Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information - Page 2398

I went back and re-read it, and you're right, he's trying to circumvent the FOX negotiating window to go for fast cash on the "open" market. I had assumed he was asking the court to allow the original FOX offer to go through, which Selig had objected to and basically started the whole MLB takeover of the Dodgers.

We are definitely in agreement that the TV rights sale should be put on hold until such time that McCourt is gone, or there is a clear indication that the team, and not McCourt, is the beneficiary of that TV deal.

The fact that this ownership thing is likely to drag out into the 2012 season is depressing as hell.

What ever happens, they sure better lockup Kershaw and Kemp, in my opinion the clear Cy Young Award winner and a tremendously strong case for MVP in Kemp, although being on a third place team that will likely struggle to reach a .500 finish is going to make that tough to sell.

You're a hoot. First you ask for a cheap plan for people that only watch a few hours of streaming and I show you one and now it's not good enough. Let's face it you basically want eveything for next to nothing or you're not happy.

The 2011-2012 Season
New Fantasy: Viewing Like It's 1979
By Ginia Bellafante, The New York Times - September 18th, 2011

In advance of the debt-ceiling debate in Congress this summer, morning-show pundits repeatedly compared the moment with 1979 both in terms of specific economic realities and the bleak, broader cultural mood. In 1979 the country similarly faced the danger of defaulting on its financial obligations; growth lagged; the Iranian revolution sparked turmoil in the Middle East. Catastrophists found validation for their unease in the disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania just as bizarre shifts in weather patterns today seem to confirm our darkest worries about global warming.

Historical analogies that serve political pundits occasionally aid observers of television trends just as concisely. As it happens, there is much to remind us of the 1979 television season in the one now beginning, and I refer here to more than the obvious example of Charlie's Angels, begun in 1976 and resuscitated as a network series on ABC. Glancing at the schedule one is struck by the number of new series set in fantastical or futuristic worlds: places where certain citrus fruits attain the status of precious commodity (Terra Nova on Fox); where the darkest dimensions of fairy tales animate otherwise anodyne suburban existences (Once Upon a Time on ABC and Grimm on NBC); where the development of a brainy and mysterious machine assists in the pre-emption of violent crimes (Person of Interest on CBS).

Although by the late '70s the social realist comedies of Norman Lear and Larry Gelbart were still very much dominating the consciousness The Jeffersons and M*A*S*H an interest in the world not as we know it had begun to take expression in a decisive way for the first time since the original Star Trek series went off the air a decade earlier.

Spurred on by the popularity of Star Wars the networks invested in science fiction and fantasy, delivering the first iteration of Battlestar Galactica in 1978 and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century a year later. Buck Rogers imagined that a nuclear holocaust had taken out Earth, but that the human race had ultimately been recreated and put under the protection of the Earth Defense Directorate, a kind of more ambitious Department of Homeland Security. In 1979 it was also possible to watch the earthling-alien romance Mork & Mindy as well as Out of the Blue, a comedy about an apprentice angel working as a schoolteacher, presuming you caught one of the show's nine episodes.

None of the current offerings are meant to be funny, though some share the campier aspects of their forebears and the obvious wish to reproduce both the aura and popular kitsch of the current culture's vampire production mill. Chief among the culprits in this regard is Grimm, a series about an Oregon homicide detective who suddenly starts to see monstrous imagery on the faces of ordinary people. Why? Because he is a descendant of some kind of demon-chasing aristocracy. On Grimm people speak with great urgency to one another and make ominous pronouncements like: There are things you don't know things about your family.

If there is a larger point to the series beyond the notion that the world is scary and things are rarely what they seem, it is not evident from the initial episode. Cheekier in disposition but guided by the same sense of airy, soft-core paranoia is Once Upon a Time, which gives us a bail bondswoman, played by Jennifer Morrison (last seen as Cameron on House) inadvertently reunited with the little boy she'd given up years earlier, a child who is convinced that they are fairy-tale characters trapped, by cruel chance, in the mundane world.

Unfortunately for the boy, the woman raising him is the evil queen of Snow White and the mayor of a bizarre, Witches of Eastwick-like New England hamlet called Storybrooke. Once Upon a Time seems, in one sense, to aspire to speak to fantasies of an easier, more enchanted life and in another to serve as caution against giving babies up for adoption.

Both Terra Nova, which has Steven Spielberg as a producer, and Person of Interest are rooted in more palpable collective anxieties. Set in the 22nd century Terra Nova fashions a world whose resources have been overexploited and which is at the brink of extinction. Very little can grow; oranges are a rarity. The series opens with a family being investigated for violations of population-control ordinances. Before long, though, its members are transported back to a primeval time where an experiment is looming to rebuild civilization, this time more in accordance with the dictates of Greenpeace.

The dream of prevention is also at play in Person of Interest, a series set in the very real world of present-day New York, where a remnant device of a post-9/11 counterintelligence effort is being deployed to stop murders from happening as they are being planned. Behind the initiative is a mysterious billionaire, played by Michael Emerson, who gave us the mysterious islander Benjamin Linus on Lost. (J. J. Abrams, a creator of Lost is one of the new show's executive producers.) That casting choice alone would have put the series in the territory of the surreal. And yet despite the grimly earnest tone there is something almost sunny eyed about an enterprise that imagines violent crime as the greatest threat to the city at a time when crime rates have plummeted. In its own way Person of Interest is also a fairy tale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/ar...ref=television

TV Review
'2 Broke Girls' serves sharp adult humor
By Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - September 18th, 2011

There are more than two things to like and loathe about CBS's new Monday night comedy "2 Broke Girls" (9:30 p.m. this week, before moving to its regular 8:30 p.m. time slot next week).

On the plus side, stars Kat Dennings (as Max, the sarcastic dark-haired broke girl) and Beth Behrs (as Caroline, the blond, once-wealthy broke girl) have enjoyable odd-couple chemistry, and the jokes are sharp.

But the show's humor is quite adult (in the pilot there's a crude reference to an orgasm and semen stains on a work uniform), flirts with ethnic stereotypes (the two women work in a diner whose Asian manager chooses the Americanized name Bryce Lee) and is sometimes just cruel ("That girl is working harder than Stephen Hawking trying to put in a pair of cuff links," says the diner's cashier).

Traditional CBS viewers may be appalled; the younger viewers CBS actually wants to tune in will likely be entertained.

"2 Broke Girls" begins with Max chastising rude hipsters ("I wear knit hats when it's cold out," she says. "You wear knit hats because of Coldplay") and breaking in a new waitress, Caroline, daughter of a scheming, now-imprisoned billionaire who's had all her worldly possessions locked up by the bank.

At first they bump heads, then they see the worth in one another, become roommates and plot a business together.

Depending on your tolerance for edgy humor, "2 Broke Girls" ain't broke, but a greater effort by the show's writers to be funny without being overly crude/cruel would help fix it for a broader audience.

2 BROKE GIRLS
When: 9:30 p.m. Monday, CBS

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11261/1175206-67.stm

TV Review
'The Playboy Club'
The new drama on NBC falls in the trap of turning sexism into kitsch
By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times - September 17th, 2011

There is, no doubt, a tantalizing drama to be made about the early years of the Playboy Club, about the women who worked there and the men who patronized it, about Playboy's influence on the sexual revolution and the often very fine line between sexual liberation and sexual exploitation. But NBC's "The Playboy Club" ain't it.

For all its "Mad Men" pretensions (which extend so far as casting Naturi Naughton, who played Lane's bunny paramour in Season 4) and judge-not retro naughtiness, creator Chad Hodge doesn't have the courage of his convictions. "The Playboy Club" is nothing but a tarted-up mob drama; the bunnies may be used as the marketing and milieu but the main narrative is about the men, and no one seems aware of the irony.

Which makes "The Playboy Club," if nothing else, a good example of one danger of our current surrender to nostalgia: the kitschification of sexism.

We meet callow new bunny Maureen (Amber Heard) as she is dreamily admiring the vocal talents of power bunny Carol-Lynne (Laura Benanti), only to be advised by nice bunny Alice (Leah Renee) and sassy bunny Brenda (Naughton) to get back to her cigarette bunny duties.

But the action doesn't start until Maureen catches the eye of Nick Dalton (Eddie Cibrian). Nick Dalton, now there's a name, and what a guy Chicago's hottest young politico who, within minutes, saves Maureen from a supply closet attack by a creepy patron who Maureen accidentally, and rather hilariously, kills in the process. But this isn't just any creepy patron, this is a connected creepy patron, and so Nick and Maureen quickly develop the sort of sexy bond created whenever you dump a mobster's body into the river together.

