CouchBoy Chronicles

with Brad Oswald

• TV drama writer/producers pound the Peacock

  During a panel Friday featuring the top writer/producers of several FX (cable) network series -- including Rescue Me, The Shield, Damages, Sons of Anarchy and a next-season entry, Lawman -- it became very evident, very quickly, that many folks who make their living writing and creating hour-long scripted series are NOT thrilled by NBC's decision to hand five full hours of its prime-time real estate over to The Jay Leno Show this fall.

  
  For reasons that have much more to do with cost cutting than artistic aspiration, the 9 p.m. slot once inhabited by Peacock-proud hits like Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Law & Order, Miami Vice and ER will now belong to a chat/variety/comedy show, the likes of which have been limited to the late-night realm until now.

  View Full Post | 8/08/2009 11:21 AM | 0

• The REAL heroes of the TV press tour

  As outlined here in varying degrees of detail here over the past couple of weeks, this TV-press-tour thingie is pretty much a two-week-long parade of actors, producers and network executives, all passing through in a promotionally inclined (and, in the case of the onscreen talent, contractually obligated) effort to get the assembled TV-critical mass to pay attention to their shows.

  
  If you're a devoted teevee fan, it's the kind of event at which you'll inevitably encounter someone, from behind or in front of the camera, who'd qualify as your hero.

  View Full Post | 8/08/2009 11:19 AM | 0

• So You Think You Know Who Should Win

  

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  Jeanine Mason waves after being announced Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance" winner in Los Angeles. Viewers said Mason can dance best as they crowned her the winner of the Fox network dance competition show. (MATHIEU YOUNG / AP PHOTO)

  Fox TV's So You Think You Can Dance crowned its latest winner on Thursday night, handing the title of America's Favourite Dancer to Jeanine Mason, the 18-year-old Floridian who edged out fellow finalists Brandon, Evan and Kayla in a finale that drew more than 21.6 million votes from cut-a-rug-inclined North American viewers.

  
  Was it the right choice? Was she the best dancer in the field? Well, the two questions might not be directly related, if you listen to the perspective offered earlier in the day by series producer Nigel Lythgoe during Fox's portion of the U.S. networks' semi-annual press tour.

  View Full Post | 7/08/2009 7:35 AM | 0

• Fox's Paula-less Idol Plans

  As expected, Fox Broadcasting's program executives faced a tidal wave of Paula-Abdul-themed questions when they met the press here on Thursday morning.

  And unlike the top brass from other networks, who ducked and dived when the hard questions were aimed their way earlier this week, new-ish Fox Entertainment chairman Peter Rice tackled the Abdul's-out issue pretty much head on.

  View Full Post | 6/08/2009 1:43 PM | 0

• Hurry. Hard. Homer.

  Fox Broadcasting started its press-tour day with a breakfast-mingle meet-up with The Simpsons, who celebrate their 20th season in prime time this fall.

  What that meant, along with a bountiful buffet of Homer-friendly brekkie stuff ranging from egg/meat bunwiches to frosty-sugar-bomb-y cereals to -- yes, of course -- doughnuts, was inevitable encounters with full-sized, three-dimensional versions of the yellow-hued folks themselves -- a pat on the shoulder from Marge, a thumbs-up from Homer and a high-five greeting from Bart.

  View Full Post | 6/08/2009 1:41 PM | 0

• How to stay sane during press-tour madness

  5:38 a.m. First tee, Brookside Golf Club. As soon as the sun pierces the pre-dawn darkness, hit the ball. Find it, and hit it again.

  Repeat (sadly, more times than desired), for three fast-moving hours. Then race back to the hotel, shower and change and get down to the press-conference theatre in plenty of time for the first session of the day.

  View Full Post | 6/08/2009 1:39 PM | 0

• NBC's garden-party

  First of all, sorry for the temporary loss of blogging momentum -- I think I hit the mid-tour wall, and had a day or two when writing for the printed Freep thingie was all I could manage (yeah, I know, tough gig, suck it up, CouchBoy....).

