Forbes Avenue » TV

Southland lands on TNT while NBC continues to suck

griffn — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:00:12 +0000

Good news: Southland has survived its moronic cancellation by NBC and found a home on TNT. Bad news: It looks like we may only get six new episodes from now until the 2010 fall season.

TNT has picked up the critically acclaimed series SOUTHLAND, closing a deal with Warner Bros. Television that will bring the drama from Emmy^®-winning producer John Wells (ER, The West Wing) to the network in January. TNT has obtained exclusive rights to air all six episodes that have been shot for the second season, as well as the seven episodes from the series’ first season. SOUTHLAND will air on TNT Tuesdays at 10 p.m. (ET/PT), beginning with the first episode of the series on Jan. 12.

But the question is will TNT air the profanity that was too much for network television unbleeped?

Meanwhile, the dramas NBC did decide to keep are failing miserably. Trauma has already been cancelled and Mercy will probably be off the air by spring. And The Jay Leno Show continues to be a ratings black hole that drags down and destroys everything within its gravitational pull. Good.

Fred Armisen’s Obama impression needs to be removed from office

griffn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:00:22 +0000

Okay, Saturday Night Live fans, it’s time to face the truth. Fred Armisen’s Obama impression sucks. And I mean really, really badly. I’m not just talking about the fact that he’s completely given up trying to sound or look at all like Obama. I’m talking about the fact that Armisen hasn’t said or done a single funny thing as Obama in two years.

I realize President Obama is harder to spoof than the deliberately slow President Bush or the slick, fun-loving President Clinton. But Armisen can surely do better than just talking straight to camera in his regular speaking voice and spouting recycled Daily Show punch lines. Armisen’s skit on Obama’s Nobel Prize was about the millionth bit of worldwide commentary to point out that Obama won for not being Bush. (Seth Meyer managed to score some originality points later in Weekend Update by stating that, in other premature awards, a nine-year-old had just been named People’s Sexiest Man Alive.)

Will Ferrell and later Will Forte both managed to find quirks in Bush’s personality (wild overconfidence and childish whininess, respectively) without it turning into just a guy with a Southern drawl saying dumb stuff. Darrell Hammond could draw huge laughs from his Clinton character with just a smarmy bite of his lip. I find Fred Armisen to be generally hilarious, but it’s clear that he has no idea how to make Obama funny. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that Obama is significantly funnier in real life than Armisen’s impression of him onstage.

And what makes it all worse is that not only is Saturday Night Live sticking with Armisen as the Impersonator in Chief, but they’re determined to trot him out at the beginning of every show to do an Obama skit, regardless of whether or not Obama had actually made any significant news that week. This became clear last weekend, when the Balloon Boy hoax had been the entire national buzz for two straight days, complete with a cornucopia of spoof-able moments such as anything Richard Heene had said or done in the previous 48 hours. So of course SNL kicked off the show with a skit about Obama turning into the Hulk in order to get health care passed. And of course, the skit wasn’t funny until after Fred Armisen’s Obama turned into The Rock’s Obama. Even then it fizzled pretty awkwardly.

I’m guessing SNL’s emphasis on Obama is a continuation of last year, when their hilarious election season skits (thanks mostly to Tina Fey’s Emmy award winning portrayal of Sarah Palin) were the talk of the town. But unless they’ve got something funny and semi-original to say about Obama, and someone funny to deliver it, they’re just turning the opening of every show into an uncommonly accurate advertisement of the next 90 minutes of uninspired comedy.

The Cleveland Show isn’t racist, it just sucks

griffn — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:00:43 +0000

John McWhorter at the New Republic thinks The Cleveland Show sucks– which I agree with– and that it is therefore racist– which I don’t:

The show is basically Family Guy in blackface – and what isn’t black in it is so shamelessly ripped off from Family Guy that it’s hard to believe it’s the product of creators who are usually so studiously “post-” obvious stunts of the sort. …

The question is: would the Family Guy people create a show where a white supporting character – say, paraplegic Joe voiced superbly by Patrick Warburton — moves to another town and settles in with retreads of the Family Guy characters? No – it’d be seen as folly to let that get beyond a conversation over beers. The reason it felt right to pull this with The Cleveland Show is because of a sense that blackness is so much a “thing,” so diverting in itself, that painting the Family Guy people brown makes artistic and commercial sense. …

Popular culture is long past black characters held up as a genuflective novelty in their brown skin alone, à la Franklin in the Peanuts comic strip or even Homer Simpson’s drinking buddy “Carl,” with a dopey white working-class voice, and “black” only in tint, as a gesture of diversity 1989-style.