B-plots arise as B-plots must Maureen refuses to give up her Chicago dreams; Carol-Lynne fights with manager Billy (David Krumholtz) for power in the club; Alice has a Big Secret and Brenda dreams of being the "first chocolate centerfold" but Nick's career, past and present, defines the show. Hodge doesn't seem quite sure of what to do with all those bunnies beyond parading them and their cantilevered bosoms around and then self-righteously showcasing some of the humiliations the women must endure to embody every man's fantasy.

The show's blatant attempt to have it both ways is perfectly captured when Hugh Hefner, who opens and closes the pilot in voice-over, explains why his ethos was just as liberating for women as for men: "It was the 1960s, and the bunnies were some of the only women in the world who could be whoever they wanted to be."

This is patently absurd the bunnies may have been better paid than their non-cotton-tail-wearing counterparts, but they were uniformed waitresses, for heaven's sake, chosen for their homogenous bustiness, taught how to stand and walk and dip a certain way, and controlled by a demerit system. But it is an argument that is often made in any context in which a woman's sex appeal is a coin with which she trades. Never was it argued louder than in the late '50s and early '60s, when the nascent modern women's movement was defined by both "The Feminine Mystique" and "Sex and the Single Girl."

Which should, in theory anyway, make for great television.

Most modern television shows assume a certain gender parity, making the sexual stakes increasingly discrete and personal will this seemingly mismatched pair overcome their separate neuroses and find love? In many cases, the traditional roles have been reversed, with women portrayed as tightly wound, breadwinning multi-taskers and men as slacker-boys, dazed by the responsibility of adulthood.

So it's not surprising that, as "Mad Men" proved, Americans were happy to be entranced by a show that bathes our past foibles in the golden light of nostalgia. A drama set in the early '60s threw sexual dynamics into broad relief men really were in control and women literally defined by biology. The networks could not wait to catch up, with "The Playboy Club," ABC's "Pan Am" and reboot of "Charlie's Angels" ("once upon a time, there were three little girls"); even the BBC got into the act with the miniseries "The Hour."

All of them share a desire to show, one way or another, just how tough it was for a woman in a man's world. And in its finest moments, a period piece can show us how much we have changed, how much we have not and perhaps even why.

At its worst, it renders real issues quaint and decorative, turning, say, a woman's inability to walk through her place of employment without being fondled into a bit of retro kitsch, like skinny ties or beanbag ashtrays. The upcoming "Pan Am" also argues, much more convincingly, that being a stewardess offered women freedom that their other, limited, choices did not. But still the women exude a sexuality (not to mention muscle tone) that is decidedly modern, and while much is made of the outrageous requirement that stewardesses wear girdles, the camera lingers lovingly over their sleek silhouettes, turning their neat little figures into just another graphic device of the period, like the Pan Am logo or the inevitable martini glass.

There's nothing wrong with playing a little dress-up now and again, said the French maid to the vicar, but it helps when a show has substance and direction. "The Playboy Club" has neither, which makes its "celebration" of the bunnies even more shameful, like putting the rag back on Aunt Jemima's head.

THE PLAYBOY CLUB
Monday at 10PM on NBC

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,7099840.story

TV Notes
Official from Bravo: Four ladies make 'friendly departures' as 'Real Housewives of NYC' regulars
By Tanner Stransky, EW.com's 'Inside TV' Blog - September 17th, 2011

The reports last week that there will be major casting changes on the next season of Bravo's reality hit The Real Housewives of New York City are indeed true: In a statement, Bravo confirmed to EW that Jill Zarin, Kelly Bensimon, Alex McCord, and Cindy Barshop are not currently signed to be regulars on the upcoming season five of the hit reality series. The network, however, claims to continue to have on-going discussions with the four ousted housewives.

Ramona Singer, Sonja Morgan, and LuAnn DeLesseps will be returning for season five of The Real Housewives of New York City, a Bravo spokesperson told EW via email. We've had a fabulous run with all the ladies and appreciate them sharing their lives with our viewers. It is a friendly departure among the other ladies and we continue to have on-going discussions with them.

Zarin and McCord were original housewives in the first season of the series; Bensimon was added at the beginning of season two; and Barshop officially became a housewife at the beginning of season four, the last to air. Of those returning for season five, Singer and DeLesseps are the only two members of the original cast remaining; Morgan joined partway through season three.

This is not the first big defection for the series: Original cast member Bethenny Frankel completed three seasons of the show before leaving for her own show, Bethenny Ever After, which was a runaway ratings smash and was renewed for a third season back in March.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/09/17/re...k-regulars-cu/

The 2011-2012 Season
Networks rediscover comedy
By Aaron Barnhart, Kansas City Star

When I look at the fall prime-time television schedule, I'm struck by how funny it is. Not funny weird, like a show built around 1960s Playboy Club waitresses or the idea of reuniting Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul.

No, I mean funny funny. As in LOL. ROTFL. LMAO.

What I mean is this: The sitcom is back, baby.

You remember the sitcom that time-tested package of calibrated punch lines enhanced with helpful audience laughter. Usually paired off in twos TV's version of happy hour sitcoms were designed to deliver millions from the cares of the day and into the grateful arms of the sponsors.

And for half a century they succeeded marvelously. Whether it was the one with Lucy or Dick or Maxwell or Archie or Fonzie or Cosby or one of the friends or Ray, the vessel stayed the same. Only the contents changed.

But about 10 years ago, the vessel ran aground. Networks lost interest in sitcoms, as reality TV stormed onto the prime-time schedule. After all, who needed the expense of a writers' room and marathon taping sessions before a studio audience when you could get just as many laughs putting 10 unpaid bachelorettes in a room with a man they barely knew?

The audience confirmed the networks' foresight. Ratings for sitcoms plummeted, as reality and police procedurals crowded Nielsen's top 30. When Everybody Loves Raymond signed off for good in 2005, many old-timers reacted as though it was the end of an era. The show's creator, Phil Rosenthal, took the occasion to mock-declare the end of laughing, and soon the end of smiling, but truthfully? It kind of felt that way.

By the fall of 2006, the roll call of prime-time network sitcoms had fallen to just 15 shows, half the number that were airing the day before Survivor debuted.

What a difference five seasons and 5,000 reality shows make.

Today the sitcom doesn't look so hackneyed or formulaic. Not only are laughing and smiling back, so is writing. Whether it is the instantly recognizable voice of the teenage outsider in ABC's Suburgatory, or the madcap pacing of Fox's Zooey Deschanel vehicle New Girl, or the finely crafted odd couple at the heart of CBS' 2 Broke Girls, comedy writers are showing us some of their best stuff in years.

(Unfortunately, today's sitcoms resemble a lot of the sitcoms we grew up with in one outdated respect how few people of color are in starring roles on the shows. It's not just comedies either such high-profile dramas as "Pan Am" and "Person of Interest" are whiter than Cheryl Hines' teeth. The 2011 season is proving to be a throwback behind the scenes as well; as my colleague at AOL, Maureen Ryan, reported, the number of female writers and producers on prime-time shows has fallen from 35 percent five years ago to 15 percent.)

There will be 27 network sitcoms this fall, and though nobody knows how many will still be on the air come January, there's little doubt that the genre has reclaimed its rightful place both on the schedule and in the hearts of tastemakers.

What changed? The sitcom changed, that's what. The networks never really gave up on their 30-minute chucklefests, not out of the goodness of their hearts but because one hit sitcom will make more money than Jersey Shore ever could, with revenue from selling and airing the reruns over and over.

Here, in three acts, is how I see the metamorphosis of the sitcom in the 21st century:

Act 1: Chuck Lorre takes over CBS. Monday nights were never the same once Two and a Half Men took over Raymond's time period. For a while it was by far the raunchiest comedy on network TV also the most popular and (from my seat) the funniest. Lorre then developed The Big Bang Theory and Mike & Molly for CBS. Compared to, say, a typical episode of Entourage, these sitcoms were relatively tame. But they set a new tone for network prime time, as seen in 2 Broke Girls (from Sex and the City producer Michael Patrick King).

Act 2: DVRs begin to count. Or rather, the Nielsen ratings people start to count DVR usage. For years The Office and 30 Rock languished in the ratings, and the boost they got from time-shifting (not to mention rentals on iTunes) was crucial to their success. For The Office in particular it was helpful, because its mockumentary format was a genuine experiment in network comedy. Had it been allowed to die, it's unlikely ABC would have greenlit Modern Family, TV's first mockumentary with mass appeal.