  
  Anyway, back to the BPHP upate: perhaps the most striking thing about NBC's outdoor, behind-the-hotel starry-party thing on Wednesday night was that no one in the teevee-world publicist community got the memo telling them to tell their female clients that wearing five-inch stilleto heels to a party that takes place on a big patch of bermuda grass (tough stuff for a prairie lad to hit golf shots on, but even worse for walking in those to-die-for Jimmy Choo shoes....) is a peril-producing bad idea.

  View Full Post | 6/08/2009 1:36 PM | 0

• The stars come out for CBS

  There hasn’t been much to report BPHP-wise, on this summer press tour so far; after AMC’s tour-opening Mad Men/Breaking Bad cocktail-a-thon last week, things got pretty quiet, probably a reflection of tough economic times and pared-down network publicity budgets. Sure, there was a fancy-schmancy Food Network evening at a palatial private residence here in Pasadena — the food, naturally, was great, prepared as it was by contestants from the new season of Iron Chef — but even it didn’t have much to offer in the way of out-and-out star power.
  
  Well, the paucity of celeb-schmooze opportunities came to a glamourous and starry stop on Monday night on the breathtakingly beautiful grounds of the Huntington Library (http://www.huntington.org/), when a combined CBS/CW/Showtime press-tour party brought dozens upon dozens upon DOZENS of stars and producers in very close contact with each other and the assembled critickal mass.
  
  Among the highlights were a revealing chat with Survivor host Jeff Probst about the new season of the series and the way contestants who’ve studied every minute of every episode of past seasons STILL make the same dumb mistakes when the cameras start rolling, several spottings of supermodel/CW-series star Elle MacPherson holding court with the press (yikes, is she TALL), and very entertaining visits with Canuck stars Hugh Dillon and Enrico Colantoni (Flashpoint) and Jeremy Ratchford (Cold Case).
  
  The guest list also included the likes of Jenna Elfman (new CBS show Accidentally on Purpose), Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory), Ashlee Simpson-Wentz (CW’s revival of Melrose Place), Joe Mantegna (Criminal Minds), Jay Mohr and Paula Marshall (Garry Unmarried), the cast of Showtime’s bloody Dexter (including new-season killer John Lithgow), a bespectacled Simon Baker (The Mentalist), David McCallum and Pauley Perrette (NCIS), Drew Carey (The Price is Right), Jenny Garth (90210) and a whole bunch more.
  
  NBC (Wednesday), Fox (Thursday) and ABC (Saturday), all of whom have star-party events planned here at the ritzy Langham Huntington Hotel, have their work cut out for them if they hope to meet or exceed the celeb-load standard set by The Eye and its corporate-cousin networks.

  View Full Post | 4/08/2009 1:17 PM | 0

• A coupla slices of sort-of humbling pie

  For reasons that remain a bit murky, it has become something of a tradition here on the old' TV press tour for late-night talk-show host Craig Ferguson to send a greeting to the assembled critickal mass at the semi-annual TCA business meeting in the form of a whole bunch of extra-big thick-crust pizzas from a locally renowned pie-a-torium.

  I could be wrong, but I think the gesture has its origins in the year Ferguson -- host of CBS's post-Letterman staple The Late Late Show -- was guest host at the annual TCA Awards ceremony.

  View Full Post | 2/08/2009 9:10 AM | 0

• Lamas Life? How 'bout Lame-Ass Life?

  There's a lot of goofy, loopy, silly stuff that takes place here on the ol' TCA press tour, but most of what's pointless and insubstantial is at least somehow amusing.

  The Lamas clan, however, fits into another category -- the "Geez, there's an hour of my life wasted that I'll never get back" category.

  View Full Post | 1/08/2009 5:38 PM | 0

• Canucks count in ESPN's big anniversary series

  U.S. cable's pre-eminent sports network, ESPN, is marking its 30th anniversary later this year with an ambitious and fascinating documentary series, 30 for 30, that will see a very interesting and unusual collection of directors -- some Academy-Award winners, some first-time film-makers -- contributing docs that explore some of the most important (but, in some cases, unexpected) sports stories of the past three decades.

  The list of subjects ranges from O.J. Simpson's descent from sports-star to murder-suspect fugitive and the rise and fall of NFL Today handicapper Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder to Michael Jordan's brief but unspectacular foray into professional baseball and Nelson Mandela's nation-uniting appearance at the opening of the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa.

  View Full Post | 1/08/2009 5:34 PM | 0

• Where do TV critics come from?

