five of last night's shows over at Huffington Post.)
Late Show With David Letterman: Yes, Dave (pictured, left) and his Worldwide Pants production-company employee Craig Ferguson are the guys who struck agreements with the Writers Guild to use their writing staffs, thus supposedly giving them an advantage over the competition. But when it comes to live-on-tape TV and public opinion, is that really an advantage? I fully expect a little backlashing along the lines of, "Oh, sure, Dave was funny, but he had all his writers doing the work. Poor Leno!" Well, phooey on that theory. Letterman commenced Letterman-less: instead, a taped bit popped up starring Hillary Clinton who intro'd the host (with Clinton's camp undoubtedly collaborating with Letterman's writers) by saying, "All good things must come to an end."
• Monologue: Dave strode out sporting the unemployed-guy beard he'd grown — he said quite accurately that he looked like "a missing hiker" and "a cattle-drive cook." And he instantly made me feel the way my parents used to say Johnny Carson made them feel — relaxed and in a state of anticipatory good humor, knowing you're in the hands of a pro.
• Spontaneous banter: When he went to his desk, he told a nice little story about feeling overwhelmed by the holidays just past and feeling most comfortable hiding under a blanket with his four-year-old son, Harry. Non-spontaneous highlights included staff writer Bill Scheff "interrupting" Dave to excoriate "producers' greed" and urging them to stop spending their money on "cufflinks, cocktails, and whores" and start earnest bargaining with the Writers Guild. Speaking of labor leaders, my favorite joke of the evening was one few in the audience laughed at: At the start of the show, leggy female chorus dancers came out carrying picket signs, and Dave asked for applause for "the Eugene V. Debs." Loved that. The Top 10 List was read by ten striking writers, including comic essayist-director Nora Ephron, and Jon Stewart's Daily Show writer and former EW staffer Tim Carvell — hi, Tim!
• Guests: Robin Williams was his usual self, which is to say, alternately funny — rapid impersonations of everyone from a rabbi to character-actor Walter Brennan — and rapid-fire unfunny. He's still doing Brokeback Mountain jokes??
• Bottom line: Letterman was rock-solid, with a deep bench of pros to turn to, including veteran Letterman show director Hal Gurnee, who introduced a silly novelty act straight out of the circus for a segment of the revived "Hal Gurnee's Network Time-Killers."
Tonight Show With Jay Leno:
• Monologue: There was the usual glad-handing and audience-goosing going on here, with Leno's band punctuating nearly every joke with some vehement noise, and the studio audience members sounded as though the applause-sign was being beamed into their cortexes. How else to explain the raucous reaction to Leno's mild jabs at his boss Jeff Zucker regarding the power-players in the writers strike? Leno also played a groaningly unfunny video from the JibJab Internet folks reviewing the previous year in news and pop culture. Sanjaya jokes, anyone?
• Spontaneous banter: Leno took questions from the audience, and while his interrogators looked like real people, not plants, it also looked as though Jay more or less knew what they were going to ask. I could be wrong — his responses were feeble and interrupted by a mildly charming but not funny reminiscence of wooing a girl when he was young, prompted by a mention of Dan Fogelberg's death.
• Guests: Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was permitted to give out probably a bit more of his stump speech than he might have been allowed had Leno been doing a tightly-written show with more sketch material. Jay did a decent job of getting him to explain his recent pulling of an attack ad Huckabee had made regarding rival Mitt Romney. The "Bam!" cook Emeril came on for a cooking segment during which he and Jay slathered nice looking pieces of steak with hideous amounts of mustard before frying them. Yuck. Emeril explained why he first started shouting, "Bam!" Too boring to repeat here.
• Bottom line: As tedious as the commercial "button" on the lower left corner of the screen plugging NBC's Sunday premiere of American Gladiators for what seemed like most of the hour. Welcome back, Jay.
So yesterday at 9:31 a.m., I received a forwarded e-mail from a coworker with the subject line "Corey Feldman on Deal or No Deal" and the simple message "Merry Christmas, Mandi!" Apparently, the Jan. 6 episode of the Howie Mandel-hosted game show (pictured) is '80s-themed, and the Lost Boy is the surprise celebrity guest. Naturally, I wanted to use this news as a peg for a "Who'd be your celebrity Deal or No Deal support system?" post. (I'd go with Dolly Parton. I imagine she'd put the Banker in a good mood.)