Act 3: Animation domination. It wasn't that long ago that Fox had just two cartoon sitcoms on Sunday nights. This fall there are five, with the addition of Allen Gregory from creator-voice Jonah Hill. While it's a stretch to think that Hill could be the next-gen version of Seth MacFarlane (who has three of those five shows), it's clear that Fox has learned its lesson since the year it canceled Family Guy and renewed Arrested Development.

Hey, I loved Arrested Development. But let's just say it was a show ahead of its time. Fortunately, you can watch Arrested Development any time you like on DVDs or Netflix.

That is, if you can find any time to watch old TV shows this fall.

Funny, isn't it?

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/10...ny-seeing.html

The 2011-2012 Season
A People Story, but It Has Dinosaurs, Too
By Brian Stelter, The New York Times - September 18th, 2011

LOS ANGELES.- Ensconced in a lightless editing suite the producer Brannon Braga was watching and nipping and tucking the eighth episode of the new Fox show “Terra Nova” one afternoon this month. The episode, he said, is his favorite yet. “It’s a good story. It’s about people.”

Then he said, with a lot less emphasis, “There are some dinosaurs in it that are cool.”

There, in the space of a few words, Mr. Braga had expressed the essential tension of “Terra Nova,” the most expensive and arguably most ambitious of all the new television series that the networks are introducing this fall. In the works for two years, “Terra Nova” begins 138 years in the future, on a dying Earth, then travels back 85 million years to a newly recolonized Earth, where a small group has the chance to start over — if dinosaurs don’t eat them first. It is, to borrow Mr. Braga’s description, a postmodern-science-fiction-western-family-adventure series.

“That’s a lot of hyphens,” he admitted.

And yet “Terra Nova” has to be all of those things to survive. The time-travel concept is catnip for the Comic-Con crowd, but to justify the elaborate sets in Australia and the special effects created back here, the series has to attract that demographic’s mothers and fathers and little sisters too. It has to appeal to the “four quadrants” for which Hollywood engineers its blockbusters: young and old, male and female.

Thus the talk in the hectic weeks leading up to the premiere on Sept. 26 is about balance: dinosaur carnage versus character development.

“You can have the most sophisticated special effects in the world, but if you don’t have characters to care about, the whole thing is going to be for naught,” said Stephen Lang, who plays Nathaniel Taylor, the very first colonist.

There were serious concerns about the lack of character development after the first two episodes of “Terra Nova” were filmed late last year. But after highly publicized delays, rewrites and reshoots the day-to-day producers — Mr. Braga, formerly of “24,” and René Echevarria, of “Medium,” in the writers’ rooms in Los Angeles and Jon Cassar, also of “24,” on the set in Australia — say they are now pleased with the balance. “It’s classic storytelling that hasn’t been around in a while,” Mr. Echevarria said. He compared it to “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” Mr. Braga to “Swiss Family Robinson.”

The story is told from the point of view of the Shannon family, which sees the trip back in time as a second chance. “It plays on two levels: it’s mankind’s redemption, and it’s also this family’s redemption,” said Gary Newman, a chairman of 20th Century Fox Television, which is producing the series.

Reflective of both the scale of the show and the struggle it has sometimes been to make, 11 people have executive producer credits, including the director Steven Spielberg and Peter Chernin, a former No. 2 to Rupert Murdoch at Fox’s parent company, the News Corporation. Mr. Spielberg proposed casting Mr. Lang, contributed ideas for the colonies and specific shots of dinosaurs, and insisted that “Terra Nova” feature dinosaurs not seen in his film “Jurassic Park.” The show is set in the Cretaceous period, instead of the Jurassic period.

The dinosaurs lend an extravagance to “Terra Nova” that no other television show can match. They also lend themselves well to billboards and commercials as well as action-figure lines. And yet “the show’s not about the dinosaurs,” Mr. Braga said, sitting in Mr. Echevarria’s office before taking part in the episode edit. “The dinosaurs are interfering objects.”

“They tend to come along at the worst possible times,” Mr. Echevarria added. “There’s already drama happening.”

The “Terra Nova” team discovered, belatedly, that it needed a set of antagonists other than nicoraptors and brachiosaurus, so it added a group of mysterious settlers called the Sixers that clash with the colonists. “We needed some villains that could talk,” Mr. Braga explained.

In the first episode the Shannon family is given permission to time-travel to Terra Nova because the mother, Elisabeth, played by Shelley Conn, is a surgeon needed on the colony’s medical team. The father, Jim, played by Jason O’Mara, is a police officer — a change from the original script, which had him as a factory worker. “We realized that making our dad the lawman was going to give us storytelling engines,” Mr. Braga said.

Fox first announced “Terra Nova” in May 2010. Rather than a single episode, 13 were ordered. “The costs for the first hour or two were just so big that we really needed a season to amortize it,” Mr. Newman said. Sets were built, casts assembled and dinosaurs conceptualized, but production was ultimately slowed down to, as Mr. Newman put it, “flesh out the character work.” The premiere was ultimately delayed twice, both because of the character work and the time required to render the special effects.

“It just took time to figure out what character dynamics would give us the most bang for the buck,” Mr. Newman said.

Most noticeably the first two hours of the series, as originally filmed and edited, were wall-to-wall action, setting up both the future and past worlds that the show will explore. As recounted by Mr. Braga, when Mr. Echevarria joined the production late last fall, he “came in with a fresh eye and said, ‘This is terrific, but who are these people?’ ”

Rewriting ensued, and when production resumed on the remaining 11 episodes, new scenes were filmed for the first two hours — a process that the producers insist is normal but has received a great deal of attention because of the show’s ambition. In the re-edited premiere, before the Shannon family leaves for the Cretaceous period, the father hides Zoe, the youngest of his three children, from the authorities, who enforce a two-child policy. Mr. Echevarria called it the “Anne Frank scene.”

Moments like that were added to “invest you in the family emotionally earlier on,” he said. “One could argue, ‘No, just get into the action,’ but the action doesn’t have a rooting interest if you don’t know who you’re watching.”

Another added scene lingers on a shirtless Mr. O’Mara — a blatant appeal to female viewers. Also intended for female viewers is the relationship between Mr. O’Mara and Ms. Conn’s characters. In various drafts of the scripts they were married, separated or somewhere in between; in the incarnation viewers will see this fall, they are married, but “they need to fall in love with each other again,” Mr. O’Mara said by telephone from Australia.

Asked about character development, Mr. O’Mara, who may be familiar to viewers from the American version of “Life on Mars,” said: “I think you need to give it a little time. You know? We’re trying to bring some pretty spectacular images to the television screen.” He added: “As the series progresses, there are many more character moments.”

In later episodes 15-year-old Maddy, played by Naomi Scott, finds a love interest in the colony, and 17-year-old Josh, played by Landon Liboiron, fights to have his girlfriend from 2149 brought to the past.

“What if he gets wind that there might be a way to get her here, but it’s slightly illegal?” Mr. Braga asked. “And it gets him involved with some nefarious people? While his dad’s the cop in town?”

“It sort of tumbles along,” he added. “And that’s the wonderful thing about TV. It’s rarely what you think it’s going to be.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/ar...ref=television

Oh, come on.

I clearly said I had a 3 out plan. Going to a 1 disc at a time plan with a limit of two rentals a month is a ridiculous example.

You example is like saying because I want a Ford Crown Vic with the option to buy a couple of additional airbags I can get on a Lincoln, that I should settle for a Kia Spectra that has one added to the driver's side window.

I'm not going to trade a steak dinner for a hamburger just because it's the only way I can get fries without buying them at a full appetizer price.

SATURDAY's fast affiliate overnight prime-time ratings -and what they mean- have been posted on Analyst Marc Berman's Media INsight's Blog.

Emmy Notes
Producers Under Pressure To Cut Charlie Sheen From Broadcast
By Nellie Andreeva, Deadline.com - September 18th, 2011

EXCLUSIVE: I hear that there has been some pressure put on the TV Academy and the producers of tonight’s Primetime Emmy Awards telecast not to have former Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen as a presenter. Here is what I’ve learned has happened: Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre, who was the subject of many of Sheen’s public insults last spring and is currently being sued by the actor over his termination from the show, confronted TV Academy chairman John Shaffner, who is the production designer of two of Lorre’s comedy series, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. I hear that Lorre demanded that Sheen’s planned appearance be cut from the broadcast. Meanwhile, Warner Bros Television Group president Bruce Rosenblum — who oversees the studio producing Men, Warner Bros TV, which also is being sued by Sheen — made a call to Fox chairman Peter Rice asking whether it would be possible for Sheen to be dropped. After Rice couldn’t commit to doing so, Rosenblum asked him to at least not give Sheen an open mike that the actor may use to embarrass Lorre or the other Emmy nominees from his shows, all produced by WBTV.

