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So much for ‘Smash’: Broadway series is doomed

February 23, 2012

By ADAM BUCKMAN

It will go down as one of the biggest debacles in the history of television — a hugely expensive flop that NBC hoped would trigger a turnaround in its low-rated prime-time lineup.

That hasn’t happened so far with “Smash,” but even more importantly, it’s not ever going to happen.  Three weeks into its run, it’s tanking.

Here’s the rundown:

In its premiere (Monday nights at 10) the night after the Super Bowl when it got promoted like crazy (see story below), it drew 11.44 million total viewers, and scored a 3.8 rating in the “young” demo, 18-49.

In Week Two (Feb. 13): 8.06 million viewers, 2.8 in the demo.

In Week Three (Feb. 20):  6.47 million, 2.3.

Here’s the thing about ratings: The trends are just as important as the numbers.  And downward trends don’t usually reverse themselves.  In fact, to be even more blunt, they almost never do.

Instead, they just indicate the obvious: Viewers are abandoning “Smash.”  They’re simply not finding it enjoyable enough to return the following week to see what happens.  And that means the show is toast.  It will probably stay on until its season ends in May, but don’t hold your breath waiting for Season Two next fall because you’ll suffocate.

Why did it fail?

Here are a few reasons:

The show was one big cliche:  They should have just named it “TV Show: The Musical” — that’s how generic this thing was.  Here’s a litany of some of the cliches this tired show trafficked in: The dream of Broadway stardom (more on this below), a musical about Marilyn Monroe (c’mon, really?), and the macho, authoritarian director who tries to seduce the young female contestants for the lead role in his show by laying some line on them about how they must free themselves from their inhibitions.   Excuse me for bluntly leveling an accusation here with no real proof but that one came straight out of “Black Swan” (which did it a whole lot better).

Nobody cares about Broadway: At least not in numbers sufficient to support a TV series that is supposed to draw the kind of viewership that is supposed to save an entire network.  Sure, the tourists flock to the shows in and around Times Square, but that’s because they’re in New York — it’s one of the things you do when you come here.

It’s a lot of fun too, and Broadway, generally speaking, is very profitable these days.  But that’s because of the peculiar characteristics of Broadway and its shows — they’re live, they’re in theaters, and they’re something you do so that when you go back home, you can tell your friends and neighbors that you saw a Broadway show while you were in New York.

A TV show about Broadway is just not the same thing at all.

It’s almost a certainty that the decision-makers who said yes to “Smash” went through a thought process that went something like this: They observed the crowds in Times Square just before curtain time and noted what they read about box-office receipts.  Then they considered how many aspirational talent shows are on TV nowadays, from “American Idol” and “The Voice” to “Glee.”   So they decided they would make a drama series combining all these elements (in the hope that high ratings would become their version of robust ticket sales).

That didn’t happen, for the simple reason that Broadway shows are for viewing once or twice in a lifetime on a rare trip to New York City, not for watching every Monday night at home.

Of course, I could have told them this, but nobody asked me.  On the other hand, what do I know?  Before it premiered, I predicted that “Smash” would be an 8 million-viewer show.  I was correct where the series’ second episode was concerned, but in Week Three, “Smash” proved me wrong.  How wrong?  That all depends on how low it goes next week.

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Posted in Adam Buckman, NBC, Smash, TV Howl, TV Howl by Adam Buckman, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

NBC promo ploy pays off for ‘Smash,’ ‘The Voice’

February 7, 2012

Megan Hilty in NBC's "Smash" (Photo: NBC)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NBC smashed its way to victory in the ratings Monday night — a huge turnaround for the network on a night where it suffered mightily all season.

The reason: A one-two punch of series that were highly promoted during the Super Bowl – “The Voice” and “Smash.”  It was a promotion ploy that paid off — promoting both shows during the big game that was watched by 111 million people, and also premiering the new season of “The Voice” directly following the game on Sunday night.

By the time Monday rolled around, America was apparently ready to check in with “The Voice” for a second consecutive night, and also primed to sample “Smash,” the widely promoted Broadway drama that NBC hopes will ignite a comeback for the entire network in the ratings.

Well, the jury’s still out on whether “Smash” will revive NBC’s entire lineup, and it also won’t be known ’til next Monday if this week’s “Smash” viewers will return next week.  But for now, NBC execs are likely popping champagne corks over the 11.498 million viewers the “Smash” premiere drew at 10/9c Monday night.  While they had probably hoped for an even bigger audience on opening night, that number is far, far better than anything NBC had aired previously in any time slot on Mondays this season, including shows such as “Chuck,” the ill-fated “Playboy Club” and the Brian Williams news magazine “Rock Center.”

And the news for “The Voice” was even better.  The talent-competition series found itself in “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” territory Monday night with a two-hour average from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. (7-9c) of 17.686 million viewers, according to the Nielsen overnights — the kind of audience tally for a regular series that NBC hasn’t seen in years.  It also bears mentioning that the “Voice” numbers far outpaced Simon Cowell’s “X Factor” on Fox earlier this season.  In fact, the second hour of “The Voice” Monday night drew a monster-sized audience Simon can only dream about: 19.295 million.

That figure was more than enough to clobber the usually dominant sitcoms on CBS – “Two and a Half Men” at 9/8c (which drew 12.898 million Monday night) and “Mike & Molly” at 9:30/8:30c (11.015 million).

NBC won every prime-time hour Monday night.  Among the other shows on the other networks, “The Bachelor” on ABC averaged only 8.243 million viewers over its two hours (8-10/7-9c).

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Posted in Adam Buckman, AdamBuckman.com, NBC, Nielsen ratings, Smash, The Voice, TV, TV Howl, TV Howl by Adam Buckman, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

Here comes the judge: Howard Stern on ‘AGT’

December 15, 2011

Howard Stern on NBC? Yes, it's happening.

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NBC finally made it official Thursday morning: Howard Stern’s been hired as the third judge on “America’s Got Talent,” replacing the departed Piers Morgan.  Stern will be seen on the show starting next summer.

There are likely many people who are scratching their heads over this hire, people who don’t see how on earth Howard Stern, the notorious radio personality whose conversations with guests on his Sirius XM radio show are often X-rated, will now be seen on one of our biggest TV networks in a show that, if nothing else, is suitable for the whole family.

Sure, on the face of it, he doesn’t seem compatible with this show at all.  But, in fact, he’s a great choice.  Here’s why and how it happened:

1) Stern’s adaptable: One thing many people other than his most ardent fans fail to realize — Howard Stern is a very gifted broadcaster.  Whether you enjoy the subject matter of his conversations on the radio or not, he is still one of the best there is at talking, which, believe it or not, is a skill that only a few have.  And among his skills is this: Putting the potty talk on hold when it’s necessary to do so — on late-night shows, for example, and also when he used to voice commercials for sponsors of his radio show; those commercials were second-to-none.  On “AGT,” Stern will clean up his act accordingly because, while I know this is difficult for many to believe, the guy is a consummate professional.  Yes, it’s true.

2) NBC needed him: How badly?  Enough to move heaven and earth — and the show from L.A. to New York — to get him.  And it will be worth it too — Stern will not only be very entertaining week after week, but the man is an electro-magnet for media attention.  His utterings on the show will be widely covered, at least initially, and “AGT” will reap the benefits in publicity.  In fact, with Stern on board, there’s little reason, other than timing, why this show shouldn’t air during the regular season on NBC, instead of the summer.  It would certainly do better than “The Sing-Off” or “The Biggest Loser,” competition shows that NBC had on its fall lineup this season that performed terribly in the ratings.

3) Stern “needed” this gig: Not in the sense that one “needs” a job in order to make money to support his family.  Stern’s rich enough to never have to work, but I suspect that an offer like this was irresistible to Stern, if it could be arranged.  Ever since he left terrestrial radio for Sirius, Stern has not been nearly the center of attention he once was in the heyday of his national morning show on old-fashioned broadcast radio.  With this “AGT” gig, he gets an opportunity for exposure in what is probably the most mainstream environment of his career — a G-rated talent show on one of our major TV networks.  Plus, he gets to feel relevant again, a media personality who still has the clout to get a network to roll out the red carpet for him, even though his history on television is mixed at best, and at worst, dismal.