My editor, however, had a more pressing question: What if real stars, not wanting to cross WGA picket lines after the late-night shows return next week, actually have to stoop to this level to promote their projects? It's not crazy-talk. According to a recent piece in The New York Times, "Strong-arming marquee stars to participate in more stunts is a delicate topic, but studios are starting to discuss it. Among the ideas are cameos on game shows like Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? or stints as a guest meteorologist on local news programs."
Okay, actually, I'm kinda digging that meteorologist idea, but what about you? Have you missed seeing stars peddle their films on late-night TV? What would you recommend studios do if they really want to reach you and late-night isn't an option?
Last night at L.A.'s Steve Allen Theater — a small proscenium whose full name is "The Steve Allen Theater At The Center For Inquiry West" and whose upstairs houses a variety of inquisitive groups like the empoweringly-named "Atheists United" — a rag-tag bunch of kids got together and put on The Strike Show, the first of two performances intended to raise money for the Motion Picture Television Fund, and help out some of the folks being financially afflicted by the writers' strike.
Okay, not so rag-tag. The show's actually the brainchild of 'Til Death's Kat Foster (pictured) and her associate, occasional Cavemen man Nick Kroll, who called up a bunch of industry pals — including Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, Emily Deschanel from Bones, Ed Helms, Brad Garrett, and perfectly-matched comedians the Sklar Brothers — to help them slap together a combo sketch and improv comedy show. The good news: It's really, really funny. Not just funny in a "oh that's nice you're all finding a way to fill your spare time" way. Funny, like, "let's turn Death of a Salesman into a sitcom" funny. Funny like, "let's do a hyper-melodramatic staged reading of the infamous Saved By the Bell episode in which Jessie takes too many caffeine pills and utters possibly the greatest line in the history of Saturday morning TV" funny.
I'm trying not to overstate the case here, or to spoil too much, because L.A. residents can catch the whole thing again on Friday night — and if you've got an extra $25 (and are not an easily-offended member of the AMPTP, or NBC president Ben Silverman, who may just want to stay home and feel good about himself instead), you really should. It's got musical numbers. It's got dance numbers. It's got puppets. It even, in a way, has the Olsen Twins. It's a solid hour of laffs for a worthy cause. And I'd say that even if I wasn't biased.
Oh, by the way, I'm biased: Ms. Foster was three years behind me in theater school at NYU, and once I became faculty, I taught her everything she knows, or at least like to tell people I did inappropriately. As I'm currently spending the night at her apartment, I thought I'd take the opportunity to interview her over a glass of wine and some reheated zucchini pizza. She has a very nice white shag rug that feels good on my sleepy feet. After the jump, some words from Kat. Meanwhile, first person to quote the aforementioned Saved By the Bell line in the comments gets their pick of swag from my office.
How will the writers' strike affect all the upcoming movie awards shows? On the plus side, no groaner gag-lines ("Oprah, Obama. Obama, Oprah.") for returning Oscar host Jon Stewart. On the minus side, Stewart and most of the likely honorees may stay home rather than cross the picket lines. The only show that won't be affected is the Screen Actors Guild awards, since the unionized writers have granted their fellow labor stalwarts a pass for that one. Still, the rest of the shows could look like those from previous strike years, such as the 1988 Oscars, when the presenters wrote their own painful gags, or the 1980 Emmys, when almost no one showed up to collect their trophies. Kinda ironic, since the 2007 Oscars made a point of celebrating the work of screenwriters.
What do you think, PopWatchers? Will you watch star-free or nearly star-free awards shows? Does the SAG awards ceremony suddenly loom large on your winter calendar? Should stars show up anyway on awards night to celebrate artistic achievements that should exist in a larger context than the current labor strife? Should the writers grant all the shows a waiver for the same reason? Or should the writers and actors stick to their guns and not help support events that are, essentially, a promotional tool for the producers the writers are striking against?