First of all, let me just say that network television is so devoid of quality black programming right now that we’ll pretty much take what we can get. And I’m only half joking about that. But I think McWhorter makes some valid points. Society is pretty much past seeing blackness as a novelty in and of itself. There’s a reason why Barack Obama is president while Michael Steele continues to be a running national joke. If just being black is all you’ve got, people are going to figure it out pretty quick.

Thing is, I don’t think this entirely applies to The Cleveland Show. I don’t think race has much to do with the fact that it sucks. I think it just doesn’t work because it doesn’t work. Cleveland isn’t funny, none of the supporting characters are funny, and the smart-mouth baby who’s obviously meant to be the show’s scene-stealing star would only be funny if Stewie Griffin or the Boondocks comic strip never existed. McWhorter, in between his points about racism, admits as much:

[T]he show itself is dishwater, and part of the reason is Cleveland. A Type B Droopy-Doggish fellow, he’s no lead. …

It feels like something Family Guy itself would venture in one of their ironic cutaways, in which case it would have been a choice one. But this is intended as a franchise that will run for years, stacking up something like 200 episodes and running endlessly in syndication. In which case the joke will wear off, and in fact, by my lights, become irritating.

It’s actually funny that McWhorter mentioned the Family Guy cutaways, because there’s one The Cleveland Show reminds me a lot of. It’s the one where Julia Louis-Dreyfus is pitching a new sitcom called Now It’s Just Getting Sad where she throws a bunch of comedic elements against the wall, hoping desperately that people will find a few of them funny: “Okay, okay, hear me out. My character is a therapist who’s living in the city, but I’m married… to an elephant.” (You can listen to the hilarious audio of the scene here.)

I think Seth MacFarlane’s pitch for The Cleveland Show probably went along those same lines. “Okay, okay, hear me out. Cleveland is living next door to… a family of bears.” Yeah. I don’t think this says nearly as much about race as it does about how badly out of fresh ideas MacFarlane is, and his unwillingness to let that stop him from cashing FOX’s checks.

Simply put, MacFarlane threw a bunch of stuff against the wall (many of it the same stuff he threw against the wall for Family Guy) and virtually none of it worked. The fact that one of the things he threw up there was that the show centered around a black family doesn’t make the atrociousness of the show rise to the level of racism.

Jon Gosselin’s “morals” are in question

negrostotle — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:01:41 +0000

(photo via INFPhoto.com)

If you’ve been following the debacle that is now TLC’s Jon & Kate Plus 8…you need to find a hobby.

I kid!

As you already know, the status of the show is up in the air, the status of Jon & Kate’s marriage is up in the air…all that we really know is that the kids are still going to school.

And that TLC has decided to sue Jon Gosselin.

Discovery Talent Services, which secures the services of individuals who appear on Discovery shows like TLC, has filed its lawsuit in Maryland Circuit Court.

According to the complaint, Gosselin signed a new deal in 2008 for “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ that provided his services and his family’s services in taping and promoting the program exclusively. The deal promised he wouldn’t do anything inappropriate that offended “social conventions or public morals or decency” or bring TLC into “public disrepute, contempt, scandal or ridicule.” It also obligated him to maintain confidentiality of business or operational information concerning the show, and stipulated he would not endorse products or services competitive to the program.

The plaintiff cites various breaches of this contract, including photographs and stories of Gosselin intoxicated and in the company of women other than his wife, Gosselin selling his services to other media outlets including a “lucrative arrangement” to appear on “Entertainment Tonight,” and Gosselin issuing his own press releases about the show. (via THR, Esq.)

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Although we usually hear about morals clauses in athlete contracts (i.e. Michael Jordan can’t wear Reebok, or dilute Nike’s brand, etc.) it makes perfectly good sense that they exist, in a much, leaner fashion, in television contracts.

Only time will tell what will happen with the lawsuit, but it looks like Discovery Talent may have a fairly strong case, with Jon’s recent talk about his own T.V. show, and his various trysts, among other things.

The complaint can be found here.

Quinnipac University to Letterman: No sex with our interns.

negrostotle — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:09:41 +0000

This may be a little prudish (or a lot) but in lieu of David Letterman and that whole “sex with my interns” thing, one university has decided to make sure…well, I’m not sure exactly what they’re trying to do. We go to PEOPLE for the story,

David Letterman’s days of frolicking with interns are over – at least as far as one Connecticut university is concerned.