  PASADENA — It's an interesting question — at least, down hereabouts — and probably one about which you'd never expect to know (or care about) the answer.

  But this year's version of the semi-annual TV press tour has offered the assembled critickal mass the opportunity to find out where it — on an individual, one-on-one basis — originated.

  View Full Post | 30/07/2009 9:01 AM | 0

• An almost-obscene wealth of TCA comedy

  PASADENA — It was a raucous Wednesday morning during cable-TV's portion of the U.S. networks' semi-annual press tour here in Los Angeles (well, specifically, lovely and lavish and decidedly old-money-L.A. Pasadena), highlighted by appearances by a couple of top-level standup-comedy personalities — one from the past, and one from the very-successful present.

  There isn't a whiff-length's moment's hesitation here in saying that the old-school comedy carried the day.

  View Full Post | 30/07/2009 8:54 AM | 0

• Cranston's coif: hair today, gone tomorrow

  PASADENA — Tuesday's schedule at the TV press tour here in Pasadena ended with this summer's first crack at the BPHP (Big Phony Hollywood Party) thing, in the form of a cocktail reception hosted by U.S. cable's AMC network — home of all those old movies and, more recently, pretty top-notch original series like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Actually, it probably couldn't be fairly described as a full-out BPHP, as it was a fairly modest affair (outdoor-patio setting here at the Langham Huntington Hotel, open bar, a modest smattering of foodie items), but what it WAS well stocked was talent from the aforementioned AMC shows, and more.

  The cast of Mad Men — which was ferried to the Langham directly after a day of shooting scenes for the show's upcoming third season (which premieres Aug. 16 on AMC) — was well represented, with Jon Hamm (Don Draper), John Slattery (Roger Sterling), Bryan Batt (Salvatore Romano), Christina Hendricks (Joan Holloway), Robert Morse (Bertram Cooper) and a few others all stopping in to mingle with the assembled media mass.

  View Full Post | 29/07/2009 9:51 AM | 1

• A view on The View

  Early candidate for favourite quote of this press tour:

  Joy Behar, here to discuss her upcoming new talk/interview show on CNN spinoff HLN, offered this taped-interview observation on her more-familiar current TV job:

  View Full Post | 28/07/2009 6:05 PM | 0

• The circus - TV-press-tour-style - is back in town

  If it's July, then this must be California -- at least, if you live in the tiny but ever-entertaining corner of the world that's populated by television critics, that's usually the case.

  After a long and largely unwelcome two-year break from the U.S. networks' semi-annual press tour in Los Angeles, I'm back on the job, having joined a somewhat-dwindled (recession, newspaper-industry financial crisis, layoffs, shutdowns, beat changes, that kind of thing) membership of the Television Critics Association for this year's version of the TV-crazed marathon that is the press tour.

  View Full Post | 28/07/2009 6:02 PM | 0

• New Canadian Idol host? I’m with Ben!

  

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  Ben Mulroney, Canadian Idol host. (CTV)

  In an interview this week, random prime-ministerial offspring and occasional reality-TV host Ben Mulroney suggested that whenever Canadian Idol returns to CTV’s airwaves – that is, IF it returns – the show’s producers might be well served by a complete shakeup of the format, in order to "prove to the cynics that the show is still relevant."

  Among the changes he mulled out loud were a new set of judges and ... wait for it ... a new host.

  View Full Post | 5/05/2009 2:59 PM | 2

• Terminator: Fit to be saved from termination?

  Is there a "bubble" show in the current prime-time lineup that you believe shouldn't be allowed to burst?

  The U.S. version of E! network just ran its annual online "Save One Show" campaign, and fans who voted chose the Fox action drama Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as the series they'd most like to save from the cancellation axe. Second place went to NBC's geek-spy thriller, Chuck, and third belonged to Fox's other Friday-night fixture, Dollhouse.

  View Full Post | 4/05/2009 9:55 AM | 5

• Cringe-worthy comedy at its Gervaisian best

  There hasn’t been a one-two TV-comedy punch this uncomfortably brilliant in recent memory – the Comedy Network just announced that it’s launching something called Ricky Gervais Sunday Nights next month (starting May 3), meaning back-to-back episodes of the Brit-wit genius’s two comedy classics – The Office (the original British version) and Extras – airing at midnight and 12:45 a.m. each Sunday.

  
  If you’ve never seen the BBC version of The Office but are a fan of the much-longer-running NBC adaptation, you really are in for a treat.

  View Full Post | 27/04/2009 2:08 PM | 2

• Idol yawns, Dancing dips, Survivor seethes

  

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  Benjamin 'Coach' Wade has been the Survivor castaway viewers love to hate (MONTY BRINTON / CBS)

  Is it just me, or have some of this season’s second-half reality-TV offerings suffered a decided fun-quotient downturn?

  Despite a fairly strong field of finalists, I’ve found the current season of American Idol to be one of the least inspired in the series’ lengthy run.

  View Full Post | 23/04/2009 2:21 PM | 0

• Best of MY Fest

  Well, no one's laughing now. Not because they're not interested in a good chuckle, of course; simply because the 8th annual funny fest is finished and all involved, from organizers to performers to audiences members, probably just need a nice long rest.

  And in terms of putting this Comedy Festering blog to bed for another year, I guess the only thing left to do is wrap it up with a quick look at what qualified as the best of my circuitous journey through the fest. Here's what caught my eye and tickled my funny bone:

  View Full Post | 21/04/2009 9:36 AM | 1

• Debaters 2: This time, it’s personal....

  I hate to miss a taping of The Debaters anytime anyway, because they’re so darned much fun, but Sunday afternoon’s wrap-up edition of this fest’s filibusterathon was a must-see for me because one of its topics hit quite close to home: Should we be sad that newspapers are disappearing?
  
  Outlining the affirmatives and negatives of the question were two intellectually well-armed arguers -- deep-and-dark-thinking U.S. comic Marc Maron and fest artistic director Al Rae.
  
  Rae, whom I’m pretty sure actually likes newspapers, presented the case for newspapers as irrelevant dinosaurs; Maron, whom I’m confident loathes newspapers much less than he loathes most of everything else that confronts him, was cast in the role of newspapers’ defender.
  
  It was a spirited and erudite sparring session that probably didn’t do anything to either stave off or speed up the printed paper’s demise; Maron ended up winning the debate with a series of head-on declarations about papers’ importance in maintaining an enlightened population in the face of an increasingly prevalent and progressively dumbed-down online information flow:
  
  “The death of newspapers signals the end of community, objectivity and an organic connection to events,” he offered, preaching directly to this one-member choir. “The computer is a portal in to a sterile, bright electronic now where we glean detached information that reflects a past, present and possible future; online you find news that fits YOUR interests, YOUR ideology, YOUR priorities, YOUR needs. You are your own city ... your own world. What news is important on Planet YOU, and ... who cares?”
  
  Works for me. Worked for the voting-by-applause crowd, too.
  
  Other debates in the six-pack of verbal showdowns included Sean Cullen and Ron Sparks arguing the merits of monotheism over polytheism, Irwin Barker and Mike Bullard pondering youth justice, John Wing and Teresa Pavlinek tussling (and engaging in a best-tush showdown for good measure) over which sex ages more gracefully, George Westerholm and Maryellen Hooper tackling the topic of too-spoiled kids, and The Williamson Playboys and Sam “White Chedda” Easton engaging in a bizarre in-character debate of the death of respect among today’s younger generation.
  
  It was, as expected, a very entertaining afternoon. And for me, that’s a wrap on the fest -- I’m taking a pass on tonight’s final Best of the Fest gala so’s I can take in a nephew’s playoff hockey game, and later I’ll spend a few minutes poring over the notes and figuring out what qualifies as the best of MY fest ... which I’ll share tomorrow with anybody that might actually give a ... whatever.
  
   

  View Full Post | 19/04/2009 5:42 PM | 1

• Saturday night’s ... well ... all right

  Maybe it was a simple case of -- as discussed pretty much to DEATH in earlier posts -- the choices made. As it was, my Saturday night at the comedy fest was a bunch of just OK that ended with a crescendo of hot-and-sweaty, unrepentently dark and dirty WOW.
  
  If your travels and total weekend-evening experience were different from mine, maybe you can fill in the blanks and brighten up the picture just a titch....
  
  What I got to: Saturday Night Evening Gala at Pantages; Saturday Night Late Gala at Pantages; The Dark and Stormy Show at the Park Theatre
  
  What I couldn’t get to: Kings of Komedy, both early (Steve Patterson) and late (Jonny Harris) at Rumor’s; Park At The Park, at, well, you know.
  
  The early gala, The Seven Deadly sins, had a topic-appropriate host in former Codco fella Andy Jones -- as a born-and-bred Newfoundlander, he’s always carried a deep-rooted contempt for and boundless comedic curiosity about religious institutions (specifically, the Roman Catholic church) and the often hypocrisy-soaked strictures they impose on their followers. It also helps that he’s a brilliant writer and a gifted -- if perhaps somewhat dark -- monologist.
  
  “For years, you’ve been asking us to do a show that’s more relevant to Winnipeg,” he said in his introduction to the vice-gripped gala. “Well, I think we’ve finally done it.”
  
  His opening chat delved, quite expectedly, into sin as an RC-concocted concept: “The deadly sins are also known as the ‘cardinal’ sins -- because many a cardinal has been caught committing them...”
  
  This year’s festival’s Ms. Everywhere, Debra DiGiovanni, was up first, tackling the topic of envy with a peripatetic performance that careened between stuff she’s envious of and stuff about her other people should envy -- including the simplicity of her single existence: “You can be envious of the fact I’m a spinster -- sure, I’m dying alone, but I rarely shave my legs.”
  
  Jeff McEnery seemed an odd choice to explore lust -- neither his delivery nor his material ever managed to generate much in the way of heat; Maritime big boy Brad Muise fared much better on the subject of gluttony, with a buffet’s worth of self-deprecating observations: “I know I’m a glutton; I was backstage, and the other comics were discussing the seven deadly sins, and I was thinking, ‘I wonder what sloth tastes like...’”
  
  Speaking of sloth, and all its ‘-fulness’ implications, topic tender Ron Sparks had a much better time of it in Saturday’s sin-fest than at Wednesday’s opening-nighter; his pacing and insights fit his assigned subject quite nicely: “I put you at the lower end of the continuum (of laziness),” he offered to the ‘Peggers at Pantages. “If you were REALLY lazy, you wouldn’t live in Winnipeg, where you have to shovel snow out of your driveway from July until June...”
  
  Tim Nutt, whose stage-persona signature is all about imposing and angry, got the topic he deserved and made the most of his 10 minutes of tirade time. “Our parents and grandparents got mad,” he reflected on the current population’s relatively tepid approach to rage. “They fought wars and ended injustice with their anger. What do we do? We get cancelled TV shows back on the air.”
  
  He ended his set with this, which turned out to be a bit prophetic: “Of all the things that make me angry, this is one of the worst: I had to come out here and talk to you people about anger, and I couldn’t swear one time.”
  
  Jones returned to the stage for a character piece that showed off his talents as a one-man-show performer but seemed to leave the audience unsure how to react; the piece had the host, as often he has been onstage, dressed in priest’s garb and railing about sin and damnation and the unworthiness of vain mere mortals to lay claim to anything approaching perfection in their Earthly lives (the punchline being that it was graduation address to an elementary-school class).
  
  Show-closer (well, sort of) Marc Maron turned his topic -- greed -- on its head by declaring it’s the only vice that ISN’T on his daily checklist of activities; it was, like his Friday headlining gig at Rumor’s, a dark and challenging effort.
  
  And then, unexpectedly, like one of those hidden bonus tracks on a CD, Nutt re-took the stage and did about 15 more minutes of standup in which he WAS allowed to curse. Fest organizers said later they gave him the extra time because the show finished more quickly than anticipated and they wanted to make sure the audience got its laughs-per-minute money’s worth. It was a good decision, and Nutt’s after-rant was much stronger than his earlier mouth-washed-out-with-soap set.
  
  Overall, a pretty good show that never erupted into wild peals of laughter; maybe it was the touchy subject matter, maybe flood fatigue, maybe the fact the house wasn’t completely full; it just felt like the early-gala audience never completely committed itself to Sin.
  
  The later gala, Cradle to the Grave, produced similar mixed crowd-reaction results. Host Kevin McDonald -- the gangly, curly-haired Kid in the Hall, was a pretty able host, opening with a weird musical number and injecting appealingly absurd scripted bits throughout the show, but the life’s-journey-exploring performers I caught before ducking out early to catch another show elsewhere never got much more that polite acceptance and occasional waves of laughter from the crowd. Big Daddy Tazz, always a big fave with locals, fared well with some bits about how this generation’s kids are treated differently from the last -- “I read in an anger-management pamphlet that you’re never supposed to hit your kids or your animals out of anger. My dad used to hit me with a cat!”
  
  Festival iron man John Wing -- the only performer to appear at every Winnipeg festival to date -- mused on the impossibilities of being father to two teenage daughters: “(My 16-year-old) is so embarrassed to be seen with me that I have to drop her off three blocks from her Facebook page,” and, later, while discussing the awkwardness of having “the talk” with female offspring, “She thinks I don’t know anything about sex ... which means she’s been talking to her mother.”
  
  The standups then sat down for a spell, making room for a somewhat uneven sketch by Picnicface guys Mark Little and Andrew Bush, and a weary but amusing in-character monologue by Teresa Pavlinek in the guise of a middle-aged mom who’s just been dumped by her husband and has reacted by going all botox/new boobs/party-hardy-RV-lifestyle-y.
  
  A rare foray by Mike Bullard into pre-written material (his usual thing is off-the-cuff spritzing with the audience) produced mixed results; the meandering exploration of hitting life’s 50-year barrier teetered at times on the dividing line between bitterly funny and just plain mad: “I used to love older women. When I was 20, my first girlfriend was 42. She was fantastic. I’m pretty sure if I bumped into her today, the love wouldn’t come flooding back,” and “I used to love older women because they were great in bed; now I bang older women because the HAVE great beds,” and, later, on his own techno-un-saviness, “I don’t have a Blackberry, but I do know a black guy named Barry, so I have him send all my e-mails.”
  
  That’s when I hit the road to get to south Osborne in time for The Dark and Stormy Show, which means I skipped out on Maryellen Hooper’s character piece and The Williamson Playboys’ musical contribution. I don’t know how much I missed, but I do know that the late-gala crowd, like the earlier group in the soft-seat hall, didn’t seem wildly overwhelmed by what they’d seen so far.
  
  Dark and stormy -- a.k.a. the dirty show -- was an out-of-the-Park sweat-soaked home run -- you know, like, if you’re into that sort of gynecological/scatological/discussions-of-deviance/no-filter-on-profanity kind of thing. The beyond-sold-out crowd in the cozy confines of the former movie house -- which, by the way, is a GREAT venue for live comedy -- knew what to expect and, I’m sure, had all their expectations exceeded. Tim Nutt was the well-chosen host, and the roster -- Rob Pue, Tim Steeves, Sam Easton, Tom Steffen, Allyson Smith, Glen Foster and Marc Maron -- got as down, dirty and dark as they possibly could. It was brilliant ... if you’re into that sort of thing ... and allowed me to head home feeling a bit better about a Saturday night that would otherwise have been just all right.
  
   
  
   
  
  
  
   

  View Full Post | 19/04/2009 4:55 PM | 0

• There's just no debating it...

  Based on the fun level at Saturday afternoon's taping of The Debaters, I wish I could advise you to grab tickets for Sunday's follow-up session as quickly as you can.

  But I can't. I wish I could, but I can't. Because you can't. If you don't already have them, you won't be able to get them, because both tapings of the recorded-for-radio verbal joust-off were, as always, sold out before the fest even started.

  View Full Post | 18/04/2009 5:28 PM | 0

• Decision, decisions, decisions...

  It's the Saturday morning after the Friday night before; I have awakened, bleary eyed, with some familiar feelings -- slight unease about what happened last night, a need to mentally retrace my steps, concerns that I may have made some questionable choices, remorse about things I maybe should have done but didn't, and the unsettling certainty that whatever mistakes I've made and whatever I might try to delude myself I've learned from them, I'm going to make them again.

  Nothing new here. What's a bit different is that last evening didn't include any notable misbehaviour, I was at no point blissfully and willingly overserved, and I actually do remember everything I did and said.

  View Full Post | 18/04/2009 9:59 AM | 2

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