I ganked this bit from Jane Espenson's blog (which you should totally make part of your rotation — not just because she's a talented TV writer who's worked on Buffy, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica, but because she'll tell you what she had for lunch every day!), an email she got from her old Buffy compatriot, and current Private Practice executive producer, Marti Noxon:
"Friday, the 14th of December at 8 p.m., there will be a comedy benefit for the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which is available to provide health and social services to all workers in the entertainment industry affected by the strike. The line-up is EDDIE IZZARD, JACK BLACK AND KYLE GASS (Tenacious D), SARAH SILVERMAN, PATTON OSWALT, and LEWIS BLACK." It's at Royce Hall at UCLA. Get tickets by visiting UCLALive.org, calling 310-825-2101, or contacting Ticketmaster.
If I lived in Los Angeles — or had a whole boat of frequent flier miles — I'd go. But I don't, so you should. And report back and let us all know how it was.
According to today's Variety, CBS is thinking about importing serial-killer thriller Dexter from corporate sibling Showtime—editing the hell out of it, given Dexter's cable-extreme nature—and putting it on their schedule in the near future to fill the strike-mandated programming vacuum. Which is a phenomenal idea.
Because, honestly, who needs more hastily conceived reality programming? Would I rather NBC air the first season of Battlestar Galactica in Heroes' timeslot than give me Clash of the Choirs (real) or America's Next Great Sewing Circle or The Nation's Most Awesome Mechanic (both fake..for now)?
All of the broadcast networks have cable arms that have been doing quality programming—why not put Damages or The Shield on Fox, or The Closer or Eureka on NBC or Kyle XY on ABC? Not only is the programming already in the can and, to a large degree, unseen by broadcast-only viewers, but you can also build an audience for those shows when they air new episodes back on their cable homes. (Yes, you'd have to pay the striking writers their residuals, but it's gotta be cheaper than building a new show from the ground up.)
So what cable series deserves a chance at the big show? Nominate now!
Yes, it’s true: Hollywood’s animals are refusing to be adorable until a deal between the WGA and AMPTP is made. They too are out of work and out of cash—but were kind enough to take some time out from rummaging trash bins for kibble to produce this video with The Colbert Report writers. No tears, you cutsey wootsey piano-playing cat. And you, Mr. skateboard-riding bulldog, you had us at "Hello." Finally, to the otters: stay tough, no scabbing!
As the writer's strike continues, it was reported yesterday that Conan O'Brien would pay the salaries for his nonwriting production staff of about 80 people for the foreseeable future. (NBC is set to lay them all off today.) The gesture reminded us how much we missed the man and his pompadour. Sniff. What's worse is the folks over at Late Night Underground (which is run by Late Night With Conan O'Brien staffers) perpetuate said sniffyness with with this video tease featuring the host in threads we've never seen before: leather jacket, strike beard and cowboy boots. It's a good look for him, no?
James Franco and Mila Kunis take one for the team in this Judd Apatow, Dave Bernad and Andrew Epstein-produced Funny Or Die video to show what the world would be like without its beloved screenwriters. It would be... apocalyptic. With 354 channels dedicated to The Hills, remote controls would be useless. Or can you imagine The Hills: The Movie playing at every movie theater? With a new sequel every week? (It wouldn't be much different from the original, maybe except for the fashion and the tint of their teeth.) But it'll be okay. The writers and moguls have to make a deal, right?
As you nervously rock back and forth in your chair, check out Franco and Kunis doing their thing as Justin and Audrina. Franco looks like he kidnapped and killed GnR's Slash, discarded the body and took his hair. And Kunis could use about five more pounds of eyeshadow and more tonal variations on the word "like" added to her lexicon. What do you think?
Hollywood may be shut down, but some creatives will be damned if a dwindling checking account is going to put them in a foul mood. Gilbert Gottfried joked that “there were [fewer] Jews in Schindler’s List” than were present at the Writer’s Guild of America rally in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park yesterday, adding that he was behind the striking writers 100 percent -- unless he had to go to Congress to save his own ass.
Then, as EW.com was interviewing Sex and the City star Kristen Davis about the strike, a homeless man accosted her. This is how it unfolded: He asks for an autograph. She politely signs. He asks for her telephone number. She declines. He mumbles something about Viagra, which prompts EW.com and Davis to begin to walk away. He shouts, “Hey, say hello to Sarah Jessica Parker for me.” What’s more scary-funny? His reference to the get-it-up drug or his extensive knowledge of Sex and the City?
For those of your who can’t visit the picket lines in the flesh, there’s a bevy of material available on the Web (ironic, considering it’s the reason the industry is on strike). The writers of the Late Show update their blog on a daily basis. Today, they’ve posted a special video message from Edie Falco.
And, after the jump, you can check out a couple others featuring Demi Moore and Susan Sarandon from the Speechless Without Writers site:
Strike, schmike — there's a huge groundswell of demand for the return of Carson Daly to the late-night airwaves. Nay, all of America is rising as one, telling Daly and NBC that we don't care if he has to cross the writers' picket lines, we MUST have our nightly fix of Carson before we can drift off into untroubled sleep. At least that's the only explanation I can imagine for why NBC and Daly have chosen to make Last Call the first late night talk show to cross the writers and go back into production, with new episodes beginning next week. (The Hollywood Reporter article announcing the decision does not cite any of the reasoning behind it, so guessing is all I can do.)
But how will Daly, that paragon of comic timing and trenchant, topical monologues, tell jokes without writers? He's recruiting scabs, sending out an e-mail to friends and family, asking them to call and leave their witticisms on his joke hotline. (Maybe "scabs" is unfair; are they still scabs if you're not offering to pay them for their work?) According to the e-mail (thanks, The Smoking Gun!), Daly is soliciting jokes of the "2 priests and a rabbi walk into a bar," variety, so that should slake everyone's thirst for the kind of timely, political humor we're all missing as long as Jay, Dave, Jon, Stephen, and Jimmy remain in reruns.
Meanwhile, how is fellow NBC late-nighter Conan O'Brien, along with his staff, keeping busy? This video from the Late Night Underground blog offers a clue. No jokes, and yet still funnier than Carson Daly.
What do you think of Daly crossing the picket lines? And is there any possibility you'll actually watch his show next week?
After 21 days on the picket lines, talks are scheduled today between the Writer's Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The good news? Everybody could soon be back in business. The bad news? During the last strike in 1988, it was Day 150 before both sides hashed out an agreement.
Since a cash-flow crunch can be especially hard during the holiday shopping season, we took it upon ourselves to do a little HotJobs.com search on behalf of all those unemployed writers on both coasts. Chin up, guys, here’s what we found:
Los Angeles Company: Confidential Title: Bather Details: Bathe all-breed pets at a grooming shop. Upside: Little experience required. “Xnlt pay.” Downside: Smell of wet dogs. Risk of frequent scratching, biting, and yipping. Hairballs.
Company: The Hot Dog Shoppe Title: Cook/Cashier Details: Upside: $12/hour, and (presumably) free lunches. Also, doesn't that hot spy chick on Chuck work at a wiener restaurant as part of her CIA cover? Downside: A death knell for your far-fetched dream of attaining washboard abs.
Company: CARQUEST Title: Auto Parts Handler Details: Er, handling auto parts. Upside: Manual labor will keep your hands from atrophying now that you're not frantically typing script rewrites. Plus, you'll be able to rest your brain in preparation for all those late-night writer's meetings when the strike finally ends. Downside: You have to lift things. Frequently. Things that can weigh up to 100 lbs. Oh, and there’s a drug test, so forget about numbing your body in order to lift said heavy things.
Home
Fox's Bones concludes its strike-shortened season
tonight, wrapping up the series' first attempt at a serialized story
line with the unveiling of the skeleton-collecting, cannibalistic
Gormogon killer and his apprentice. We caught up with exec-producer
Hart Hanson shortly after it was announced that, in the show's fourth
season, it would break from it's Monday-night pairing with House, moving
to Wednesdays in the fall and Fridays come January. While he's hopeful
that the Friday-night placement, meant to help build other shows,
won't happen, and accepted yet another schedule change, Hanson seemed
to crave a little stability. ("I would like them to be tossing all
their effort into making our show a huge hit instead of something
between a huge hit and a cult hit," he said.) Still, Hanson talked to
us about the finale and what went into the planning of this season,
answering some PopWatch questions along the way. (Sorry, guys, no word
on if/when David Boreanaz' Booth and Emily Deschanel's Bones will
finally hook up.) Read Hanson's (spoiler-free) remarks below, and check back with us tomorrow, after the big reveal, to
read more from Hanson on how they decided who the killer would be and
what it could mean for the show next year.
I don't really watch 
Several years ago, after a friend of mine ran the Marine Corps Marathon (and 
From an 
With an end to the WGA strike imminent, TV fans who've spent the past few months away from the tube, interacting with friends and family (yeah, right — e-mail/IM at best) are scrambling to find out when their beloved scripted shows will return. But since networks don't have much time to make decisions on existing shows before the May announcement of the fall lineup, many of the series will only air four to eight new episodes — and most of them not until April or May. Many shows won't return this spring at all. EW.com is now keeping a regularly 
There must be a little-known proviso in the Writers Guild rules that permits striking TV writers to pen scenarios for shows other than their own in snarky magazine articles. So it is with 
After reading 
NBC recently cut back its order for pilot-season scripts. Bad idea! I know we're in the middle of a writer's strike, but the network's upcoming 
Strike or no strike, producers of the Oscar show are determined that there will be an awards telecast as scheduled on Feb. 24. 
CBS' impending new reality-TV slate may have 
Upon hearing that The Two Coreys (
Finally. Now that 
With people wondering what the WGA strike is going to do to the Oscars now that it's scuttled the Golden Globes, geeks like me have a far more pressing concern: If the strike lasts through July, what'll happen to the San Diego Comic-Con?
Political-satire junkies received two doses of methadone last night with the returns of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Which is to say, it wasn’t the pure stuff, and, given how long the writers' strike has endured and how long it may continue, the shows’ entertainment seemed at times created to simulate the old product and ween you off of the hardcore--oh, I’m going to drop this metaphor; you get the idea. Forced by a no-win situation to return to the air, Stewart and Colbert gave us a good taste of what’s to come, for the foreseeable, writer-free future. And one of them fared significantly better than the other.
Which of the late-night shows did you watch last night? Me, I watched all of 'em. And when I offered to PopWatch-blog them, I do believe this was the first assignment about which an editor said to me, "Oh, I think that's too much work!" (You're a kind one, Mr. Slezak — the very opposite of a grinch.) But, hell, I had planned to DVR and watch them all anyway, so why not toss out some opinions and then see what you thought? As once-regular David Letterman guest Marv Albert used to say, let's go to the videotape. (Speaking of, there's a video compiling highlights of all five of last night's shows over at 
So yesterday at 9:31 a.m., I received a forwarded e-mail from a coworker with the subject line "Corey Feldman on Deal or No Deal" and the simple message "Merry Christmas, Mandi!" Apparently, the Jan. 6 episode of the Howie Mandel-hosted game show (pictured) is '80s-themed, and the Lost Boy is the surprise celebrity guest. Naturally, I wanted to use this news as a peg for a "Who'd be your celebrity Deal or No Deal support system?" post. (I'd go with Dolly Parton. I imagine she'd put the Banker in a good mood.)
Last night at L.A.'s Steve Allen Theater — a small proscenium whose full name is "The Steve Allen Theater At The Center For Inquiry West" and whose upstairs houses a variety of inquisitive groups like the empoweringly-named "Atheists United" — a rag-tag bunch of kids got together and put on 
According to today's 
Strike, schmike — there's a huge groundswell of demand for the return of Carson Daly to the late-night airwaves. Nay, all of America is rising as one, telling Daly and NBC that we don't care if he has to cross the writers' picket lines, we MUST have our nightly fix of Carson before we can drift off into untroubled sleep. At least that's the only explanation I can imagine for why NBC and Daly have chosen to make Last Call the first late night talk show to cross the writers and go back into production, with new episodes beginning next week. (The 
After 21 days on the picket lines, talks are scheduled today between the Writer's Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The good news? Everybody could soon be back in business. The bad news?