Quinnipiac University says it will tell staff in charge of placing interns to be extra careful when sending students to the studio to work for Letterman, 62, who is currently at the center of a blackmail scandal over his alleged affair with one of his former interns.

“Due to recent circumstances we will have a discussion with those in charge of placing our interns at the David Letterman show in the future,” the Hamden, Conn., school tells TMZ. “We will diligently oversee this internship program to ensure that our interns are out of harm’s way.”

What an awesome waste of time. Quinnipac is going to “have a discussion” with the overseers to choose interns more carefully. Unless every intern you send is a male, there really isn’t anything you can do to stop a consensual relationship between Letterman and one of your, over the age of 18, interns. Again, “out of harm’s way”? I don’t remember Letterman trying to extort money from the intern; what harm did he do to anybody in this situation (other than his wife)?

Quinnipac is putting the kabosh on David Letterman, yet, if they’re like every other college campus in America, they’re dealing with instances of underage drinking, violence, sex, sometimes rape…but don’t worry, they’re putting a stop to any consensual relationships between an intern and a talk show host (maybe the age difference is just too much to handle).

Seriously…what are you going to do? Give everybody flashlights and rape whistles? They’re acting like Letterman sits behind that desk with no pants on or something…just waiting for that commercial break when he can black out the audience…and the noise…and just focus…

Come on man. You can’t stop David Letterman’s nether regions like that…you can only hope to contain them.

Good Morning Forbes

Leave it to the Lamas’ … A Joke, Right?

libchic24 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:05:48 +0000

Once again the world of reality TV is bringing an embarrassingly almost famous dysfunctional family into the family rooms of a very desperate American public who apparently are thought to have no standards whatsoever. Although perhaps they are right; How many spin offs did Flavor of Love have? with more on the way I’m sure… And take the Kardashians, but I digress…

Anyone remember Lorenzo Lamas? Better question; does anyone want to? Well E! isn’t really giving us a choice. He and is sort-of family are the subject of the new reality show Leave It to Lamas’ . I say sort of family because the story focuses on his media whore daughter Shayne last seen as the unconvincing “winner” of The Bachelor 2008, her over plasticized mother, her brother AJ (who, by the way slept with his father’s wife playboy playmate Shauna Sands at the age of eighteen; so classy), and half sister Dakota.

I have no idea how Lorenzo actually fits into all of this besides being Shayne father. Lorenzo claims that the show will be completely unscripted and show their everyday lives. In an interview at the premiere Lorenzo commented “I think our family is pretty normal compared to everyone else out here…I mean, yeah, my parents are famous, and I’m in the business, but we’re really kind of a normal family.” Normal? Seriously? You have four ex wives including a nude model, an extinct acting career (compliments of your famous parents), a daughter that will do anything to be on TV (see British Bachelor Matt for details), and son who enjoys having sex with his stepmother. Sooo normal; I know I can totally relate and I’m sure you can too. The show debuted on E! Last night and it has not yet been assigned a regular showing.

TV Jumping the Shark: Heroes Edition

negrostotle — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:18:11 +0000

Sigh.

You know, I knew it was a matter of time before my favorite TV show, Heroes, would completely “jump the shark” in order to try to increase its ratings. Heroes, NBC’s hour long drama about “people with abilities”, had an intriguing first season that garnered impressive ratings and great reviews from critics. Then? Season 2 started, and it looked like the writers had never expected the show to go beyond season 1 cause it sucked…big time. I personally thought that season 3 did a decent job at redeeming the show, but its hard to get viewers back once you lose them (especially with the borderline atrocity that was season 2).

That brings us to season 4. As we entered the season, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. One of the main characters had been killed off, (kind of, anyway), but besides that, there was probably only one open ended plot point (Hiro’s nose bleeds). So, the writers decided to send everyone’s favorite cheerleader, Clair Bennett (played by Hayden Panettiere) off to college. I had already heard that Madeline Zima, of Californication fame, would be playing Claire’s roommate, so my “jump the shark” meter was already beginning to tingle. Then, two episodes ago, the two inexplicably ended up in their room wearing booty shorts and wife beaters surrounded by candles; the set up was on. Lets Jump The Shark, shall we? (Spoilers ahead)

Yep, Hayden Panettiere locks lips with a girl this coming Monday on Heroes. Claire Bennet and her roommate Gretchen (Californication’s Madeline Zima) share a semiromantic first kiss, but what you don’t know about their sapphic drama is that there’s a third party involved. Read on to find out if college-girl Claire is getting kinky, or if there is something more significant going on…

Here’s the deal: Gretchen loves Claire. Claire likes Gretchen, but doesn’t like-like her. Such awkward scenarios have been worked out before, with a little honesty and upfront communication, but unfortunately that’s not possible in this case.

