10:03AM: THE GOOD WIFE Executive Producer/Creator Robert King starts off the panel on a lighter note, “Michelle (his writing partner/wife) and I started writing THE GOOD WIFE a year ago, when you could hike the Appalachian Trail without snickering.”
10:04AM: Just how ‘good’ is THE GOOD WIFE? “I think you hit exactly the question of the show,” revealed Executive Producer/Creator Michelle King. “That will play out in her decisions, does she stay [with her disgraced philandering husband], or does she go?”
10:06AM: On the real-life ‘good wives,’ star Julianna Margulies concedes that, “I was so quick to judge them until I stood in Alicia’s shoes. We don’t know what’s going on in the bedroom, we don’t know what their deal is at home, we don’t know what has been going on in their marriage over the years. And that’s not to say anyone should ever cheat, rather, we’re just so quick to judge.”
10:10AM: “I wasn’t eager at all because they’re hard and incredibly difficult to shoot,” said Margulies with regards to whether or not she was eager to return to the small screen. “I kept saying, I don’t want to do a legal show. We have great legal shows on the air, why would we put another one on.”
10:14AM: On the level of involvement of Chris Noth, Robert King vaguely answers, “He’s an important part of the series.” Our take: Just not important enough to pay him for every single episode!
9:05AM: Attending the TCA Press tour just got really, really awkward, courtesy of a blogger hit piece by former Man-Crush SFGate TV critic Tim Goodman.
9:11AM: A critic starts off the Q&A with CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler by referring to her as “Nancy.” Score one for the bloggers!
9:15AM: It doesn’t take long for Tassler to take an initial shot across NBC’s bow with regards to how THE JAY LENO SHOW might-or-might-not-do, “Whatever ratings they [NBC] get they’re going to declare victory anyways so it really doesn’t matter!”
9:18AM: Tassler on FLASHPOINT, “We have nine more original episodes that we’re going to air in-season. It was a great experience and we certainly look forward to more arrangements like that. THE BRIDGE is coming, we haven’t decided when. But it’s been great for us.”
9:19AM: Eureka! Tassler just shared the secret of successful television while discussing the failure of HARPER’S ISLAND. “The challenge is finding something that can appeal to a niche audience and have a broad appeal. HARPER’S ISLAND was very specific, very niche and just didn’t grab onto the bigger audience.” In other-words, unlike on NBC, a hit show on CBS requires a mass audience.
9:20AM: Tassler’s reaction to NBC declaring Conan the “King of Late Night” two weeks into his tenure, “”Really!? Really!? It seemed premature.” Adding. “I have no desire to do that,” when baited by a critic as to whether she’d like to prognosticate on Conan’s future.
1. Replace steroid-riddled Major League Baseball players with cocktail-swilling professional TV critics and you’ve got reason #1 why this TV Addict is excited for TCA. It’s pretty much our MLB Fantasy Camp equivalent.
2. Thanks to the wonders of live blogging, we’ll be first to get you all of the scoop on your favorite shows both new and old. Assuming of course you don’t follow prolific tweeters hitfixdaniel, sepinwall, moryan and the televisionary who will no doubt tweet us to the punch!
3. TCA is Comic Con for professional television reporters: All of the access, none if the costumes. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
Apparently, the television world didn’t get my memo.
You know, the one that politely requested that all of Hollywood press pause on their wheelings and dealings so that this TV Addict wouldn’t miss a morsel of TV news whilst bravely trekking up and down the awe-inspiring Grand Canyon and then livin’ it up in Vegas as part of my plan to get some much-needed R&R. (FYI: The finger strength that comes from a lifetime of channel surfing is not nearly as helpful as one might expect when it comes to outdoor adventures such as hiking.) I mean, how else to explain the ridiculous amount of TV news (listed after the jump) that broke on the one-and-only week of the year that theTVaddict.com went on hiatus!
Or as 30 ROCK’s Liz Lemon would say, “Blerg!”
But the good news is that theTVaddict.com is back… with, you guessed… a vengeance! And between live blogging as many TCA panels as our woefully-short-lived MacBook battery will allow, not to mention squeezing ourselves into as many snapshots as possible with some of your favorite small-screen stars (Sigh. The things I do for you people!) — we’ll be posting exclusive photos and interviews from Comic Con 2009.
So stay tuned, enjoy and remember: If you ever decide to hike the Grand Canyon, take it from someone who learned the hard way — getting off the couch, just once in a while, may save your life. Or at the very least, your knees. (Cue NBC’s “The More You Know” music in 3… 2… 1…)
Direct from the 2008 Television Critics Press Tour, theTVaddict.com is thrilled to offer up a first look at the the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA prequel CAPRICA.
President Dawn Ostroff kicked off Saturday’s Television Critics Press Tour CW executive panel by introducing us to an entirely new reality show called 13 – FEAR IS REAL [or as we at theTVaddict.com like to call it, the cancelled EVERWOOD, VERONICA MARS and JACK & BOBBY for this!] They’re pitching it as “THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT as a reality show.” Aye carumba. This was interesting when it was called SAW, or SAW 2, or SAW 3, or SAW 4. A mysterious computer-distorted voice comes on and lets us know that 13 contestants will be “Playing a game for me.” They’re “killed off,” one by one, and the final survivor wins. $66,666 dollars. Ostroff quipped, “We’ll do anything for attention here at The CW!” Funny, I really believe that.