Making things even more sensitive is the fact that I’ve learned Sheen has been eyed to present the Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series category, which features two nominees from a Lorre series, Big Bang‘s Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki. Ironically, this is the category Sheen was eligible for but opted not to submit himself this year. As of now, I hear that the Emmy producers are sticking to their plan to go with the Sheen appearance, but the final decision may come down to the last minutes before showtime. He may not be in the clip packages included in the broadcast, though, as I hear that at the last minute WBTV asked that Sheen be cut from any Men footage used on the show. Lorre is slated to attend the Emmys as he is nominated for Big Bang, which is in the running for best comedy series.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/09/emmy...mmy-broadcast/

Emmy Notes
Alec Baldwin walks out of Emmys after Fox removes Rupert Murdoch joke
By Grady Smith, EW.com's 'Inside TV' Blog - September 18th, 2011

Alec Baldwin has pulled out of tonight's Emmy telecast after a joke about News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch was cut from a segment that he had recorded to open the broadcast. EW has confirmed the story, originally reported by Deadline.

On Thursday, Baldwin had tweeted I did a short Emmy pretape a few days ago. Now they tell me NewsCorp may cut the funniest line.

Apparently, Fox was uncomfortable including a joke that Baldwin made that had to do with Murdoch and the much-publicized phone-hacking scandal, and they had it cut from Baldwin's script. When EW talked to Fox, the network was very clear that the decision to cut the joke was made at the Fox level not by anyone at News Corp. Fox also claims that the reason the joke was cut was not because of Murdoch's name, but because it was in poor taste to make light of the serious allegations surrounding the phone-hacking scandal.

When the joke ended up on the cutting room floor, Baldwin no longer wanted his segment to be part of the broadcast and Fox has consequently re-shot the clip with Leonard Nimoy. Today, Baldwin tweeted, Fox did kill my NewsCorp hacking joke. Which sucks bc I think it would have made them look better. A little.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/09/18/al...mmys-fox-joke/

Perfect karma would be for Sheen to behave himself and not make any wise cracks about Lorre, but to tell the Baldwin line about Murdoch.

Emmy Notes
Before the Emmys Were Gay
By Norman Sunshine, The New York Times' 'Sunday Review' Opinion Page - September 18th, 2011

Washington, Conn. - For a few years now, I have watched the Emmy Awards with a mixture of amazement and envy. Did that actor really kiss the guy next to him when his name was announced? Did that composer really say I love you to his male partner in his acceptance speech? Looking forward to tonight's Primetime Emmy awards, hosted by the openly gay actress Jane Lynch, I can't help but think how far we've come since my own encounter with the awards show in 1976.

I was painting in my studio in downtown Los Angeles when the phone rang. Not surprisingly, it was my friend Alan Shayne (we used the word friend in those days, even though we had lived together for 18 years). He sounded terribly excited. At that time, Alan was the president of television at Warner Brothers. Before becoming president, he had persuaded me to create collages for four holiday specials he had produced for CBS. Now he told me that he had secretly put up my name for an Emmy in graphics for the 1976 Valentine special Addie and the King of Hearts, and I had been nominated. I couldn't believe it.

That night we talked about the show and the two tickets I would receive. We had been told of Warner Brothers' hesitation in making Alan president because of our relationship, and had been advised by helpful friends not to rub it in people's faces. So Alan always attended business parties with women, never with me. But this was the Emmys, and I was nominated for Alan's show. Shouldn't we be together?

We went back and forth but finally decided it would be better if I went with a woman, and that was the end of it. In any case, I didn't think Alan would miss much. I was up against serious competition: the graphics for The New, Original Wonder Woman. For Addie, I had taken scenes from the show and turned them into bright, childlike paper collages that had appeared at the beginning and end of each act. I was very proud of the work but it didn't compare in technical virtuosity, and I was sure I wouldn't win.

The day of the awards ceremony, I took my art dealer, Margo Leavin. The room was filled with flowers, music and elegantly attired people. Margo and I were escorted to a table right next to the stage and for a moment I thought a mistake had been made, but there was my name on a place card. Waiters immediately appeared with bottles of California chardonnay.

The awards seemed interminable. Margo and I whispered. I couldn't wait until the event was over. After the awards, I planned to splurge on a small private plane to fly out to Palm Springs to meet Alan at a friend's place. In the meantime, the wine kept being poured and I figured, why not have a good time.

Suddenly I focused on the word graphics coming out of the loudspeakers. The Emmy goes to Norman Sunshine for Addie and the King of Hearts.' I just sat there, wondering if I had heard correctly. Margo kissed me and gently pushed me out of my chair. I somehow managed to get up on the stage where another woman kissed me and handed me the gold statue. I made a rambling speech thanking everybody on the show whose name I could remember, and especially the producer, Alan Shayne. Later I barely remembered a word I'd said.

In a daze, I put Margo in a cab and took another to the airport. Instead of feeling excited, I felt angry. Why wasn't Alan there with me to share this? Why did we always have to hide? Then it turned out there was a technical problem with the plane, and the flight was canceled. I found a pay phone and dialed the Palm Springs house. I shouted at whoever answered, Give me Alan. And when he came on I yelled, The plane can't fly and I'm stuck here and it's all your fault!

What happened at the awards?

What happened? I won and you weren't there.

It's just as well, Alan replied, I would have cried.

I choked up. I know, I said. And then we were laughing.

I suddenly spied a Hertz counter down the hall. Hold on, I said. I rented a car, ran back to the phone and shouted, I'm on my way.

How I got to Palm Springs I'll never know. I did the two-hour trip in an hour and a half. When I got there I honked the horn and everyone came running out yelling their congratulations. Alan just looked at me and said, I'll never let anything like this happen to us again.

Many years later, when Alan was up for an Emmy of his own for producing the miniseries The Bourne Identity with Richard Chamberlain, we sat side by side at the awards show. He didn't win, but I know that if he had, he would have stood up there and openly thanked me as his life partner.

Norman Sunshine is an artist and the co-author, with Alan Shayne, of the forthcoming Double Life: A Love Story From Broadway to Hollywood."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/op...ref=television

TV Reviews
Bunnies and Lovelorn Males
By Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal

What it is about the early 1960s that television's creative minds are finding inspirational of late we can leave to social psychologists. Whatever it is, it seems to be working. Even now, as fans of AMC's "Mad Men" longingly await the show's fifth season (scheduled for early 2012), NBC has delivered its own trip back to the era. "The Playboy Club," a drama series, offers nothing like the painstaking period detail of "Mad Men"—those perfect cocktail glasses and coffee makers, the just-right clothes, hair and liquor cabinets that set so many critics' hearts aflutter. But it's quickly evident that the series (inspired by ex-Playboy Bunny Kathryn Leigh Scott's memoir, "The Bunny Years") exerts its own strong pull back to an earlier age.

Not to say there's any suggestion here of a time of older moral values, a fact underscored by the vividly detailed violence of episode one. The life and feel of an earlier age that comes roaring out of the action so successfully here derives from the writing—from story lines interwoven and shaped in the style of old Hollywood. There's heartbreak, a touch of glamour, backstage show-business drama—every Bunny has her story and we're going to get to know all of them—also sisterly warmth and plenty of jealousy. The Bunnies are an ambitious lot.

The show is set in Chicago, whose political bigwigs and leading crime-family members do business together and rub elbows at the Playboy Club. That's how one of the city's attorneys, Nick Dalton (Eddie Cibrian), comes to befriend Maureen (Amber Heard), a new Bunny in serious trouble. She'd refused the insistent sexual attentions of a notorious mobster, with chilling consequences. She has already run into other problems, mainly over her innocent faith in the value of getting ahead, and for doing so by attracting a disproportionate share of the male customers' attention. One of the male customers she attracts is Dalton, boyfriend of the beautiful Carol-Lynn (Laura Benanti)—a Playboy Club star no longer in the first flush of youth. Carol-Lynn is not about to forgive that, or the imminent loss of the man in her life.

Not this man anyway. Mr. Cibrian's Dalton is destined, clearly, to be the central male, a playboy but also much more. Mysterious, gallant, responsible and terrific looking in an effortless way, he's a man with a secret past of sorts. All this fairly soon rings a bell. Something about Dalton is going to remind viewers of that other hero, Don Draper, dashing adman of "Mad Men." Not for long though. In this fast-moving, story-driven enterprise, there are no flashbacks, no somber reflections on the characters' inner lives.