Howard Stern on “America’s Got Talent”?  Our prediction: “AGT” is now poised to become the most talked-about TV show of 2012.

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TV Howl bonus: My own misadventures with Howard Stern

From my personal memoir titled “Jerk: My Life as a Columnist on the TV Beat” by Adam Buckman (all rights reserved), Chapter 3: “The King of All Media.”  Read all about it, starting right here:

Chapter Three:

The King of All Media

I.

The phone rang early on a Wednesday morning while I was still in bed.   It was a producer from Howard Stern’s radio show.  He wanted to know if I would talk to Howard on the air about my column in the paper that morning.

I said no, muttered something about still being asleep, hung up and slept some more.

Meanwhile, it was 6:30 a.m. and Stern was throwing a temper tantrum.  He had already spent a half-hour berating me on the radio …

Please click here to continue . . .

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Posted in Adam Buckman, AdamBuckman.com, America's Got Talent, Howard Stern, NBC, TV Howl, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

Inside the origins of ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’

December 7, 2011

Downtrodden Charlie Brown searches for the true meaning of Christmas in the revered holiday special "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (Photo: ABC).

CBS EXECS HATED SHOW, PREDICTED IT WOULD FLOP

By ADAM BUCKMAN

In a timely interview (timely as far as the holiday season is concerned), “Charlie Brown Christmas” producer Lee Mendelson reveals how this beloved special almost sank his (and “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz’) hopes for more “Charlie Brown” specials. 

It went on to become the most popular and beloved of all of TV’s Christmas specials, but when CBS executives first laid eyes on “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in 1965, they didn’t care for it.

“They just didn’t like the show when I brought it to them” for the first time, recalled one of the show’s producers, Lee Mendelson, 78, in a recent phone interview from California.  Mendelson was executive producer of the special, along with “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz, who died in 2000, and the late Bill Melendez.

“They just didn’t, for whatever reason, like the show,” he said.   “The first thing they said was, ‘Well, it’s going to go on next week.  There’s nothing we can do about it,’ but I remember them saying it will probably be the first and last Charlie Brown show.  . . .  They thought it was too slow, they didn’t like the jazz music so much on a Christmas show – in other words, these were all creative things that they didn’t like.”

In fact, Mendelson and Melendez thought they’d “missed the boat” too.  It was their first network special with Schulz and his Peanuts characters and it was shaping up to be their last.  “When we finished the show, Bill and I were very discouraged,” Mendelson said.  “In fact, Bill thought we had really missed the boat [and] I remember one of the animators stood up in the back and said, ‘You guys are crazy.  This is gonna run for a hundred years!’  We thought he was crazy.”

Mendelson also shed light on a popular misconception about “A Charlie Brown Christmas” – namely, that the CBS execs objected to the special’s Christian content.  “They had no problem with the [show’s] religious aspects,” Mendelson said.

In the show’s famous “biblical verse” scene – unique in the annals of holiday TV specials – an anguished Charlie Brown vents his frustration over the commercialism that has overtaken the holiday.  “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” he asks.

Linus then strides to center stage and asks that the lights be dimmed.  He then recites the Bible passage – from the gospel according to Luke, verses 8-14.  “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night,” he says.  “And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them . . .  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.  . . . ”

If anyone had reservations about the Bible verses, it was Mendelson and Melendez, but not Schulz because it was Schulz’s idea.  Recalled Mendelson, “I remember when we were drawing up the show, Schulz said, ‘We’re going to have [Linus] read from the Bible.’  And Bill and I looked at each other and Bill said, ‘You know, I don’t think animated characters have probably ever read from the Bible.  And I remember Schulz’s response.  He said, ‘Bill, if we don’t do it, who will?’ ”

Despite everyone’s reservations about the special, it was a smash – watched by about half the country (on Dec. 9, 1965).  Among other things, the jazz music – by the Vince Guaraldi Trio – that the CBS execs disliked became world famous.  And it was far from the last Peanuts special produced by the triumvirate of Schulz, Mendelson and Melendez.  They made dozens of others in a collaboration that lasted about 30 years.

This year, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is airing on network TV for its 47th consecutive holiday season.

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Joan Rivers’ own tragic history on ‘The Simpsons’

December 5, 2011

Krusty the Clown and agent Annie Dubinsky (Joan Rivers) in last Sunday's episode of "The Simpsons" on Fox (Photos: Fox)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

“The Simpsons” crammed a ton of TV history into that new episode seen this past Sunday night on Fox — not only spoofing Ralph Kramden and “The Honeymooners” and other iconic shows — but also featuring a storyline for guest-star Joan Rivers that cut close to the bone.

It was a story about a top comedy talent headlining a network TV show and the show’s headstrong producer, with whom the comedian has a close personal relationship.  In the episode, the producer — played by Rivers — threw her weight around so much on the set that network execs ordered the comedian, Krusty the Clown, to fire her, or else they would.

The story, no doubt devised with Rivers’ approval and possibly with her input, mirrored her own personal history — with Fox, no less — back in 1987.  That’s when she starred in a late-night show on the then-fledgling network — “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers” — while her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, acted as executive producer.  When Fox execs ordered her to fire Edgar, she refused and they were both canned.  Three months later, he committed suicide — the worst tragedy of Rivers’ life.

And yet, there she was on “The Simpsons” spoofing her own tragic history — something only a comedian of her stature and experience would attempt.

In the episode, Krusty’s kids show got cancelled because he was so sadly behind the times (even referring in a meeting with network executives to “Percy Dovetonsils,” a character not seen on TV since the late Ernie Kovacs played him in the 1950s).  So Krusty linked up with Annie Dubinsky (Rivers), who was once his agent and girlfriend in the 1960s until he dumped her.  This past Sunday, she engineered his comeback after the cancellation.  But then, he had to fire her.

The whole episode dealt with the history of television, starting out with a Simpson family outing to the Springfield Museum of Television, which was closing and holding a memorabilia fire sale because no one apparently cared anymore about the early history of TV.  And, as Homer lamented, you don’t need to visit a museum anymore to see clips of old shows when you have the Internet.

At the museum, the family encountered an exhibit devoted to an old — and fictional — black-and-white show from the ’50s called “Fatso Flanagan,” which bore more than a resemblance to the old “Honeymooners.”  Homer and Marge even mimicked the famed “Baby, you’re the greatest!” scenes from “The Honeymooners” as Homer described how almost every comedy ever made for TV was based somehow on “The Honeymooners.”

It was an incredibly rich episode, and one that ought to put to rest, at least for now, rumblings from some critics lately that “The Simpsons” ought to be put out to pasture.  All we can say to that is this: Not yet, Fox — not yet.

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How’d Herman Cain do on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’?

November 9, 2011

The many faces of Herman Cain -- four of 'em, at least! -- as he appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" Monday night.

By ADAM BUCKMAN

The embattled Republican candidate did just great — and so did Jimmy.

Jimmy Kimmel made the most of a guest who was a rarity for him and his ABC late-night show — an exclusive appearance by a prominent newsmaker and leading candidate for president who just that very morning had been accused for the fourth time of sexual harassment.

The appearance was no less of a triumph for the candidate himself — Herman Cain — who demonstrated strength and great humor in the face of adversity and, in the process, probably gained support — at least among the roughly 1.5 million who watch “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Why we admired Jimmy’s performance: He handled the candidate with just the right combination of seriousness and humor.  These kinds of guests are a challenge for late-night hosts, who feel much more comfortable kidding around with showpeople such as actors or fellow comedians.

But when a guest appears from outside the world of showbiz, some late-night hosts — such as David Letterman and Jay Leno, for example — tend to put a brake on the comedy and the segments have a way of falling flat.

Not so with Jimmy Monday night.  Even with Cain waiting backstage, Jimmy spent about half his monologue talking about the latest sexual harassment allegations leveled by Sharon Bialek with help from publicity-hound attorney Gloria Allred — probably because Jimmy knew the audience had to be well-informed on the topic before he could talk about it with his guest.

And that’s exactly what he did.  “So how was your day?” Jimmy asked Cain casually to start the segment.  “All things considered, I’m still alive,” Cain said with a smile.

“Have you considered hiring Gloria Allred as your attorney?” Jimmy asked.  “Let me put it to you this say,” Cain fired back, “I can’t think of anything that I would hire her for, OK?!”

Why Cain gets an A-plus from us: Sure, Jimmy Kimmel’s not a hard-nosed journalist, so some might say Cain got off easy with this opportunity to answer questions on national TV from a comedian who’s not a newsman.  But Jimmy pitched him all the relevant questions and Cain knocked them out of the park.  Plus, we give Cain props for showing up in the first place.  Under the circumstances, we were betting he wouldn’t.

For those of us who hadn’t really paid attention to Cain, the performance was very impressive.  He flatly and forcefully denied this latest sexual harassment charge, told Jimmy that his own wife instantly disbelieved it, and then found more than one opportunity to hammer home the goal of his campaign — to fix the economy.

He laughed at all the appropriate moments too.  In other words, his appearance didn’t have the effect of deadening the whole show, as these things often have on the late-night shows.

“I know to you, it’s a distraction,” Jimmy said of the sexual harassment accusations.  “But to me, it’s my life!”

And Herman Cain just laughed and laughed.

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Look who’s howlin’ on CNN: Adam Buckman

November 6, 2011

TV Howl’s Adam Buckman (shucks — that’s me!) was on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” hosted by Howard Kurtz.  The topic: How’d Brian Williams do with the premiere of his new prime-time NBC news mag, “Rock Center,” last Monday?  But more to the point, how’d I do on CNN? 

Check it out right here:

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Remembering Rooney: My favorite Andy story

November 5, 2011

ROONEY'S LAST STAND: Andy Rooney's final appearance on "60 Minutes" on Oct. 2 (Photo: CBS)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

This is my favorite Andy Rooney story — the time he publicly lambasted Larry Tisch, the owner of CBS and a man who could have easily fired him, as a “slumlord” who ruined CBS.  It was vintage Andy.

Andy Rooney was crusty, cantankerous, curmudgeonly — all words you’re reading in the obituaries for him today.

But he was also courageous — in the manner of the best journalists — as my favorite story about him illustrates.

It’s a story from 1995, about the time Andy excoriated, without mercy, the then-owner of CBS, Laurence Tisch, in one of Andy’s syndicated newspaper columns.

Of course, Rooney was then employed by CBS, which was paying him millions for his commentaries on “60 Minutes.”  And yet, here came Andy anyway, biting the hand that fed him (and just tearing it off at the proverbial wrist) and literally daring Tisch to fire him.

The impetus for the column — which was carried in more than 150 newspapers — was the pending sale of CBS to Westinghouse.  So, to mark the occasion, Andy decided he would give the world his own summation of what CBS had become under Tisch’s nine-year reign.

Tisch was a wealthy New York investor who had assumed control of CBS in 1986.  He then set about cutting costs, laying off employees and selling off parts of the company such as the publishing and music divisions.  By 1995, he sought to cash in on his investment with a sale to Westinghouse.  The deal was in the works, but not completed, at the time Rooney wrote this column in August — which meant that Tisch was still firmly in charge of CBS and could have fired Rooney.

And few would have blamed him either because Rooney went after the boss with a vengeance, blasting him for everything that was wrong with CBS — from the low ratings of its prime-time shows to the worn carpeting Rooney observed in the company’s landmark headquarters building in New York, known as Black Rock.

The carpet portion of the column is my favorite passage: “[CBS staffers],” Rooney wrote, “began to notice the carpets in the hallways were dirty.  Spots where people had spilled coffee with milk and sugar were left uncleaned . . .  The deterioration in maintenance standards was all the more noticeable because for years . . .  it was one of the most handsome office buildings in the world.  Under Larry Tisch, Black Rock acquired many of the characteristics of a slum housing project.”

“He could fire me,” Rooney wrote of Tisch, “but I’m part of what he’s selling [to Westinghouse] and money means too much for him to do that.”

As it happened, Tisch personally made an estimated $2 billion on the Westinghouse deal (according to Wikipedia).  He died in 2003.

The column Rooney published that summer weekend was so personal that he even included Tisch’s wife, Billie, in his “critique” of the family’s stewardship of CBS.  And yet, Andy said at the time that he never heard from any Tisches after the column ran.

“I don’t think they care very much,” he told me when I rang him up at CBS.  And that was another thing I loved about Andy — you could get him on the phone just by calling the CBS switchboard and asking for him, and he would pick up his own phone.  That’s how “old-school” this guy was.

He was a real piece of work — the genuine article.  And though he was 92 and had lived a very full life, I’m still sorry to see him go.

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‘Entourage’ series finale: A Hollywood ending

September 12, 2011

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN': Adrian Grenier in "Entourage" (Photo: HBO)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

HBO’s “Entourage” ended its run Sunday night with Hollywood endings for all concerned. 

Well, that was a dirty trick – ending the final episode of “Entourage” with “Going to California,” Led Zeppelin’s iconic song about the lure and promise of southern Cal.

The song framed a finish full of elaborate happy endings for the show’s principal characters – four of whom were once boys from New York who followed their dreams to California and, by the looks of it Sunday night on HBO, attained them.

The Led Zeppelin song came as they were gathered in an airplane hangar preparing to take two separate private jets on trips abroad – and at least three of the five were embarking on new lives representing a newfound maturity that was not much in evidence in this fun-loving, free-wheeling show’s previous seasons and episodes.

Why was the Zeppelin song a dirty trick?  Because it happens to be a beautiful song, and thus elevated a series that was never long on sentiment to something with meaning – at least for its final moments.

Of course, the neat tying up of all the show’s loose ends in one 35-minute final episode was as much of a fantasy as the way the show’s various storylines were wrapped up for each of the characters:

Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier): After one 24-hour date with the new love of his life – the journalist Sophia Lear (Alice Eve) – Vince declared they would marry that very evening in Paris, bought a ring for more than a million dollars and lined up a private jet to whisk everyone abroad.

Eric “E” Murphy (Kevin Connolly): Thanks to Vince’s largesse – not to mention his charismatic powers of persuasion – Sloan (Emmanuelle Chriqui) agreed to meet E at the airport for their own private jet flight anywhere in the world.  With Sloan already pregnant with their child, we’re left to assume they will live happily ever after.

Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven): Ari did the unthinkable: He threw over his job as co-owner of the most powerful talent agency in Hollywood – the occupation that always seemed as vital to his survival as the blood coursing through his veins – in order to reconcile with Mrs. Ari (Perrey Reeves).  With the help of a young trio of Italian opera singers, the gambit worked and Mr. and Mrs. Ari joined the group for the trip to Paris.

Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon): There were no marriages or new loves for these two – their happy endings were sealed a week earlier, with Drama getting the TV-movie role of his dreams and Turtle becoming a multimillionaire thanks to Vince’s safe-keeping of Turtle’s investment in the tequila company.

Lloyd (Rex Lee): We were glad to see that a consideration of Lloyd’s future was included in the “Entourage” finale.  He was a great character and, in the end, when he fretted about what he would do at the agency without Ari to guide him, Ari told him, rightfully, that he possesses all the tools now to go in there and make his mark in the firm – and not as an Ari clone either, but as his own man.

“Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams . . . ”  “Going to California”?  Why not?  I wrote back when “Entourage” began in 2004 that, at its heart, it was a series about California – specifically, southern California (by which we mean L.A. and Hollywood) – about the fantasy and the reality of the place, and how the two are sometimes difficult to distinguish.

As for the series finale, whether you buy into the neat and tidy happy endings that creator Doug Ellin and his team conjured for the episode, as a time capsule of life in La La Land in the years 2004-2011, “Entourage” got it right.  And we’ll miss it.

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Posted in Adam Buckman, Adrian Grenier, Entourage, HBO, Jeremy Piven, Jerry Ferrara, Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon, Scott Caan, TV, TV Howl, TV Howl by Adam Buckman, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

‘Rescue Me’ finale: Leary series goes out on top

September 8, 2011

R.I.P. Lt. Lou Shea: John Scurti in "Rescue Me" -- his character was eulogized, hilariously, on the series finale Wednesday (Photo: FX)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

The series finale of  Denis Leary’s “Rescue Me” Wednesday night on FX was darn near perfect.

Tommy Gavin didn’t die.  Instead, it was Lou, his best friend and perhaps the most likable of all the characters on “Rescue Me.”

A tragedy to end the firefighters’ series run?  Yes, but not completely.  Though Lou’s death was certainly tragic, leaving all of his surviving colleagues to question their futures in the New York City Fire Department, most of the one-hour series finale seen on FX Wednesday night played like a comedy.

That happened to be this show’s signature: Premiering in July 2004 and ending its run this week as the nation prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “Rescue Me” at its heart was a drama about one New York firefighter’s reaction to the loss of 343 FDNY brethren in the collapse of the Twin Towers that day in 2001.  That’s a weighty subject, to be sure, but since that firefighter, Tommy, was played by comedian Denis Leary (who also co-created, co-wrote and co-produced the series), much of the series was given over to Leary’s dark sense of humor.

Such was the case in the finale Wednesday night titled “Ashes.”  The ashes in the title were all that remained of sweet Lou (played to perfection for all seven seasons by John Scurti) after he was killed a week earlier in a warehouse fire (the location recognizable to all who ride the New York subway system’s elevated No. 7 train through Long Island City in Queens).  The collapse of that building left the survival of any of the firefighters in question leading into the finale.

And as the final episode began, it seemed as if at least five of them had succumbed.  But no — it was a dream conjured by Gavin, a dream in which Lou was seen eulogizing the five men with a rousing speech about the nature of firefighting — a grand piece of screen-writing, by the way, as was much of this final episode.

Certainly, it had been speculated that Tommy himself would be among the dead — a novel and striking way to end a series: Having the all-important main character, who’d been seen in virtually every scene of the show for seven years, get killed off.

But it was Lou who died, and his sendoff was a masterpiece, particularly in the choreography of the sequence in which two windows in Tommy’s SUV were opened simultaneously — because Tommy ordered Franco and Black Shawn to toss out their chewing gum — and the sudden cross-ventilation caused Lou’s ashes to suddenly explode out of their box, covering driver, passengers and the entire interior of the vehicle with his earthly remains.

Then, in a perfectly balanced combination of sentiment and black comedy, Tommy poignantly read a letter left to him by Lou (in case of Lou’s death), and then tossed his “ashes” — actually a box of Betty Crocker cake mix that Lou’s brethren bought at the 11th hour to stand in for his ashes — over a cliff and into the sea (it looked like Long Island Sound).

Other scenes were laden with comedy too, such as the scene where Tommy, contemplating life as an FDNY retiree, battles with a group of parents at a politically correct playground (filmed in lower Manhattan’s Battery Park City, about half a block from the World Trade Center site) over the sharing of kids’ toys in the sandbox.  Forget about “Rescue Me” — that was like a scene out of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” only better.

In the end, Tommy didn’t retire, but nor did he assume Lou’s lieutenant’s role, which was his right as senior firefighter in the house.  Instead, he let the promotion go to the gung-ho Franco.

As the episode came to a close, Franco and Tommy were seen exhorting a group of new FDNY recruits on the meaning of belonging to a select group of people of run toward and into burning buildings when everyone else is running out and away from them.

In the show’s touching last scene, Tommy was seen behind the wheel of his SUV having a jovial conversation with an old friend seated in the passenger seat — the ghost of Lou.

This episode was one of the best-written episodes of any single TV show seen in years.  Our hope for Leary and his team is that they get recognized for it.

Dennis Leary in "Rescue Me" (Photo: FX)

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9/11 commemorative TV shows? I think I’ll pass

September 7, 2011

BEFORE: In this light-hearted postcard from before 9/11/2001, the World Trade Center was just another landmark on the New York City skyline. (Source: Author's collection of World Trade Center postcards.)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NEW YORK — You can’t escape 9/11 on TV this week, though it would be nice if you could.

Turn on the tube and there it is, all served up on multiple channels so you can have the opportunity to relive the horror of that day:  The visual — as impossible to believe then as it is now 10 years later — of airliners flying directly into each of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the resultant smoke pouring out of the gaping holes after the great buildings seemed to swallow the big jets, the poor souls who chose to jump a hundred stories to their deaths rather than be burned alive, the eventual collapse of each tower and the debris clouds that overwhelmed lower Manhattan and billowed out over the Hudson River.

Want to wallow in the memory of it all?  Go right ahead, but I think I’ll pass.  I have no need to relive that day and the days that followed, though judging from all the special retrospective material now airing in advance of this Sunday’s 10th anniversary, plenty of people seem to have a need to relive it, and also to talk about it, to tell the rest of us where they were when it happened, what they felt then and how they feel about it now, how the terrorist sneak attacks changed “us,” and on and on.

I guess I’m not much of a wallower.  I was at home when the attacks occurred, two miles up Greenwich Street from the Twin Towers.  And that’s all you’re going to learn about what I experienced that day.  If offered a microphone by a roving reporter from a local radio or TV station to relate my experiences for broadcast, I would politely decline.  But plenty of people around here are saying yes to such invitations.  If you live in New York, you’re seeing and hearing their testimony all over the place these days in commemorative segments on all the news shows and cable channel specials.

Local newscasts this week can’t go to a commercial break without a 9/11 interlude — some somber music and the words “Remembering 9/11″ on the screen, and a brief interview with some passerby who tells us how he or she was on his or her way to work downtown that day and saw the planes hit or, less dramatically, still soaking in a tub somewhere else, perhaps not anywhere near any of the 9/11 attack sites at all, hearing the shocking bulletins on the radio or TV.

These people seem to find the opportunity to tell their stories impossible to resist — a way of thinking in line with social trends.  Everyone wants to tell his or her own story these days, right?  So they take to Facebook and Twitter and tell everyone they know what they’re eating right now.

Not me, though.  My 9/11 memories are private.  My feelings about that day are too.  Sorry, but it’s just nobody’s business.   I’ll admit this: I’m not big on anniversaries as a basis for TV commemorations.  Maybe it’s because I once had an editor, when I was at a formative age, who prohibited anniversary stories.  It wasn’t real news, he’d say, whenever a reporter came to him with a pitch from a TV network publicist ballyhooing some milestone reached by a TV show — a fifth season, or a 100th episode, or the 20th consecutive week as TV’s top comedy or drama.

As news “hooks,” such milestones were contrivances unworthy of our stations as journalists.  I got his point, and I agreed with it too.  However, you’d be correct to point out that this 9/11 anniversary is more notable than some TV show’s fifth week as the top-rated comedy on Thursday nights.

Judging by all the hours of TV programming that have been produced for the occasion, the people running the nation’s TV stations, broadcast networks and cable channels must believe the public is eager to share in a kind of telethon of national remembrance.  But you also can’t help wondering at times such as this if all the programming produced for the occasion begets all the interest, instead of the other way around.

Or, to put it another way, if TV didn’t pull out all the stops to present you with constant reminders of 9/11 this week, would you miss it?

AFTER: World Trade Center postcard from after 9/11/2001 -- the late great Twin Towers draped in elongated American flags. (Author's collection)

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Who’s a reliable source? Adam Buckman on CNN

September 6, 2011

Watch me, Adam Buckman, on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” hosted by Howard Kurtz, this past Sunday.  The topic: Hurricane Irene — Did the media over-hype the big storm?

Check it out right here:

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TV Howl’s Adam Buckman on ‘Showbiz Tonight’

August 31, 2011

Watch my insightful commentary about Ashton Kutcher, Charlie Sheen and “Two and a Half Men” on HLN’s “Showbiz Tonight” right here:

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Last coconut phone call for Sherwood Schwartz

July 13, 2011

Sherwood Schwartz (right) and the character he created, Gilligan, played by Bob Denver.

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Spend enough years as a journalist on the same beat and it’s inevitable that many of the people you met along the way will die eventually.

And if you’ve been around as long as I have, you run the risk of beginning to sound like that scene in “The Sunshine Boys” where the only subject the elderly former comedy partners Lewis and Clark (George Burns and Walter Matthau in the 1975 movie) seem to talk about is the death of someone they knew.  Maybe you remember this pointless conversation — it went something like this: “Where’d he die?”  “In Variety.”

So I try and avoid these kinds of blog posts, but when Sherwood Schwartz died the other day at age 94, I somehow retrieved a dim memory of having lunch with him.  And since cobwebs were forming here on TV Howl (my last post was a while ago), I decided it was time to make a new contribution.

I’m pretty sure it was in May 2000 or thereabouts — at the Waldorf Astoria, in the ballroom, where many a TV industry event is held in New York.  Nick at Nite (or maybe it was TV Land) was putting on some sort of presentation of its then-new lineup of old shows.  The only record I possess of this event is a photo taken backstage of Mr. T and me.

One of the only other memories of this event: Tina Yothers, formerly of “Family Ties,” singing in a rock band.

Somehow, I was assigned to the same table as Sherwood Schwartz and his wife.  I dimly recall engaging him in conversation by asking him about his various shows — “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Dusty’s Trail.”  I was particularly interested in how he arrived at the number of characters for these shows — seven for both “Gilligan” and “Dusty’s Trail” and nine for “Brady Bunch.”

I don’t recall the details, but his answer indicated that those numbers were shrewdly chosen for their versatility and potential for myriad storylines.  For that’s one of the problems the producers of TV shows always come up against: Dreaming up enough stories to sustain the scenario they created through an entire season (which, in the days of “Gilligan’s Island,” was 36 episodes) or multiple seasons.

Judging by his age when he died, Schwartz must have been 82 or 83 when I met him that day.  He was an energetic guy — a funny little old man.  At one point during the presentation that was underway on-stage after lunch had been served and eaten, a “phone” made of coconut halves — like something the Professor would have devised on “Gilligan’s Island” — was delivered to our table.

A single spotlight then cut through the darkened ballroom and shone on Sherwood as the ringing of a phone was suddenly heard.  That was apparently Sherwood’s cue to answer this “phone” and speak into it.   And since the phone had a hidden microphone, Sherwood’s voice was heard over the ballroom’s speaker system saying something about “The Brady Bunch.”

I was delighted to have witnessed this “performance” from the chair right beside him.  All in all, it was a great day, having my photo taken with Mr. T and then sitting beside the creator of “Gilligan’s Island” as he took a call on a coconut telephone.  What more could a TV columnist ask for?

May he rest in peace.

——

TV Howl bonus sidebar: The day I met Gilligan.

Bob Denver, the titular star of “Gilligan’s Island,” told me in 1993 that he made just $1,200 a week at the height of the show’s popularity on CBS in the mid-’60s.

He claimed he wasn’t disappointed that his contract didn’t call for residual payments in perpetuity, just in case “Gilligan” enjoyed any kind of an afterlife in syndication after its initial network run ended in 1967 after three seasons.

As it happened, reruns of “Gilligan” ran for decades and would have made Denver and his co-stars fabulously wealthy.  “There’s not a lot of shows that run 30 years,” Denver, then 58, said when I interviewed him in midtown Manhattan, in a conference room in the offices of the publishing company that had just released his memoir, “Gilligan, Maynard & Me” (the second name in the title referring to his role as the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”).  “If you knew in ’63, when I signed the deal, that things would run 20, 30 years, and didn’t get a deal, then you’d be really upset.”

When he died in 2005, I wrote that he was “the mellowest cat I had ever encountered” in the TV business.

Many actors who became identified with a single, iconic TV character eventually came to loathe the character that made them famous.  They would blame the character for their inability to find steady work in the years afterward, when their agents would inform them that producers were taking a pass because the actors were too closely associated with their previous roles and the producers felt audiences wouldn’t accept them in any new ones.  If Bob Denver ever felt that way, he never let on when I interviewed him.

He was a good enough sport that he always remembered to wear the one Gilligan sailor hat he still possessed when he made public appearances.  “I love to hear people say, ‘Is that really one of the show’s hats?’  They are almost in awe,” he told me.

[Excerpted from "Jerk: My Life as a Columnist on the TV Beat" by Adam Buckman.  All rights reserved.]

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Katie in the afternoon: You be the judge

June 11, 2011

Katie Couric's coming to daytime but no one knows how she'll do (Photo: Disney/ABC)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

A lot of people want to know lately: How will Katie Couric do on daytime TV?

My answer?  I have no idea.  It’s not because I’m at a loss for words or can’t quite generate an opinion.  I’ve never had those problems.  Just on the face of it, I think that generally speaking, the odds don’t favor her making a big splash with a daytime talk show.  There are just too many variables afflicting daytime television these days to state with certainty that she’s a slamdunk to emerge with a hit talk show on her hands.

Not that it’s impossible, but this is a time of day that is seriously in flux nowadays as far as television is concerned.  Based on everything that’s going on now in daytime, this new Katie Couric talk show is a huge gamble that could go either way.

Here are the factors at play, in no particular order, as Couric prepares to enter the daytime arena about 15 months from now:

1) What exactly is daytime television?  One thing it’s not: A place where any former network news anchor has ever set up shop and succeeded.  A personality with Couric’s news background might be expected to attract newsmakers as guests, for conversations about stories or subjects in the news.  The problem with that: No one’s ever attempted that in a syndicated afternoon talk show.

2) The cable news channels own that kind of news/talk on weekday afternoons.  They’ve owned it ever since the 1990s, when the O.J. Simpson trials, the Clinton impeachment, and stories such as the Elian Gonzalez saga and the 2000 presidential election recount riveted viewers in afternoons.  Broadcast networks began to notice: These “real-life” soap operas were stealing their audiences.

3) So maybe there’s an opportunity for Couric, a newsperson, to siphon off some of the audience for news/talk in the afternoon.  Maybe, but is that audience really big enough to sustain her show?  That’s doubtful.  It should be noted that Anderson Cooper is poised to do the same thing — start an afternoon talk show.  So it’s clear some people in the TV business think the afternoon is ripe for this kind of thing.

4) But is the afternoon audience ripe for it, whoever they are?  Sure, everybody’s focusing on Oprah Winfrey leaving daytime, and then, theoretically, leaving an opportunity for someone like Couric to come in and grab the “serious” afternoon TV viewer.  But are there really enough of them?  Take a look at daytime TV — Oprah was an exception.  Most of the shows on daytime are low-rent judge shows and talk shows like “Maury” and “Jerry Springer” (and yes, Ellen Degeneres holds on somehow, with ratings are that pretty low, but apparently just enough to keep her show profitable).  Will the audience for all these other shows suddenly flock to Katie Couric?  Probably not.

5) Katie’s no Oprah.  And that’s the crux of the matter.  Even Oprah’s audience was in decline, and she’s Oprah.  That’s probably why she decided to leave daytime syndication and stake her future on cable TV.  Judge Judy was beating her in the ratings and she knew it.  The question is: Do people like Katie Couric?  Once upon a time she was America’s sweetheart at “The Today Show.”  Then, something happened — I don’t know what it was, but nowadays she doesn’t seem as beloved as she once was.  In fact, that’s an understatement.  In some quarters, Couric is so polarizing a personality that she’s on par with Sarah Palin in the kinds of reactions she draws from readers of blog posts like this one.

6) Daytime is so unpredictable these days that even the traditional soap operas — the long-time backbone of daytime TV — are on life-support.  Under the circumstances, it’s just too chaotic to figure out whether Katie Couric can come along and plant her flag on this shaky ground.  Fact is, she’s a very capable broadcaster, but the savior of daytime TV?  Who came up with that idea?

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Business as usual at CBS News as Pelley era begins

June 11, 2011

THE NEW GUY: Scott Pelley takes over as anchorman on "The CBS Evening News" (Photo: CBS News).

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Scott Pelley didn’t mark his debut as the new anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in any special way Monday evening.  Instead, he chose to anchor the broadcast as if his first day was nothing special.

He made no self-referential remarks, made no speeches about what he’ll do or how the newscast might change in the Pelley era or how honored he is to be installed as only the fifth CBS evening-news anchor since 1948.

The approach was refreshing actually.  It was also unexpected since we’re not accustomed to TV personalities refraining from talking about themselves, especially on days that are very special to them personally.  Certainly, Monday must have been such a day in the life of Scott Pelley, a 53-year-old CBS newsman who had reached the pinnacle of his field, which happens to be one of the most competitive in the world.

And yet, Pelley didn’t mention it.  Instead, he anchored the news – introducing stories (10 of them) and, on occasion, exchanging a few remarks with CBS correspondents.  Perhaps the approach was deliberate.  Maybe it was meant to convey the idea, without Pelley having to spell it out, that he didn’t intend to rock the boat as the broadcast’s new anchor.

Or maybe he’s saving the boat-rocking for some future newscasts.  Whatever he was thinking, he didn’t let us in on it.  Instead, he read his copy flawlessly and, when it was time to end the show, he said simply, “For all of us at CBS News all around the world, good night.”

The Pelley era was under way, and as the week wore on, Pelley continued to underplay his own role in the broadcast.

Personally, I happen to love the old-fashioned CBS approach to news — the attention to detail, the flawless reading of the copy, the care and professionalism with which the stories are presented.  It’s all so fastidious, but in today’s world, do news viewers look for fastidiousness and attention to detail in their TV newscasts?  Other than me, does anyone really care about these qualities anymore?

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Oprah’s farewell: Long good-bye takes three days

May 26, 2011

HASTA LA VISTA, BABY: Oprah Winfrey waves good-bye. (Photo: (c) 2011 Harpo, Inc./George Burns)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

OPRAH Winfrey said good-bye — finally!  Though it seemed as if this long good-bye would never end, it finally did end Wednesday.  Here’s what happened:

The final “Oprah Winfrey Show” Wednesday consisted of little more than Oprah standing on her stage and talking.

For her millions of loyal fans, this must have been heavenly.  For the rest of us, who tuned in to her final show (the 4,561st, as Oprah herself pointed out) expecting a bit more excitement – perhaps some fireworks, a big cake, a brass band – the show was a bit of a letdown.

On the other hand, as Oprah said repeatedly, this particular show wasn’t really for those of us who didn’t regularly ride the Oprah train to inspiration, validation and self-fulfillment over the last 25 years.  This show was for those who did ride along with Oprah on this “journey” (her word) that began back in 1986.

With the Paul Simon song “10 Years” (the one he converted to “25 Years” in her honor earlier this season) playing as a theme in and out of the show’s commercial breaks, Oprah took her stage at Harpo Studios in Chicago for the last time.  Dressed in a simple pink dress, she stood for the whole hour (though a white chair was there in case she needed it) and spoke to the audience.

“This last hour is really about me saying thank you,” she said when she took the stage.  “It is my love letter to you.”

“I wanted to spend this last hour telling you what you’ve meant to me,” she said, one of many times she would thank her viewers in the course of this hour-long speech (some might call it a sermon), in which she shared details from her life story (as she’s done many times before), imparted various life lessons, and even preached about the meaning of God.  “God is love and God is life!” she exclaimed. “And your life is always speaking to you, first in whispers . . .”

And so it went.  There were no celebrity guests, though Tyler Perry was recognized from his seat in the audience because of his participation in a show earlier this season about men who had been sexually abused in boyhood.  Oprah’s fourth-grade teacher was in the audience too – the one who Oprah still calls “Mrs. Duncan” – and who apparently had a profound impact on the young Oprah.

If there was any central theme to this show, it was nothing less than the meaning of life, which is a lot for any one person to take on.  And yet, Oprah doesn’t shy away from such challenges.  She advised her viewers to “use your life to serve the world.”  She talked about the Golden Rule and the importance of “validation.”

“There is a common thread that runs through all our pain and suffering and that is unworthiness,” she preached, advising viewers to “validate” the ones they love.  Tell them: “What you say matters to me!” Oprah beseeched.

Toward the end of the hour, the commercial breaks came more frequently.  After all, television is a business and the breaks near the end of this particular show were valuable indeed.  Finally, after one last break, the end was near and Oprah said her final words.

“I thank you for sharing this yellow brick road of blessings,” she said.  “I thank you for tuning in everyday . . .  I thank you for being as much of a sweet inspiration for me as I’ve tried to be for you.  I won’t say good-bye.  I’ll just say, Until we meet again.  To God be the glory.”

She then strolled out of the studio, stopping briefly for a few hugs and greetings, then continued walking down a narrow corridor lined with members of her staff.  At the end of this gauntlet, she encountered her small dog Sadie.  Lifting the dog into the air, Oprah declared: “Sadie, we did it! We did it, Sade! We did it!”

And then Oprah, with Sadie under her right arm, disappeared behind a pillar and was gone.  Until we meet again.

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Read my list: The greatest sitcom lineups ever

January 31, 2011

WHICH LINEUP WAS NO. 1? Here's a hint: "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" -- with Moore and Ted Knight -- was a big part of it.

By ADAM BUCKMAN

What were the greatest comedy lineups ever assembled for TV?  I did the research and came up with this incredible list:

What makes a sitcom lineup great?  It’s a question I’ve set out to answer now that NBC has taken the unusual step of cramming six comedies on to the air in a single night on Thursdays – starting with “Community” at 8/7c, followed by the new “Perfect Couples,” “The Office,” “Parks & Recreation,” “30 Rock” (at 10/9c) and “Outsourced.”

So what are the best comedy blocks ever assembled?  I established my own subjective criteria: For my informal study, a lineup had to have at least four comedies in a row to qualify (before 1962, comedies were not strung together in any number greater than three); preferably, the lineup would remain more or less consistent for at least two seasons; and the shows had to be either high-rated or at least well-remembered, if not beloved.  Here’s what we came up with:

Runners-up: Before I get to my Top 10, some honorable mentions – Fall 1964, Thursdays on ABC: “The Flintstones,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “My Three Sons,” “Bewitched”; Fall 1965, Wednesdays on CBS: “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Green Acres,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show”; and Thursdays on CBS: “The Munsters,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “My Three Sons”; Fall 1987, Mondays on CBS: “Frank’s Place,” “Kate & Allie,” “Newhart,” “Designing Women.”  Incredible, isn’t it?  “The Munsters” and “Gilligan” back-to-back on a single night?  Who wouldn’t love that?

And now, my Top 10:

No. 10: Fall 1986, Saturdays on NBC: “The Facts of Life,” “227,” “Golden Girls,” “Amen.”  Marla Gibbs, Sherman Hemsley, the “Golden” gals, plus “Mrs. Garrett” all in one night?  That’s TV heaven.

No. 9: Fall 1985, Fridays on ABC: Speaking of incredible TV pairings, how about Emmanuel Lewis and Gary Coleman on the same network on the same night: “Webster,” “Mr. Belvedere,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Benson.”

No. 8: Fall 1978, Thursdays on ABC: Another great lineup – future comedy greats Robin Williams (“Mork & Mindy”) and Billy Crystal (“Soap”), plus the beloved characters of “What’s Happening” and the legendary ensemble of “Barney Miller.”

No. 7: Fall 2007, Sundays on Fox: Talk about staying power – it had never been done, or even tried, before Fox strung together these animated powerhouses: “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill,” “Family Guy,” “American Dad.”

No. 6: Fall 1975, Monday on CBS:  Of these four sitcoms, three were spinoffs: “Rhoda” and “Phyllis” (from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”), and “Maude” (from “All in the Family,” which preceded “Maude” at 9 p.m.).

No. 5: Fall 1978, Tuesdays on ABC: “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Three’s Company,” “Taxi.”  ABC definitely had a comedy winning streak going on in fall 1978 (see No. 8, above).  What can you say about a Tuesday lineup that included Richie Cunningham (future director Ron Howard) and The Fonz; Laverne, Shirley, Lenny and Squiggy; John Ritter and Suzanne Somers (plus Norman Fell and Don Knotts); and the whole gang from “Taxi”?  It seems impossible, but all that talent was available on free network TV in a single evening way back when.

No. 4: Fall 1991, Tuesdays on ABC: Many seasons later, ABC struck gold again on Tuesday nights with one of the highest-rated comedy lineups of all time – “Full House,” “Home Improvement,” “Roseanne,” “Coach.”

No. 3: Fall 1984, Thursdays on NBC: This is the comedy lineup that ushered in an era of comedy dominance for NBC that lasted into the early 2000s.  Behold: “The Cosby Show,” “Family Ties,” “Cheers,” “Night Court.”

No. 2: Fall 1993, Thursdays on NBC: Some might quibble with this lineup’s inclusion of “Wings,” but that series emerges as the best of all the sitcoms NBC tried at 8:30/7:30c on Thursdays.  And what can you say about a lineup that also boasts “Mad About You,” “Seinfeld” and “Frasier”?

And the No. 1 TV comedy lineup of all time is: Fall 1973, Saturdays on CBS: Few will argue with our choice for No. 1, particularly those old enough to have watched this incredible, never-to-be-duplicated collection of legendary megahits, four of the most critically acclaimed comedies of all time, followed by the most uproarious variety show ever made – “All in the Family,” “M*A*S*H,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “The Carol Burnett Show.”  All I can say is, Wow.

 And don’t miss my interview about the list on WGN-AM, Chicago:

Please give it a listen here!

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Howling wolves: Max Weinberg, HBO’s ‘Chalky’

October 10, 2010

FASCINATING INTERVIEWS!

CONAN’S LONG-TIME BANDLEADER;

TOUGH-GUY ACTOR MICHAEL KENNETH WILLIAMS

Conan O’Brien’s bandleader for 17 years reveals why he isn’t following Conan to TBS:

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Why did bandleader Max Weinberg decide not to follow Conan O’Brien to TBS?

Blame it on the irresistible lure of the Garden State.  In the final analysis, this lifelong Jersey boy says he just couldn’t pull up stakes in his home state at age 59 for a new life in La La Land, though he did follow Conan there for his short-lived stint as host of ‘The Tonight Show’ on NBC – a gig which abruptly came to an end last January.

The famed drummer – a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band since 1974 (since Springsteen’s third album, “Born to Run”) and a fixture in late-night TV as Conan’s musical director (and sometime comic foil) for 17 years – talked about his decision to withdraw from late-night, revealing for the first time that he underwent life-saving open-heart surgery just two weeks after the demise of Conan’s ‘Tonight Show’ last winter and how this “life-changing” experience influenced his decision to stay put on the East Coast.

The occasion for the interview was the pending premiere Thursday of a new documentary about Springsteen on HBO – ‘The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town’ (9/8c).  Weinberg, who appears often in the 90-minute film, shared his own memories of the lengthy process from which the ‘Darkness’ album was born – three years after ‘Born to Run’ turned Springsteen and his bandmates into international rock stars.

It was finally confirmed a week or so ago that you’re not joining Conan on his new TBS late-night show.  What happened there?  Will we ever see you on TV again, other than documentaries about Bruce Springsteen?

[Laughs] I’m sure you’ll see me on television again.  You won’t see me on an episodic show, that’s for sure.  I did my time.  I loved it.  It was great.  Frankly, I do prefer living in New Jersey and that was one of the problems I had.  I love playing in L.A., but my kids and my wife are back east, and we live part of the time in Italy, so it was hard to structure my life [and have a job in Los Angeles].  I can tell you – I can make a little news here, which I haven’t talked about to anybody, but on Feb. 8, I came to the end of a 26-year watchful, waiting odyssey that culminated in 12 hours of massively invasive open-heart surgery.

Was it a bypass?

[No] I had valve repair.  I found out about this 26 years ago and I knew about it and I monitored it.  At the time, there was not much they could do and it wasn’t as serious as it became.  As I got older, it got worse.  Fortunately, the protocols for dealing with it became much more advanced and I found a wonderful doctor in New York who specializes in repairing valves.  Two years ago, it became life-threatening and I had to do something about it sooner or later.  I did it two weeks after [Conan’s ‘Tonight Show’] went off the air.

I’ll tell you it was a life-changing experience emotionally and spiritually.  I owe my life to these doctors.  If you can remember back to how moved David Letterman was when he got back on the air [in February 2000] – he had quintuple bypass surgery.  [In valve-repair surgery] they stop your heart.  I was on the heart-lung bypass machine for close to seven hours.  Did it play into my decision to remain where I am?  Maybe.  I mean I had three months of very difficult recovery.  When I say it was life-changing – I’ve always been a person who smelled the roses, but everything looks a little brighter.  Everything looks a little bit more manageable.  Nothing is really that big a deal to me anymore.  I’ve never felt better.  I thought I had energy before [but] I’m a thousand percent better.  I’m playing better than I ever did.  I’m not looking backward.  I feel wonderful about where I’m at – physically, personally, professionally.

Do you have anything to add to the story of what happened to Conan?  Were you as shocked as anybody else that his ‘Tonight Show’ went south that way?

It was very dramatic.  At my age, just being in this business for as long as I’ve been, nothing really surprises me, particularly in the landscape of television.  [But] any abrupt ending to anything is shocking.  It was very weird and awkward and, of course, I felt really bad for some of the people who moved out there – over a hundred people from New York who really took the hit, people who had purchased homes.   I know of one case where the day this news broke, which I think was Jan. 5 or 6, this individual had just closed on a house and that’s a real shame.

Let’s talk about the HBO documentary about ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town.’  Why are we singling out this album for documentary treatment?  What’s so special about this one?

Of course, I have a somewhat prejudiced opinion – that all of Bruce’s albums are special.  This record, as the next project that was done after ‘Born to Run,’ to me, is extremely reflective of what was going on in music at the time in the late ’70s.  If you contrast ‘Darkness’ and its sound with the sound of ‘Born to Run,’ it’s quite different.  And I knew at the time that Bruce had begun to crystallize what it was he wanted to write about.  I always viewed my role and the rest of the musicians as: We’re colors in Bruce’s palette and I can recall on that record they wanted the drums to be very austere.  I think the best example of that is probably the title track, ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town.’  Why ‘Darkness’ now?  Well, why not?  It’s 33 years later and it’s sort of like the old Orson Welles line: ‘No wine before its time.’  There was footage that was filmed, it’s steeped in history and [so many years later], there’s a deeper resonance.

The movie traces the creation of the album and it goes into detail about the painstaking length of time that it took.  How do you remember it?  Was it satisfying, frustrating, tedious?

I remember it as a full range of emotion – definitely not tedium.  Now, I’m not the guy sitting in a room writing the songs.  Prior to actually going into the studio in, I believe, June of 1977, we rehearsed everyday at Bruce’s house – from like 2 o’clock to 7 o’clock almost everyday and we’d rehearse four or five songs and get them playable.  Then he’d come back the next day with four, five or six new songs.  That went on for two years!  Bruce had to do everything.  He had to write the songs.  He had to sing the songs.  He had to think about what he was trying to say as he was writing it. Really, to be the boss you do have to pay the cost.  And that was the cost that he did pay.

Will you watch Conan’s new show when it premieres Nov. 8 on TBS?

Absolutely.  I hope they do wonderfully well.  I’m sure they will.  I put a lot of time and effort into creating our little world over there, you know, with the band and the musical direction and what the band contributed, and I trust and I hope that the band retains the profile they had.  [Conan] is a brilliant, hard worker.  I’ve been fortunate to have people like Bruce and Conan – you don’t run into guys like that very often.

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You know him as “Omar,” the toughest thug in Baltimore on “The Wire,” and now, he’s a crime figure of a different sort in “Boardwalk Empire,” HBO’s new series about Atlantic City gangsters at the dawn of the Roaring ’20s.   Meet Michael Kenneth Williams, HBO’s Chalky White.

CHALK UP ANOTHER ONE: Michael Kenneth Williams as Chalky White in "Boardwalk Empire." Photo: Craig Blankenhorn

Chalk up another one for Michael Kenneth Williams.

He’s the Brooklyn-born actor who riveted audiences for five seasons on ‘The Wire’ in the role of Omar Little, the most-feared of all the thugs, gangsters and street toughs on that hallowed Baltimore-based HBO series.

And now, Williams is back on HBO in a series that’s shaping up to be an even bigger hit than ‘The Wire.’  It’s ‘Boardwalk Empire,’ the sprawling series from executive producers Terence Winter and Martin Scorsese about Prohibition Era gangsters in Atlantic City, N.J, at the dawn of the Roaring ’20s.   The series stars Steve Buscemi as the town’s all-powerful political boss and Williams plays dapper Chalky White, also a key local figure whose power stems from his ability to marshal the African-American vote for the city’s white political machine.

In this Sunday’s episode (9 p.m.8c on HBO), Chalky has his most important scene yet, and Williams gets to deliver an unusually long monologue that reveals a harrowing and tragic episode from Chalky’s past.

Williams, 43, talked about the scene, about Chalky, about Omar Little, and how the actor came to receive the facial scar that, for better or worse, has helped define the characters he plays.

That’s a long speech they gave you in this Sunday’s episode of ‘Boardwalk’.  How many pages of material is that?

Williams: That was actually three pages.  That was the longest speech I’ve had in my career thus far.  There was someone I’d seen do a speech [and] I always admired her performance and it was Epatha Merkerson and she did this speech in this film we did together called “Lackawanna Blues.”   And I always remember saying, God, if I had the chance to rock a speech [like that] – just the way she embodied that spirit and the character in that scene, it just blew my mind.

What was the effect you were trying to achieve in the scene, particularly as it pertains to the other participant in the scene, a Ku Klux Klan leader tied to a chair and at the mercy of your character?

It’s 1920.  It’s a whole different era.  You know, for a black man to be in a white man’s face with that type of confidence, it was a rarity.  It wasn’t like a cockiness.  It was from pain, ancestral pain, if you will.  I wanted that hardcore pain to come across in that scene.

Tell us more about the character of Chalky.  Is he a stone-cold gangster?

He’s not a stone-cold gangster.  He’s a businessman first.  But he had to learn how to have a tough skin in order to [obtain] the finer things in life.  He wanted the American dream and he had to learn how to deal in the water filled with sharks and he had to kind of become like that to achieve it.  He’s like Omar, in a sense.  He has a sense of code, he’s loyal, he’s not a backstabber – you’ll see that come out.

You pointed out how Chalky and Omar are similar.  How are they different?

You know, Omar was in it for the thrill of the hunt.  He didn’t care about the money or the fortune or the fancy house and the jewelry and the cars.  He just did it for the love of the hunt.  Chalky ain’t in it for the hunt, as long as you bring good business by his way, you ain’t got no problems outta him.  But you gonna cut him in whether you like it or not.  He’d rather just do business and keep the peace, where Omar just liked to stir the pot.

How did you come to get cast on ‘Boardwalk’?

I had worked with Martin [Scorsese] – Marty, as good friends call him [he laughs] – back in ’98 on a film called “Bring Out the Dead” with Nic Cage and Marc Anthony.  So there was a familiarity there. I’m quite sure that everybody and their father was going up for this role so [there was] a lot of competition – but I think that [producer/director] Tim Van Patten was my ace in the hole.

When all was said and done, the seemingly invincible Omar Little was fatally shot by a child while Omar was purchasing a pack of cigarettes in a convenience store.  What did you think of the ending they wrote for the character?

I mourned Omar like I lost a best friend.  He was a part of me.  It was definitely a surprise that no one expected, and it spoke to [the one weakness of] Omar, his Achilles heel.  Everybody who was trying to kill him couldn’t get to him and it took a little kid to catch him completely off guard.

How important is ‘The Wire’ to you?

‘The Wire’ changed my life, personally and professionally.  It opened me up [to a greater awareness of society’s problems].  It made me more aware of the social issues.  You know, me comin’ from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, I was exposed to just my ’hood, but there’s a “wire” in every city in this country, it opened my eyes up to that.

Would you tell us the story behind your scar?

I was 25 – my 25th birthday.  I was in Queens, N.Y.  I had been drinking.  I had that liquid courage in me and so some words got exchanged with some other guys and, you know, normally something I would have ignored, and I got jumped and one of the guys had a razor in his mouth, a straight razor in his mouth like they do in jail, and he pulled it out and he started slicin’ me.

Well, it doesn’t seem to have stopped you in the pursuit of your career.  You just did a fashion spread in the October issue of GQ (posing on the Atlantic City boardwalk in a series of designer suits  http://www.gq.com/style/suit-guide/201010/michael-kenneth-williams-three-piece-suit#slide=1)

I don’t take too much credit for anything.  I’m just pretty fortunate.  There’s tons of talent walking around here on the streets of New York.  It wasn’t like I did anything great.  I’m just truly fortunate and grateful for my opportunities.

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Posted in Adam Buckman, Boardwalk Empire, Conan O'Brien, HBO, Late-night TV, Max Weinberg, Michael Kenneth Williams, TV Howl, TV Howl by Adam Buckman, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

‘Mad Men’ 9/26/10: The high price of secrecy

September 27, 2010

PAJAMA GAME: Sanctimonious Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) ruminates on the consequences of deception in this past Sunday's episode of "Mad Men." Photo: AMC

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Lane Pryce gets smitten, then clobbered, Don has a panic attack, Joanie gets pregnant and Roger nearly has another heart attack.

Talk about your mid-life crises!  The men of ‘Mad Men’ were mired in the muck of their own self-made messes on Sunday night’s episode of the AMC drama series.

The episode – titled “Hands and Knees” – was the 10th installment of the ongoing fourth season.  It began and ended with the Beatles.  At the outset, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) phoned daughter Sally (Kienan Shipka) some time during the work week to tell her he’d scored two tickets to the Beatles’ concert at Shea Stadium the following weekend.  Sally’s reaction?  She screamed, and probably continued screaming all the way to Sunday (Aug. 15, 1965), when the real-life Beatles concert drew 55,000 fans to the home of the New York Mets in Flushing, Queens.

At the episode’s conclusion, we heard an instrumental, ’60s-style, lounge-music version of the Beatles’ hit, “Do You Want to Know a Secret,” a very appropriate choice of music given the many secrets both revealed and concealed on the show.

Over-riding the entire episode: The possibility that Don’s big secret would finally come out as the result of a government background check set in motion by his application for a security clearance.  It had to do with an agency client, North American Aviation, a defense contractor involved in the sensitive business of providing aircraft and missile systems to the Department of Defense.

Don’s secret, of course, is that he was once Dick Whitman and adopted the identity of a dead lieutenant named Donald Draper during the Korean War as a way of getting out of the war.  As a result, “Dick Whitman” is still considered a U.S. Army deserter.  Few people know Don’s secret – among them, wife Betty (January Jones), ad agency colleague Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), agency senior partner Burt Cooper (Robert Morse) and, as of Sunday night, Don’s current squeeze, demographer Faye Miller (Cara Buono).

Incredibly, nobody squealed – not even Pete, who could have used the information to ruin Don and elevate himself in the agency hierarchy.  And even though Pete railed to wife Trudy (Alison Brie) about people who keep secrets, we all know Pete has one himself – that he had an illegitimate child with Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss) in Season One.  Pete kept Don’s secret, even though it cost the agency this crucial client.

If Don was facing the possibility that a lifelong secret was about to upend his middle-aged life, then two of his partners faced mid-life crises of their own.  Roger Sterling (John Slattery), apparently already bored with his much-younger wife, has once again set his sights on Joan Harris (nee Holloway – Christina Hendricks), with whom he formerly carried on an affair.  She informed him Sunday night that she’s pregnant with his baby, stemming from their sidestreet tryst in the previous episode.  She went to Morristown, N.J. (a quiet suburb about 30 miles west of New York City), to have the pregnancy terminated.  Roger paid for it.

Meanwhile, upright Britisher Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) was forced to deal with his strict, assertive father, Robert (guest-star W. Morgan Sheppard), who came all the way to New York from the U.K. to order Lane to return to his family and patch up his relations with his wife.  In response, Lane took dad to the Playboy Club (with Don in tow) and introduced his father to his new love, a Playboy bunny who also happened to be black.  In one of the most shocking scenes yet seen on ‘Mad Men,’ Robert Pryce slugged his grown son in the head with his cane, then stepped brutally on one of his hands as his son writhed on the floor in semiconscious agony.

By the episode’s end, it was apparent that Lane’s father had won the confrontation as Lane announced at the partners’ meeting that he was headed home to England for a few weeks.

Incredibly, none of these secrets were the biggest of the evening.  The secret with the most far-reaching consequences for everyone at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was the loss of its biggest client – the one the agency depends on most for its financial health – Lucky Strike.  Roger was the recipient of this bad news and he kept it under wraps, nearly having another heart attack when he got the news.

And now, there are only three episodes left in the season for the agency to pull itself back from the brink of ruin – again! – which was also the situation in Season Three.

OK, ‘Mad Men’ fans: How did you like Sunday’s episode?  And with just three episodes left, where do you think we go from here?

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