Someone popped a hard hitting question wondering if Ostroff was worried about the economic downturn in the country having a negative affect on shows like 90210, PRIVILEGED, and GOSSIP GIRL, and she compared the current situation to the 1980s when shows like DYNASTY and DALLAS were doing well amidst a poor economy. I’m too young to remember if that was true or not, but they’d better hope that people retain a voracious appetite for the drunken antic of underaged rich kids.
Set fifty years before the events of the first Cylon war, CAPRICA explores the rivalry between two different families, the Greystones and the Adamas, and sets them on a path that eventually results in the creation of the Cylons.
The clip reel they showed during Sunday’s Television Press Tour Panel had a real detective / film noir look to it. Men wear suits, fedoras, and live in a world where people smoke and drink. Plus, they also apparently go to strip clubs, as there was a pretty clear shot of some side boobage. CAPRICA looks to be trying to up the “hot” factor with this spinoff. According to Remi Aubuchon, writer and executive producer, they weren’t specifically trying to emulate the look of MAD MEN, but he said that that show and CAPRICA do a “good job of making the viewer realize immediatelty that you’re looking at a different era.”
Ron Moore said that the tension in the show will come from the fact that audiences who have been watching BATTLESTAR GALACTICA know what eventually happens to everyone on the planet. He compared it to making a good WWII movie, “You know that the Nazis are going to lose, but that doesn’t keep you from telling a compelling story.”
He also said that they were exploring the idea of a prequel right from the beginning, especially since “The way we end BATTLESTAR GALACTICA doesn’t hold itself open to another story. We end that pretty definitively with a sentence that has a period at the end of it.” They toyed with the idea of doing a show about another rogue Battlestar, but eventually decided that they wanted to pursue a story that wasn’t taking place in outer space. There’s commerce, relationships, and wars between the planets, but “that’s just not where the show lives” according to Moore. It’s a lot more like a contemporary drama.
Experimentation. It’s the buzz word of this year’s Television Critics Press Tour.
Will SCRUBS jumping ship from NBC to ABC pay off? Will the CW really shake things up by shifting the start of their Fall season to mid-summer next season? And will satellite provider DirecTV’s gamble to pick up the critically acclaimed yet ratings anemic football series [that's not really about football!] be hailed as a brilliant programming move or, a grand experiment that was ahead of its time?
Place your bets. Because the only thing we know for sure is what one audience member inappropriately [yet accurately!] yelled out at this morning’s FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS TCA Panel. “FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS will quickly become the most downloaded show on television!” Which in case you’re wondering, star Zach Gilford full endorses, stating, “Well, if you’re a loyal fan I say you download it, and then out of good conscience just switch on NBC when it comes on the air.”
So what else did we learn. Well, Jason Street (Scott Porter) and Smash Williams (Gauis Charles) will be doing four-episode story arcs this season and aren’t signed on as series regulars. Which according to executive producer Jason Katims makes sense because they’ve both graduated from school on the show and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS has always strived to be “as realistic and true to real life” as possible. [With the notable exception of Tyra and Landry's ridiculous murder story-line! But let's not get too nit-picky here]
The little network that could, or as we around theTVaddict.com are now calling it — HBO 2.0 — decided to pull out all the stops my rolling up the WEEDS, CALIFORNICATION, DEXTER and BROTHERHOOD panel into one enormous joi…. ummm fantastic panel.
Heck, even one of the executives joked, “This is the Showtime mixer!” Granted, I’ve never seen Brotherhood, but at least I hear it’s good. The other shows I can vouch for. And I admittedly had a chill go up my spine when Michael C. Hall walked onto the stage. How can people not be afraid that this guy is going to stick a knife in their backs?
What’s really impressive was how much everyone looked like they had tried to dress like their characters, except Michael C. Hall who wore a sharp suit. David Duchovny was wearing a black button up shirt with a wrinkled black sportcoat, and Mary Louise Parker had on a sharp little cocktail dress and looked radiant in her gleaming white skin. How she’s lived in California all this time and not become tan, I’ll never know. She’s sitting on the far left, right next to David Duchovny, who’s sitting next to Michael C. Hall, who’s sitting next to Jason Clarke in an awesome row of Showtime star power.
Minutes ago, CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler filled us in — and by ‘us’ I mean the hundred or so journalists attending the 2008 Television Critics Association Press Tour — with regards to what fans can expect from the character replacing William Peterson’s Gil Grissom on CSI this upcoming season. According to Tassler, Grissom’s replacement will be a doctor, who not only is a bit of an outsider and must work his way onto the team, but has somewhat of a complex dual identity. One that DEXTER fans might be intimately [or is it eerily] familiar with.
In other news, Tassler pretty much put a final stake into MOONLIGHT’s chances for survival by revealing that she stands by her decision to cancel this season’s JERICHO. Said Tassler, “We love Alex and the rest of the cast, but we’re okay to let the show go.” Adding that most of the comments she received from viewers were aimed at the actors and not the show itself.
Which naturally got us thinking. If Alex O’Loughlin is currently unemployed and the gang from CSI are on the look out for a dark and mysterious investigator. It doesn’t take THE BIG BANG THEORY’s Sheldon and/or Leonard to connect the dots here! Match made in television heaven? You be the judge.
Photo Credit: Lauren “Ansel Adams Jr.” Thorek
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