Nor is this the adman's world, a bitterly combative place but one where most of the mortal danger comes from too much booze. "The Playboy Club" is about a far tougher society—one, Bunnies learn, where bad characters have to be handled. She might just consider dating him sometime, the resourceful Maureen tells one terrifying mob figure confronting her—but he has to get rid of that knife in his pocket. It's a tactic that seems to work for her, at least at this point in the series—a sharply drawn and riveting one from the evidence on hand, and bolstered by a skilled cast. This club should lure plenty of customers, television-viewing variety. They'll have good reason.

THE PLAYBOY CLUB
Mondays, 10-11 p.m. EDT on NBC

* * * *

"Free Agents," whose first episode aired this week, comes with its own lure, recognizable right off in the person of Hank Azaria, who stars as Alex, a newly divorced staff member at a public-relations agency. This series, a darkish workplace comedy, was adapted for U.S. audiences from the British show of the same name—which means, as such adaptations always do, that its tone doesn't begin to approach the acid barbarity of the original. Still there's bile enough here to enliven this saga of life at the firm. Under Stephen (Anthony Head), the buoyantly self-obsessed and sex-obsessed boss—a delectably offensive character—work days are filled with raunchy fun, undergraduate sex prattle, and small humiliations.

Alex, an employee, bears those that come his way with a complicated dignity fascinating to watch—an Azaria trademark closely linked with his skill at conveying silent suffering. There it was as Alex endured, in that first episode, a neck massage the boss barged into his office to give him—an event that causes a miraculous variety of expressions to go flitting across Alex's face, all gradations of agony. Alex had much to be agonized about on other grounds, to be sure. He's now single, supposed to be taking up a new life, new romance, but all he can do is weep for sadness, which he does at inopportune moments—in bed with a woman, in conversation. It's no small miracle that Mr. Azaria makes this soppy character work. He does. The same can be said for just about everything else in this appealingly hard-headed, smartly written comedy.

FREE AGENTS
Wednesdays, 8:30-9p.m EDT on NBC

* * * *

"Prime Suspect" is another case of a British series redeveloped for U.S. audiences—one so devoid of any semblance of the artfulness characteristic of the original, or, for that matter, of any merit whatever, that it's hard to imagine how it got made. Or how stellar names like Peter Berg, creator of "Friday Night Lights," and Lynda La Plante, creator of the original "Prime Suspect," came to be associated with this project, as executive producers.

The tone, rich mainly in false notes, announces immediately that this U.S. version of the tale of an ambitious and talented female detective, now named Jane Timoney (Maria Bello), has fallen victim to deadly script writing. The hostile male colleagues standing in Jane's way are with rare exceptions stick figures devoid of recognizable humanity as they deal with the unwelcome female in their midst. Then there's the dialogue. The writers' notion of how police detectives talk and think is neatly encapsulated in a conversation about a victim's husband. He's a thoracic surgeon, one detective reports. "What is that," his puzzled colleague asks, "something about dinosaurs or something?" The only suspects of interest in this crime series are the producers and writers who threw this hapless business together and called it "Prime Suspect."

PRIME SUSPECT
Thursdays, 10-11 p.m. EDT on NBC

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...estyleArtEnt_6

TV Review
'2 Broke Girls' (CBS)
By Brian Lowry, Variety - September 18th, 2011

Taking inventory of its assets and debits, "2 Broke Girls" has appealing co-stars, a quite functional premise, considerable raunch, a favorable time-slot and one inherent problem: While CBS has enjoyed solid success with its Monday comedies, programs dominated by female leads generally haven't been among them. Whether "Girls" can reverse that trend remains to be seen, and will perhaps depend in part on how handsomely the new-look "Two and a Half Men" does in sustaining an audience -- and propping up the entire night -- beyond its inevitable initial rush of curiosity.

The Eye network has seemingly scored a coup by landing Kat Dennings as Max, a blunt, sexy, cash-strapped Manhattan waitress introduced putting a couple of grungy patrons in their place, telling one dude that snapping his fingers to demand service "dries up my vagina."

In walks Caroline (Beth Behrs), the blond, leggy, Paris Hilton-like heiress to a fortune that has disappeared faster than you can say "Bernie Madoff." (From a programming standpoint, given the plot of "Damages" last season and a similar wrinkle in ABC's "G.C.B.," the Madoff scandal has become the narrative gift that keeps on giving.)

Perky but impoverished, Caroline needs a job, which doesn't exactly provoke cartwheels from Max. Still, she takes a degree of pity on her, after grilling her about what it's like to be rich and have a pony.

That the two will end up living together, "Odd Couple" style, is never in doubt. Still, producers Michael Patrick King ("Sex and the City") and Whitney Cummings (whose prospects looks considerably better here than in her new NBC sitcom) -- aided by the sure hand of pilot maestro James Burrows -- still manage to have fun getting there. "Oh my God, you were robbed!" Caroline shouts upon her first glimpse of Max's sparsely furnished apartment.

Beyond the well-cast leads -- with Dennings enjoying the meatier role but Behrs holding her own -- the show distinguishes itself by being almost as dirty as "Men," albeit from a female perspective, with a lot of lascivious sighing about the chiseled abs of a guy Max is dating. There's also broad (if not especially strong) comic relief, including "Saturday Night Live" original Garrett Morris and Matthew Moy as the diner's owner.

Not that naughtiness alone will be enough to secure "Girls'?" future where it counts, or by itself make the show feel like one of the boys. Still, if this promising half-hour finally comes up short on Nielsen's balance sheet, it won't be due to a deficit of energy or charm.

2 BROKE GIRLS
Premieres Monday at 9:30PM ET/PT on CBS

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117946114?refCatId=32

jaron

Congrats to your son for Mag's Emmy win!

Well, I guess I shall have to give up on this one. I loved Jill, Alex and Kelly and they were the reason I watched.

Emmy Notes
Primetime Emmys Live-Blogging
By Nellie Andreeva, Deadline.com - September 18th, 2011

We’re off and running. The much talked about opening number of host Jane Lynch features the Glee star in a massive pre-taped production number having her sing and dance through the stages of a slew of hit TV shows. It opens with Leonard Nimoy, who, as network president, introduces Lynch to the house of TV where all shows are housed. The part was originally taped with Alec Baldwin but was re-done after Fox cut a line about the News Corp. hacking scandal. The elements are uneven but the best bit is Lynch’s walking into a scene of AMC’s period ad agency drama Mad Men where Lynch was schooled to “go learn how to type and fire the guy who gave her that men’s haircut.” Lynch tells them that she comes from a time where women can marry each other, nodding, “Hi Peggy.” “Does it mean we don’t have to sleep with men to get to to the top anymore,” wide-eyed Peggy asks. “No, you still need to do that.” When Lynch suggests that where she is from people can skip commercials, ad man Dan Draper turns to her and gives her a steely look. “You’re gonna turn around and go away and we are going to pretend that we never met you.” The number spilled into the stage with a big live finale featuring Lynch hoisted up by male dancers. “Try doing this with triple Spanx,” she said after getting down.

ABC’s Modern Family is on an early roll in the supporting comedy series acting categories, dismissing some projectionists that, with all 6 cast members nominated in the 2 categories, they may cancel each other. First winner of the night is the show’s Julie Bowen for best supporting actress in a comedy series. “I don’t know what I am going to talk about in therapy next week now.”

A second after she thanked her TV husband, Ty Burrell, he too walked to the stage to pick up his trophy for best supporting actor in a comedy series. Burrell talked about his dad who passed away before his son got into acting, doing a job where he gets to wear makeup all the time.

Ricky Gervais presents the director for a comedy series category in a pre-taped segment. “Sorry. I can’t be live and in person. Not after the Golden Globes. I’m not even allowed on American soil if I say something rude or offensive.”

Modern Family is going 3-for-3 with a comedy series directing award for director Michael Alan Spiller.

And how it’s 4-for-4 as Modern Family also wins for best writing in a comedy series for the Caught in the Act episode written by Steve Levitan and* Jeffrey Richman. Levitan, noting that the episode’s main story of the Dunphy kids walking on their parents having sex was based on his own experience, thanked his “somewhat satisfied wife and 3 traumatized children.”

Lynch came back from commercial with “Welcome back to the Modern Family Awards.”

Then it’s Charlie Sheen, presenting the lead actor in a comedy series category. Like on The Tonight Show earlier in the week, it was not the Warlock but the old Sheen — cool, collected and gracious — who showed up. “Before I present the award in my old category I wanna take a moment to get something off my chest and say something to all my friends form Two and a Half Men,” he said. “From the bottom of my heart, I wish nothing but the best for this upcoming season. We spent 8 wonderful years together, I know you will continue to make great television. Now onto the Emmy.”