See, Claire starts feeling a little threatened by Gretchen after a series of odd happenstances make it appear like Gretchen is stalking Claire. But is Gretchen really responsible? As it turns out, she might not be, because there’s a third person in the mix who also has her eye on Claire, and that person’s intentions are none-too-good. And maybe, just maybe, that third party is setting up Gretchen as the fall girl.

Who is this wicked woman? You’ll probably be able to sniff out the suspect as soon as you see her, but just in case there’s any doubt, here’s a hint: You hated her guts on another series we love, and you rejoiced mightily when she was written off at the end of the season. Any guesses? (via EOnline)

Ugh. Its not like I’m not going to watch. Its not like I’m not going to like it. Its just…I had hopes that were so much higher for this show…even with it being in its 4th season. The lesbian kiss seems like such an over-used plot device to get shock value. It always seems to imply that a show isn’t doing that well (see: the now defunct Dirt or Grey’s Anatomy…yeah, argue with me that Grey’s is going well. Then we will revisit it when its off the air after next year.)

So…Heroes. Lesbian kiss. Monday. 8pm. NBC. They’re hoping that your special ability isn’t the ability to change the channel. I just wish they had a more convincing way of convincing you not to use your gift.

The End of Jon & Kate Plus 8?

libchic24 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:46:25 +0000

Yet more drama in the Jon v. Kate saga. Jon has decided, oddly close to TLC’s decision to drop him from the show, that he wants the show to end for the sake of his children. Entertainment Tonight reported that John’s lawyer wrote in a letter to TLC -

“Jon Gosselin unequivocally believes that his children’s continued participation in your client’s television production is ‘detrimental’ to his children. Accordingly, Jon expects that your client will cease and desist from any and all further production which includes his eight children.”

Sounds to me like someone’s a little bitter about being fired.

TLC Dumps John

libchic24 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:57:00 +0000

TLC announced today that John Gosselin will no longer be seen of its hit show John & Kate Plus 8. The show will be renames Kate Plus 8 starting on November 2^nd of this year. The show plans to refocus itself on Kate’s role as a single mother rather than on the shuffling of the kids between the two parents that has been seen so far this season. The changes are most likely due to the falling ratings the show has endured the past few months. The show only pulled 1.7 million viewers during its last episode; an 84% drop from the 10.6 million viewers who watched the return of the show after the show’s short hiatus.

The ratings slump is most likely significantly due to overexposure; there isn’t an entertainment mag or tabloid that hasn’t run at least a few covers on the Gosselins. Lately everything they do from shopping at Target to sunbathing on vaca is front page news. I also suspect that there is a certain amount of backlash from John’s attitude and choice of “dating” partners in recent months. The “reality” was taken out of the show when it continued to show the family on happy outings and vacations (usually with just one parent) when the all the viewers knew that John was living in New York and dating various bimbos and Kate continued to keep up with hair highlighting appointments and scheduled interviews, while supposedly raising the kids alone. I’m not sure how a John-less show will fare in the ratings; he was totally the more likeable parent. Plus the kids are growing out of their adorable stage and quickly approaching awkward. I guess we will have to wait and see how long TLC rides it out.

Jay-Z on Oprah

negrostotle — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:07:29 +0000

Sean Carter…on Oprah. In 4 parts. When you really think about it, this is really an interview of completely crazy proportions. These are arguably the only two black people in the last 20 years that have completely blurred the cultural barrier between black & white all races. Suburban white house wives know who both of these people are. At the same time, any black person on “the streets” knows them as well. Not only knows them, but for the most part can accept (yes, I’m excluding Bill O’Reilly, of course)…which is really crazy. Crazier? the fact that I instantly fell into the rich white woman-poor black people comparison. Sad that those years of conditioning still haven’t worn off. I blame “the man” for that.

On a side note, just like the boy Rizoh said…You can almost hear Oprah yelling at the TV…”I can’t promote this, I got sponsors!” whenever the usage of The “N-word” comes up.

Video Courtesy of (rap radar) found at The Rap Up

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV