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« Roush Dispatch
ABC at TCA: Lost in Translation
Peter Krause by Bob D'Amico/ABC
Get lost, ABC. That was the hostile undercurrent behind much of the questioning for ABC's entertainment president Stephen McPherson Wednesday morning. We critics can be a surly group, especially this late in the TCA press tour. (ABC has the bad luck to be up to bat on the final two days of the three-week hype-a-thon.) But give us something legitimate to gripe about — in this case, the decision by Lost's producers to skip the TCA and instead address the game-changing events behind Lost's cliff-hanger at the Comic-Con fan convention in San Diego on Thursday — and you'd better watch out.
One reporter even put it this way: “Are we not important enough for you?” At first, McPherson tried to shrug it off with a joke, saying that he has hired Don Imus — fired earlier this year from his radio and TV gigs for a racial slur — to join the show. (This was the closest he or anyone else came to addressing the Isaiah Washington/Grey’s Anatomy debacle during his official press conference.) The Lost hubbub ultimately led public relations VP Hope Hartman to come onstage and whisper in McPherson’s ear, prompting him to announce that Lost’s exec producer Damon Lindelof had OK’d him to release a nugget of news: the return of original cast member Harold Perrineau to the show. But on the essential issue of how Lost plans to tell its stories over the next two seasons, given that the game-changing cliff-hanger jumped to the future: nothing.
“[Damon and Carlton Cuse] have not released whether or not it will take place now with flash-forward or flashbacks. They obviously opened up a new world,” McPherson said. “They have pitched us where they’re going this year and where the next two years take us. What’s great about that is now that we know that we have this end date, it has allowed them to craft that end story exactly the way they want.” As for scheduling it from February to May, skipping a fall “pod” that proved so unsatisfying last season: “As much as we needed it from a scheduling standpoint, running these episodes straight through will be the best way to do that. Regardless of the storytelling technique that they use, I think it’s going to be a much better, fully enclosed installment.”
Among other hot topics:
MacPherson confirmed that the high-profile pilot adaptations of Footballers Wives and Mr. and Mrs. Smith are officially dead at the network.
The much-maligned decision to keep Men in Trees off the air for the rest of the season after its spring hiatus was directly due to the unexpectedly strong showing of October Road (which I’m happy to note was named “worst series” in the recent Televison Week critics’ poll). ABC is presenting a Trees panel on the show Thursday afternoon, right before a panel on Private Practice (that ought to be a lively two hours), so it’s not like they’re ashamed of Trees or anything. Better yet, the leftover episodes from last season will be tacked onto the start of this one (shades of when Boston Legal was bumped for Grey’s Anatomy a few mid-seasons ago), so the upside is fewer repeats.
Women’s Murder Club, based on the James Patterson book franchise, is ABC’s “stab at a procedural,” something the network sorely lacks and needs. If it clicks with viewers on Fridays, it could easily migrate to another night.
Most critics don’t seem to be buying the new Cavemen sitcom, based on the Geico ads, as a one-note racial allegory. The pilot episode is being retooled and recast and won’t air until several weeks into the season (if it even gets that far).
Several questions addressed the sameness of much of ABC’s drama development this year, which leans heavily on the travails of rich, glamorous, beautiful people, with shows like Dirty Sexy Money, starring Peter Krause as a lawyer for a celebrated family of Kennedy-esque brats; Big Shots, a sort of "Desperate CEOs" featuring Dylan McDermott, Michael Vartan, Christopher Titus and Joshua Malina; and Cashmere Mafia, a bald-faced Sex and the City/Lipstick Jungle rip-off about four high-powered Manhattan women. McPherson kept countering this criticism by holding up the Suarez family of Ugly Betty as a model of diversity. Whatever.
One show that definitely falls outside the norm is Pushing Daisies, a dazzling fable about a lovable guy (Lee Pace) who can bring the dead back to life by touching them — but if he touches them twice, they stay dead. Daisies, infused with a Tim Burton-like look of heightened fantasy, is a complete original, blending love story with crime drama. (The hero uses his gift to help a private eye solve murders.) It’s enjoying some of the fall’s best buzz despite skepticism that it’s too offbeat and thus defies categorization. McPherson insists that on a week-to-week basis it will unfold as a procedural, although its magical qualities mean “it’s never going to fall into a CSI vein.”
But Daisies faces another challenge: a tough time slot of Wednesdays at 8 pm/ET, where it launches a night of all-new series that includes Private Practice and Dirty Sexy Money. McPherson credits its originality, “and the fact that it is different in the way that Lost was when it launched at 8 o'clock. It doesn’t fit neatly behind any show, either, because of its originality. So for us, we just feel like we’ve got to spend a lot of money and a lot of effort to launch it in that slot.”
Showers of critical acclaim probably won’t hurt, either.
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Jul 25, 2007 1:55 PM
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If I had a choice to attend this so-called "hype-a-thon" or prepare for the gigantic event known as comic-con, I think I'd take the nerds over the critics anyday.
I know critics have a strong influence over viewers and have much better resources to make judgements about early pilots, but if a show really wants to make some noise and get the entire internet buzzing before the season even starts, Comic-con is the place to do it. Just ask Tim Kring and the cast of Heroes.
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Jul 25, 2007 4:04 PM
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Jesus Christ, are you critics 12 years old? San Diego is not a "fan convention", it's the prime buzz-maker event for anything remotely geeky, and of course "Lost" will open its cards there instead of the TCA Tour. In fact, the show is what it is now thanks to the Comic-Con, so it's only right that they withhold scoop for that event.
Two weeks aren't enough for you, you have to have everything? Jesus...
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Jul 25, 2007 5:37 PM
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Well, I've got something nice to say! At least YOUR comments on Lost were a little meatier than those of your colleague who only mentioned the return of Harold/Michael to my saying so what, because I was expecting more. You can't please everybody, but sometimes I wonder why some people are so bad about getting your input - it never leaves me complaining - so just pass off the bad knowing you can never please everybody.
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Jul 25, 2007 10:37 PM
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I want to know what "fall into a CSI vein" means. ABC wants to be the network for women -they could use some shows that appeal to men like a CSI does to have some diversity.
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Jul 26, 2007 9:49 AM
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The critics are coming across as very juvenile and petty in this whole ABC/Lost story. Surprisingly, the bitter undertone of this entry only strengthens that viewpoint.
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Jul 26, 2007 10:15 AM
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ABC wants to share scoops with the fans before the critics -- that sounds like smart strategy to me, and ComicCon is definitely the place to do it.
If you seriously expect anybody BUT TV critics to take offense at that, grow up!
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Jul 26, 2007 10:34 AM
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Actually, Matt didn't say anything more about Lost that hasn't been posted on other blogs/entertainment pages. I know the tv critics pay for this shindig but the reality is that in this day and age, tv coverage and exposure isn't just the domain of tv critics at papers and magazines. There are a lot more venues where people can get info about shows and the tv critics seem to be forgetting that.
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Jul 26, 2007 11:24 AM
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Everybody commenting here seems to be forgetting one important thing: TV critics are TV fans. Otherwise they'd be reviewing sunsets in Tahiti.
So I can understand why many them would be a bit upset that ABC and the Lost Execs were not going to give them any scoop. I mean, the internet can and does a lot for cult/popular shows, but critics want scoop too -- especially since it was the critics who helped spread the word about Lost when it first came on the air.
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Jul 26, 2007 2:35 PM
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I get your point, BlueDahlia, but the first I ever heard about "Lost" -- and the first a LOT of us ever heard about it -- didn't come from critics. It came from the pilot's spectacular ComicCon debut.
Keeping some revelations for ComicCon is valid. It's one thing for the critics to be disappointed or to angle for their own bit of news, but Matt and some others I've read are reacting to this in a very short-sighted, entitled way, like this is the WRONGEST WRONG OF ALL WRONGS.
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Jul 26, 2007 3:24 PM
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Matt, I have a lot of respect for you, but I think it's hilarious how upset you and the other critics have gotten about this. The producers of Lost are going to give the meaty news directly to the viewers/fans. How is this a bad thing? This is making all of you look very bad.
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Jul 26, 2007 4:13 PM
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Mr. Roush, I have to agree with the majority of the replies to your post: the press comes across as juvenile & egotistical regarding ABC's decision to hold some important "LOST" information for the San Diego Comic Con. The people attending the Comic Con are the fans that keep shows like "LOST" on television; it's only fitting that the creators and the networks try to give them a little something in return for their loyalty to the series.
I recognize TV critics and reviewers have a job to do, but it's not ok to put down the Comic Con or the fans. And yes, that's how it comes across, like the reporters at the press tour are more important, more special than lowly "fanboys" or "fangirls" who attend a nerdy comic book/sci-fi/fantasy convention.
I'm sorry, your gripe doesn't seem very legitimate to me.
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Jul 26, 2007 5:29 PM
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I read elsewhere that a critic actually said, "What? We're not good enough for you?" to ABC. If I were up there I would've said NO. I hate to break it to you, but critics neither make or break a show these days. It's buzz and that happens at things like ComicCon. How many series that have been just adored by critics only to have no audience at all. The Wire, FNL, Men in Trees. Yes the M.I.T. has some audience, but not enough to keep it from being bumped in favor of October Road, which not only had a sizable audience, but did so IN SPITE of the ctitical lambasting it got.
So Critics do help, but idignation at being passed over for ComicCon makes you look like the whinny girl who didn't get pick for the cheerleading team b/c she wasn't pretty enough.
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Jul 26, 2007 8:35 PM
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Nasty nasty. Think some of you posters are being a lot more indignant than Matt was and I'm sure he didn't intend to create the kind of reaction he got. Lighten up on the guy, I think he does a great job on his critiques.
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Jul 26, 2007 11:15 PM
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My post wasn't a dig at Matt, but more at the TCA who collectively disparaged an entire group of people by calling Comic Con a "Fan convention" as if they were somehow unworthy of special attention given to them by the creators of Lost.
Most of the time I agree with TV critics in the types of shows I think are good and in need of recognition. I agree with them that Connie Britton not being nominated for an Emmy is an omission so large and erroneous that I have lost all interest in the Emmys period. But the TCA essentially "called out" the regular fans and so I think the fans have the right to take umbrage.
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Jul 27, 2007 1:31 AM
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