The Big Bang Theory‘s Jim Parsons repeats as a winner in the first major upset of the night. Steve Carell has been considered the sentimental favorite as this was his last chance to win an Emmy for his signature role as Michael Scott on The Office. “This is so odd for so many reasons,” were the first words out of Parsons’ mouth. He, of course, stars on a show, which like Men, is executive produced by Chuck Lorre, the object of Sheen’s insults early in the year and a multimillion dollar lawsuit.

The best actress in a comedy series category is being presented like a beauty pageant, with all nominees walking up onstage and holding hands while the winner is announced. And it’s also a surprising one — Mike & Molly‘s Melissa McCarthy. She broke down while accepting her Emmy and a sparkly tiara and a big bouquet to keep with the pageant theme. She thanked series co-creator Chuck Lorre who “fought for me” and called Peter Roth, president of* Warner Bros. TV, which produces the show, “cheerleader in a suit.”

It seems like the TV Academy members themselves were shocked that The Amazing Race‘s 7-year winning streak in the best reality competition series category ended last year. The veteran unscripted series is back with a win. That means that the globe-trotting reality show has now won 8 out of the 9 times since the category was launched. Top Chef was the only show to ever beat Race when it nabbed the Emmy last year.

The Daily Show won for best writing in a comedy/variety series, a category where it seems to alternate with fellow Comedy Central program The Colbert Report. The Colbert Report won last year, The Daily Show the year before.

The Lonely Island guys did a rousing and outrageous number of the all Emmy nominated songs with guests* Michael Bolton aka Captain Jack Sparrow from his hilarious Saturday Night Live bit, as well as Maya Rudolph and Akon and others.

Don Roy King is the winner in the best director for a music/comedy/variety series for the James Timberlake/Lady Gaga episode of SNL.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had won the best comedy/variety series for 8 consecutive years, prompting presenter Scott Caan to iuntroduced the nominees with: “here is a look at the shows that will lose to The Daily Show this year. He was right as Stewart & Co. won again to make it 9 in a row.

Big final hurray for departing Friday Night Lights as developer/executive producer Jason Katims wins best writing in a drama series for the series finale. By upstaging heavy favorite Mad Men in the category where AMC’s period drama had 2 nominations, including Matthew Weiner’s tour-de-force Suitcase episode, is the football drama poised for another major upset tonight?

After Sheen, it was his former Two and a Half Men co-star Jon Cryer and Sheen’s replacement on the show Ashton Kutcher’s turn to present. “I am not Charlie Sheen,” Kutcher said, before turning to Cryer, “And I do not think you are a troll,” a reference to a comment Sheen had made about Cryer last spring.

Actress Margo Martindale wins the supporting actress in a drama series award for her season-long gig on FX’s Justified. “Some things take long”, she veteran actress said about her first Emmy. “I love you Graham even though you killed me,” she told Justified creator. The producers, especially Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly for getting me another job. (She is a regular on the new CBS drama A Perfect Man)

Martin Scorsese will now have an Emmy to go with that Oscar. The overwhelming favorite in the best director in a drama series category won for the pilot of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.

The pretty wide-open supporting actor in a drama series category was won by Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones, who by the way was the first actor cast in the HBO fantasy drama.

No upsets for Julianna Margulies in the best actress in a drama series category this year. The Good Wife star, who was the heavy favorite to win the category last year but lost out to The Closer’s Kyra Sedgwick, won the trophy this time.

Jason Katims’ drama writing win was not a fluke. Friday Night Lights‘ victory lap continues with a surprising win for star Kyle Chandler in the best actor in a drama series category over heavy favorites Steve Buscemi and Jon Hamm.

Host Jane Lynch: “A lot of people are wondering why I’m a lesbian. Ladies and gentlemen, the cast of Entourage.” The cast of the departing HBO comedy are presenting the writing for a TV movie/miniseries category. The winner is British writer Julian Fellowes for Masterpiece Theatre’s Downton Abbey. Like for Scorsese, this was Fellowes’ first Emmy, to join his Academy Award. Fellowes thanked the Hollywood industry for “kick-starting my second career 10 years ago” with the Oscar for Gosford Park and doing it again today with the Emmy Award. Another British-born Oscar winner, Maggie Smith, won the supporting actress in a drama series award, also for Downton Abbey.

Somewhat of an upset in the lead actor in a TV movie/miniseries category where Barry Pepper of The Kennedys gives cable upstart ReelzChannel a first Emmy Award. Pepper won over William Hurt, Edgar Ramirez and fellow Kennedys co-star Greg Kinnear.

Talent representatives are a hit tonight as their mentioned in almost every acceptance speech, prompting one agency insider to email me: “You can tell that times are tough in the business when almost everyone thanks their agent…”

First-time Emmy Awards executive producer Mark Burnett made headlines last month when he said he didn’t want the In Memoriam segment to be a “downer” this year. The segment was a tear-jerkier, set to Leonard Cohen’s beautiful ballad Hallelujah sung live by The Canadian Tenors quartet.

Guy Pierce won the best supporting actor in a TV movie/miniseries for his role on HBO’s mini Mildred Pierce. “I had a delightful experience working on Mildred Pierce — I got to have sex with Kate Winslet many, many times. I share this with you you are an outstanding woman,” he said. “Thank you for allowing me to insert myself into… your worlds on Mildred Pierce and to my wife who allowed me to talk about it every night I came back from work.”

Kate Winslet followed him onstage as the winner for best actress in a TV movie/miniseries, continuing the trend of Oscar winners earning their first Emmy tonight. (She’s No. 3). Very emotional Winslet didn’t address her sex scenes with Pierce but was quick to acknowledge Mildred Pierce writer-director Todd Haynes. “This had nothing to do with me, it was all you Todd,” she said about her win.

A big upset in the now-combined TV movie/miniseries category, which went to Masterpiece Theatre’s Downton Abbey, with HBO’s big troika of Mildred Pierce, Too Big To Fail and Cinema Verite shut out. Fellowes, who accepted the trophy,also looked genuinely surprised. “This is really a David and Goliath story with Goliath represented by some remarkable movies,” he said. “It seems extraordinary that we won.”

Mad Men was shut out in every category tonight except the one that mattered the most — best drama series. The AMC period drama made it 4 in a row by taking the top drama series trophy over HBO’s hot newcomer Boardwalk Empire and sentimental favorite Friday Night Lights. “I didn’t think this was gonna happen,” series creator Matthew Weiner said.

Another repeat in the best comedy series category, won by last year’s victor and odds-on favorite Modern Family. Co-creator Levitan gave special recognition to the show’s underage actors. “Modern Family was this close to being animated, that’s how much we didn’t want to work with kids,” he admitted and ended his acceptance speech with an anecdote about a gay couple who told him, “You don’t just make people laugh, you make them more tolerant.” Levitan agreed. “We do think that there is nothing wrong about a long and committed relationship between….an old man and a hot young woman,” a reference to the show’s couple Ed O’Neill-Sofia Vergara. “Looking at you tonight I see many of you agree.” And that was the end of the show.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/09/prim...g/#more-172890

TV Notes
Monday's Highlights: 'Two and a Half Men' and Charlie Sheen's Roast
By Los Angeles Times' 'Show Tracker' Blog - September 18th, 2011

[ALL TIMES LISTED ARE PACIFIC TIME]

THE SHOW MUST GO ON: Ashton Kutcher joins the cast of the raunchy sitcom Two and a Half Men at 9 p.m. on CBS, and the series' former star Charlie Sheen is the center of attention on The Comedy Central Roast at 9:45 p.m.

SERIES

How I Met Your Mother: Season seven of the sitcom opens with the wedding of Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) to a mystery bride. Josh Radnor, Chris Romanski, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders also star (8 p.m. CBS; additional new episode follows at 8:30).

The Sing-Off: Eight of the 16 competing groups perform together in the season premiere (8 p.m. NBC).

Dancing With the Stars: The 12 celebrity contestants include atheletes Ron Artest and Hope Solo; actors David Arquette, J.R. Martinez and Elisabeth Canalis; reality TV personalities Kristen Cavallari and Robert Kardashian; journalist Nancy Grace, style guru Carson Kressley; talk show host Ricki Lake; singer Chynna Phillips and author Chaz Bono (8 p.m. ABC).

Hell's Kitchen: The remaining four chefs compete and the winner is announced in the season finale (8 p.m. Fox).

Eureka: The Astraeus countdown is under way in the season finale. Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Trevor Jackson, Erica Cerra, Dave Foley and Niall Matter star (8 p.m. Syfy).

2 Broke Girls: A street-wise waitress (Kat Dennings) working takes an inept new waitress (Beth Behrs) under her wing in this new sitcom (9:30 p.m. CBS).

Hawaii Five-0: In the second season premiere Danny (Scott Caan) works to clear McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin), who awaits trial for the murder of the governor (10 p.m. CBS).

The Playboy Club: This new drama set in the 1960s star Amber Heard, Eddie Cibrian, Laura Benanti, Jenna Dewan Tatum, Leah Renee, Naturi Naughton, David Krumholtz (10 p.m. NBC).

Castle: The season premiere, resolves Detective Beckett (Stana Katic) fate following last season's cliff hanger. Nathan Fillion stars (10 p.m. ABC).

SPORTS

Baseball: The Angels visit the Toronto Blue Jays (4 p.m. FSN).

Football: The St. Louis Rams visit the New York Giants (5:30 p.m. ESPN).

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...ens-roast.html

Emmy Notes
Emmys By the Numbers
By Nellie Andreeva, Deadline.com - September 18th, 2011

WINS BY NETWORK
(2 or more; includes Creative Arts Emmys)

HBO 19
PBS 14
CBS 11
Fox 9
ABC 8
NBC 6
Comedy Central 4
Discovery Channel 4
History 4
ReelzChannel 4
AMC 3
Cartoon Network 3
DirecTV 2
Disney Channel 2
Showtime 2

WINS BY PROGRAM
(2 or more; includes Creative Arts Emmys)

Boardwalk Empire 8
Downton Abbey 6
Mildred Pierce 5
Modern Family 5
Deadliest Catch 4
Gettysburg 4
Saturday Night Live 4
The Kennedys 4
Freedom Riders 3
So You Think You Can Dance 3
64th Annual Tony Awards 2
American Idol 2
American Masters 2
Phineas and Ferb 2
Firebreather 2
Friday Night Lights 2
Futurama 2
Game of Thrones 2
Glee 2
Mad Men 2
The Borgias 2
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 2

http://www.deadline.com/2011/09/emmy...-full-results/

Emmy Notes
The Complete List of Emmy Nominees & Winners
By Daniel Frankel, TheWrap.com - September 18th, 2011

Here's our list of winners for the 63rd annual primetime Emmy Awards. For each category, winners will appear with an asterisk (*) and be in bold:

COMEDY SERIES
*Modern Family (ABC)
The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Glee (Fox)
The Office (NBC)
Parks & Recreation (NBC)
30 Rock (NBC)

DRAMA SERIES
*Mad Men (AMC)
Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Dexter (Showtime)
Friday Night Lights (DirecTV/NBC)
Game of Thrones (HBO)
The Good Wife (CBS)

MOVIE OR MINISERIES
*Downton Abbey (PBS)
Cinema Verité (HBO)
The Kennedys (Reelz)
Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Pillars of the Earth (Starz)
Too Big To Fail (HBO)

ACTRESS IN A MOVIE OR MINISERIES
*Kate Winslet, Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Diane Lane, Cinema Verité (HBO)
Elizabeth McGovern, Downton Abbey (PBS)
Taraji P. Henson, Taken From Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story (Lifetime)
Jean Marsh, Upstairs Downstairs (PBS)

SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A MOVIE OR MINISERIES
*Guy Pearce, Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Tom Wilkinson, The Kennedys (Reelz)
Brian F. O'Byrne, Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Paul Giamatti, Too Big to Fail (HBO)
James Woods, Too Big to Fail (HBO)

ACTOR IN A MOVIE OR MINISERIES
*Barry Pepper, The Kennedys (Reelz)
Edgar Ramirez, Carlos (Sundance)
Greg Kinnear, The Kennedys (Reelz)
Idris Elba, Luther (BBC America)
Laurence Fishburne, Thurgood (HBO)
William Hurt, Too Big to Fail (HBO)

DIRECTING FOR MINISERIES, MOVIE OR DRAMATIC SPECIAL
*Brian Percival, Downton Abbey (PBS)
Olivier Assayas, Carlos (Sundance)
Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, Cinema Verite (HBO)
Todd Haynes, Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Curtis Hanson, Too Big to Fail (HBO)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A MOVIE OR MINISERIES
*Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey (PBS)
Evan Rachel Wood, Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Melissa Leo, Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Mare Winningham, Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Eileen Atkins, Upstairs Downstairs (PBS)

WRITING FOR A MINISERIES OR DRAMATIC SPECIAL
*Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey (PBS)
Todd Haynes and Jon Raymond, Mildred Pierce (HBO)
Steven Moffat, Sherlock: A Study in Pink (PBS)
Peter Gould, Too Big To Fail, HBO
Heidi Thomas, Upstairs Downstairs (PBS)

ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
*Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights (DirecTV)
Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Michael C. Hall, Dexter (Showtime)
Jon Hamm, Mad Men (AMC)
Hugh Laurie, House (Fox)
Timothy Olyphant, Justified (FX)

ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
*Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife (CBS)
Kathy Bates, Harry's Law (NBC)
Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights (DirecTV)
Mireille Enos, The Killing (AMC)
Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: SVU (NBC)
Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men (AMC)

DIRECTING IN A DRAMA SERIES
*Martin Scorsese, Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Jeremy Podeswa, Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Neil Jordan, The Borgias (Showtime)
Tim Van Patten, Game of Thrones (HBO)
Patty Jenkins, The Killing (AMC)

SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
*Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones (HBO)
Andre Braugher, Men of a Certain Age (TNT)
Josh Charles, The Good Wife (CBS)
Alan Cumming, The Good Wife (CBS)
Walton Goggins, Justified (FX)
John Slattery, Mad Men (AMC)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
*Margo Martindale, Justified (FX)
Christine Baranski, The Good Wife (CBS)
Michelle Forbes, The Killing (AMC)
Christina Hendricks, Mad Men (AMC)
Kelly Macdonald, Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Archie Punjabi, The Good Wife (CBS)

WRITING FOR A DRAMA SERIES
*Jason Katims, Friday Night Lights (DirecTV)
David Benioff, Game of Thrones (HBO)
Veena Sud, The Killing (AMC)
Matthew Weiner, Mad Men (AMC)
Andre Jacquemetton, Mad Men (AMC)

DIRECTING FOR A VARIETY MUSICAL OR COMEDY SERIES
*Don Roy King, Saturday Night Live (NBC)
Jerry Foley, Late Night With David Letterman (CBS)
Gregg Gelfand, American Idol (Fox)
James Hoskinson, The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
Chuck O'Neil, Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central)

VARIETY MUSICAL OR COMEDY SERIES
*The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central)
The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
Conan (TBS)
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (NBC)
Real Time With Bill Maher (HBO)
Saturday Night Live (NBC)

WRITING FOR A VARIETY, MUSICAL OR COMEDY SERIES
*The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central)
Saturday Night Live (NBC)
The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (NBC)
Conan (TBS)

REALITY COMPETITION SERIES
*The Amazing Race (CBS) American Idol (Fox)
Dancing With the Stars (ABC)
Project Runway (Lifetime)
So You Think You Can Dance (Fox)
Top Chef (Bravo)

COMEDY SERIES DIRECTING
*Michael Alan Spiller, Modern Family (ABC)
Gail Mancuso, Modern Family (ABC)
Pamela Fryman, How I Met Your Mother
Steven Levitan, Modern Family (ABC)
Beth McCarthy-Miller, 30 Rock (NBC)

ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
*Melissa McCarthy, Mike & Molly (CBS)
Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie (Showtime)
Tina Fey, 30 Rock (NBC)
Laura Linney, The Big C (Showtime)
Martha Plimpton, Raising Hope (Fox)
Amy Poehler, Parks & Recreation (NBC)

ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
*Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock (NBC)
Louis C.K., Louie (FX)
Steve Carell, The Office (NBC)
Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes (Showtime)

COMEDY SERIES WRITING
*Steve Levitan, Jeffrey Richman, Modern Family (ABC)
Louis C.K, Louis (FX)
Greg Daniels, The Office (NBC)
Matt Hubbard, 30 Rock (NBC)
David Crane, Jeffrey Klarik, Episodes (Showtime)

SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
*Ty Burrell, Modern Family (ABC)
Chris Colfer, Glee (Fox)
Jon Cryer, Two and a Half Men (CBS)
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Modern Family (ABC)
Ed O'Neill, Modern Family (ABC)
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family (ABC)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
*Julie Bowen, Modern Family (ABC)
Jane Krakowski, 30 Rock (NBC)
Jane Lynch,Glee (Fox)
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family (ABC)
Betty White, Hot in Cleveland (TV Land)
Kristin Wiig, Saturday Night Live (NBC)

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-pos...8-et-fox-31075

TV Notes
Hot Seat for Sheen Promises the Warmth of the Limelight
By Brian Stelter, The New York Times - September 17th, 2011

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Long before television and the Web crystallized our build-celebrities-up-then-knock-them-down culture, there were roasts: smoky, boozy affairs made famous by the Friars Club, where comedians privately traded barbs and pushed boundaries and, above all, bonded. The Friars’ motto: “We only roast the ones we love.”

That may not be true anymore. In fact, that may have stopped being true a while ago, somewhere between the first Comedy Central roast, of Drew Carey in 1998, and the last the channel televised, skewering Donald Trump in March. Now it is Charlie Sheen’s turn.

Though viewers may not tune in out of love for Mr. Sheen, they may come away liking him. That’s because the channel’s roasts reverse the tabloid playbook, mercilessly tearing a celebrity down but then giving him a chance to build himself back up. Jonas Larsen, the Comedy Central executive in charge of the roasts, likened the format to an image makeover or rehabilitation show: “You can air out all your sins and gain absolution on one night.”

Like David Hasselhoff, Joan Rivers and William Shatner before him, Mr. Sheen seems to be betting on that. He taped the roast last weekend, then hit the interview circuit this week, both to promote the broadcast, set for Monday night, and to promote himself. He told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” that he had wrongly thought he could “come back” after being fired from “Two and a Half Men” for a made-for-TMZ meltdown last winter, and then described his current plan for a comeback in a sitcom called “Anger Management.” (The show has a studio, Lionsgate, but no broadcaster yet.)

By all accounts, Mr. Sheen embraced the roast and impressed the roasters with his rebuttal, delivered at the end of the show, which concluded, “I’m done with ‘the winning’ because I’ve already won.”

Recounting the roast to Matt Lauer in an interview on Friday’s “Today” show, he said, “I was sitting there like, ‘I volunteered for this? ... Who would do that?’ But then I thought about it, and it’s not an attack. It’s a celebration.”

These, umm, celebrations have become the biggest nights on Comedy Central’s calendar. Mr. Trump and Mr. Hasselhoff each drew about 3.5 million viewers; roasts of Larry the Cable Guy and Pamela Anderson drew more like 4 million. The biggest draw, Jeff Foxworthy, had an average of 6.2 million viewers in 2005; the smallest, Rob Reiner, had an average of 1.8 million in 2000.

“It’s a true platform for comedians,” said Michele Ganeless, the president of Comedy Central, who called it the channel’s “longest-running event.”

Its first roasts were produced in conjunction with the Friars Club, but about nine years ago the channel set off on its own. The roasts, now held roughly twice a year, have grown increasingly sophisticated; on an elaborate stage, up to a dozen comedians take turns slapping around the roastee before the rebuttal. This year, there is even a red carpet preshow.

“There’s usually a symbiotic relationship” between the roastee and the channel, Mr. Larsen acknowledged at the end of a pre-production day two weeks before the taping here.

Kent Alterman, the channel’s head of original programming and production, added, “These are people who understand that they never look better to the public than when they show they can take a joke about themselves.”

And, of course, they are being paid, though executives declined to say how much.

At any time, a handful of names of possible roast subjects is percolating. “We’re talking to Barack Obama right now,” Mr. Alterman said, not seriously.

Sometimes celebrities offer themselves. “But it’s like dating,” Mr. Larsen said. “The girls you really want” — he paused — “they don’t come calling.”

When Mr. Hasselhoff, the former “Baywatch” star, agreed to be roasted last year, he was still an Internet punch line for a video that had surfaced three years earlier that showed him shirtless, senseless, struggling to eat a cheeseburger on the floor.

“How can you embarrass a man who so thoroughly embarrasses himself?” the host of that roast, Seth MacFarlane, asked, but still he and the other comedians found ways to do so. Afterward Mr. Hasselhoff told the press that it was “therapeutic,” and chowed down on a hamburger.

“It was like he had embraced it,” Mr. Larsen said. “It’s very simple pop psychology, but it’s also true.”

Mr. MacFarlane hosted the Sheen roast as well. In a clip Comedy Central posted online to build interest, he reads a fake obituary for Mr. Sheen “since we all know there’s a good chance Charlie will be dead soon.”

A roast was proposed by Comedy Central and accepted by Mr. Sheen’s management team after his comedy tour last spring.

“None of us wanted to go in and enable someone that has problems,” Mr. Larsen said, referring to Mr. Sheen’s history of drug abuse. “But he is in such a good place now, I have to say, I can’t reconcile the guy I saw melting down on TV with the guy I see today.”

Referring to the more ridiculous aspects of his behavior, Mr. Sheen taped promotional spots that imagined him as the conductor of a “crazy train,” complete with “goddesses” and a tiger, the source of his imagined “tiger blood.”

Most of the roastees have a couple of ground rules — no jokes about their children, no jokes about deceased family members — but “Sheen had none,” the show’s executive producer, Joel Gallen, said, exuberant.

Some jokes from the roast will be cut from the broadcast for time reasons; the show is only 90 minutes long. But one, an uncouth reference by the comedian Steve-O to the 2003 Rhode Island nightclub fire, will be omitted for taste reasons, a Comedy Central spokeswoman said.

Over time the roasts have grown more explicit — though “they were always pretty filthy,” Mr. Alterman said. Mr. Gallen observed that “on each of the eight roasts I’ve done, there have been less and less bleeps.”

The producers haggle with Comedy Central’s standards-and-practices staff over which curses to permit, keeping in mind both the number of words and the context. “That is part of the roast — we try to push the boundaries on the language front as far as possible,” Mr. Larsen said.

And on the comedy front too. “We tell people to push the joke right to the edge,” Mr. Larsen said. “Dip your toe in. A good roast lives right on that edge.”

THE COMEDY CENTRAL ROAST: CHARLIE SHEEN
Monday at 10PM ET/PT on Comedy Central

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/ar...ref=television

I'm confused. If "The Sing-Off" airs from 8pm-10pm, how can "The Playboy Club" start at 9pm?

The Playboy Club airs at 10pm.

^^^ Correct, 10PM ET/PT (9PM Central) is when "Playboy Club" premieres on NBC. My bad!

TV Review
Cooper at his best when he is less playful
By Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe

There was a question hovering in the air during Anderson Cooper's new daytime talk show on Tuesday, as he hung out with his pal Kathy Griffin during a Summer Hot List'' episode.

The fiery Griffin took the happy, high-ceilinged set of Anderson'' by storm, teasing him relentlessly as is her wont. She loves to make the CNN star motor up his now-famous giggle, which sounds miraculously like Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble all at once. The two cozily recalled their summer weekend together, and we saw footage of them in the kitchen of Cooper's summer home, eating hot dogs for breakfast.

During the segment, we also glimpsed Cooper topless as they frolicked together in his swimming pool. Or, I should say we glimpsed Cooper topless again, because the Silver Fox removed his shirt to reveal his pale, worked-out bod at least three times in the course of the episode. Sans T-shirt, he went mud bathing in Colombia, and he paid a visit to a tanning-salon with another guest, Nicole Snooki'' Polizzi.

The hovering question became more pressing each time the episode pressed against Cooper's personal side - when he confessed that he doesn't like to be touched, for instance, or when he laughed goofily as Griffin asked him, Do you want to touch me in my no-no place?''

The question was, Who is this guy?

There is something about Anderson Cooper that is simultaneously likable and unknowable. And I'm not just making a reference to the gossip columns that question his sexual orientation. In the newsier context of CNN, he fits in perfectly and naturally, but in the more touchy-feely world of daytime TV, he comes off like a man from nowhere. Positioned smack-dab in the Oprah'' hour, every day at 4 p.m. on Channel 25, he seems out of place.

The show (which Fox repeats the next morning at 11 a.m.) has a reality-show influence, as Cooper opens each hour with his face in the camera as if he's vlogging. But he projects none of the full-on openness that marks reality TV. This week, he has gone through all the Cooper personality quirks we already know about, via Griffin's visit and an interview with Gerard Depardieu. The French actor inspired Cooper's Gigglegate,'' his uncontrollable laughter on CNN when he reported that Depardieu had peed on the floor of an airplane near other passengers. What quirks will Cooper riff on next? Hard to imagine.

Cooper's less playful moments on Anderson'' were his best. On Monday, he welcomed members of Amy Winehouse's family and talked about the late singer's life and her final days. There was nothing revelatory, but Cooper managed to bring his guests through to the end without compromising his or their dignity. I prefer him when he's not trying to share himself and make us love him, when he's focused on others. In those moments, he seems a lot easier to understand.

ANDERSON (Syndicated)
On: Fox, Channel 25
Time: 4-5 p.m., reairs following morning 11 a.m.-noon

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles..._less_playful/