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« Roush Dispatch
Fall Season Press Tour: Flying Blind With NBC
Knight Rider's KITT by Paul Drinkwater/NBC Photo
After sitting through NBC’s frustrating and un-illuminating final day of official press tour Monday—there are a few set visits scheduled on Tuesday before whoever’s left heads for home (or in some cases Comic-Con over the weekend)—I’m tempted to say that TCA saved the worst for last. More like saving the least for last.
It’s unprecedented in my memory of press tour for so many networks to screen so little of their new fall programming, but NBC really took the booby prize in giving us an entire day of hype with nothing but their word to back up the fact that they’re “incredibly happy” with the way the new sitcom Kath & Kim is coming along—despite the fact the show (based on an edgy Australian format) dumped its original director and is reshooting much of the pilot, which we only saw a few ghastly-looking moments of right before one of many awkward panels. We also heard the new season of Heroes is going to be “awesome,” but I guess they’re saving any visual evidence of that for Comic-Con.
Jay Leno showed up in disguise to needle his bosses about next year’s inexplicably unnecessary and premature changing of the late-night guard, but that stunt only served two sad purposes. One, to remind the room that Jimmy Kimmel (who did much the same thing at ABC’s executive session a week earlier) is funnier and more original these days, and two, to focus us on the reality that the only thing we have to talk to NBC about these days is their lost, faded glory.
The network is pinning all of its hopes, it would seem, on Amy Poehler, who’s leaving Saturday Night Live to star (after a career pause to give birth) in a vague new sitcom from the producers of The Office, who we’re told are still under orders to develop a separate Office spin-off, though that’s on hold until the Poehler show is ready this spring. (And here’s where we speculate about spreading your producing talent too thin, which is only a concern when you consider the spotty quality of so many of those supersized Office episodes that NBC treasures.)
But what about the fall stuff? Over breakfast, NBC screened a clip-reel loop of the new adventure series Crusoe—looked kinda hokey, like middle-drawer Halmi, but who can really say—which premieres on Fridays in mid-October, but NBC declined to present a panel with cast and producers via satellite from Africa, where this international co-production (saves money that way) is underway. Satellite sessions are relatively common during press tour, and NBC did arrange a hook-up with Olympics anchors and execs from Beijing.
Instead of Crusoe, the day ended with the critics grilling (to little effect) the cast and crew of a puzzling mid-season drama called Kings, which isn’t even scheduled yet. A modern-day David and Goliath parable that imagines a fictional kingdom that looks an awful lot like New York, set against a wartime backdrop that looks an awful lot like Iraq, Kings actually looks promising. But that didn’t stop the session from getting uncomfortably contentious when a reporter declared the producers weren’t “making any sense,” prompting an outburst from the show’s outspoken star Ian McShane (Deadwood).
Piece of advice: Want us not to be confused? Show us something.
It was even worse if less testy at a session for the incomprehensible (on paper, anyway) new Monday night action-drama My Own Worst Enemy, starring Christian Slater in a Jekyll-Hyde meets Jason Bourne style role as a mild-mannered family man who’s somehow also a cold-blooded secret agent, and what happens when his separate identities (which he’s not aware of) collide. In the words of Alfre Woodard, who plays his handler: “What we actually do is we manifest a divergent identity dormant in a sealed-off portion of the medial temporal lobe.” To which exec producer Jason Smilovic (who gave us last year’s winner Bionic Woman) quipped: “Now who doesn’t understand that?”
My Own Worst Enemy is one of many new NBC series this season that was picked up without benefit of a pilot and went straight (though obviously late) into production, which is why we haven’t seen anything. And which is why it’s unfair to judge, though how can we not when entertainment chief Ben Silverman gushes about Enemy less as a kickass drama than as a “marketing platform” for General Motors, which was brought into the development process for this show from the get-go. In fact, according to Silverman, “the first things we actually shot were for General Motors with Christian Slater that are going to air at the Olympics.” Yeah, why not: Promo first, show second. The show’s mid-October premiere date is also timed to coincide with a new GM line being launched around the same time.
Anyone else getting Knight Rider vibes? (In a panel on the new Wednesday night series being spun from last season’s wretched car commercial of a movie, Knight Rider’s new show-runner admitted, “Even Ford said it was way too much [product promotion] in the two-hour.”)
While NBC proudly sells out, I’ll end my press-tour musings for now by listing all of the new fall shows we have yet to see an actual episode of. Could make for a busy August as we prepare for a fall season that right now feels like one of the best-kept secrets of the year.
NBC: My Own Worst Enemy (just wrapped production); Knight Rider (we saw the movie; we can wait); Kath & Kim (reshoots); America’s Toughest Jobs (try watching NBC shows for a living); Crusoe (currently shooting in South Africa).
ABC: Life on Mars (reshoots, major recasting, relocating from LA to NY); Opportunity Knocks (revising some of the game rules, so I hear).
CBS: Eleventh Hour (new episode being shot to air in front of the original pilot, whose cloning theme was considered a bit grim).
CW: 90210 (just finished shooting), Privileged (Anne Archer joining the cast, forcing reshoots), Stylista (still being edited); the Sunday-night lineup leased out to Media Rights Capital of In Harm’s Way, Surviving Suburbia, Valentine, Inc. and Easy Money (all still in development, and not even presented in panel form, so a complete mystery to one and all for now).
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Jul 22, 2008 11:36 AM
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... and NBC wonders why they are in last place.
Still I have to wonder if network tv will be able to recover from the writers strike this coming season and now with the potential of an actor's strike.. Yikes.
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Jul 22, 2008 12:34 PM
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The amount of incompetence at NBC the last few years is truly amazing.
Meanwhile, I've actually seen reviews of some of these shows on blogs and sites like TheFutonCritic. How are they getting screeners of the pilots or presentations when the actual critics don't seem to be getting them?
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Jul 22, 2008 12:53 PM
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That comment from Ford cracks me up. Translation: "Please stop showing our product in this abomination you call a TV show."
I don't think I'll be checking out anything new on NBC this year. My TiVo can find my returning shows like 30 Rock and Chuck just fine without my having to suffer through any of their other junk.
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Jul 22, 2008 1:47 PM
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I hated the way they handled their "green week" thing last fall. It came off as repetitive and condescending. Only 30 Rock managed to make it work, because they were ultimately making fun of the whole fiasco.
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Jul 22, 2008 1:50 PM
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Ha! I think you need a break, Matt!
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Jul 22, 2008 2:53 PM
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" In the words of Alfre Woodard, who plays his handler: “What we actually do is we manifest a divergent identity dormant in a sealed-off portion of the medial temporal lobe.”
Wow..this sounds really bad, I can't WAIT!!
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Jul 22, 2008 3:38 PM
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It just makes me think - Brandon Tartikoff was freakin' brilliant and they don't make them like that anymore. Now they just rubber stamp the same old ideas. I think that's why most people who really enjoy tv, gravitate to the cable tv shows.
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Jul 22, 2008 3:43 PM
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Is it possible that Ben Silverman secretly works for Rupert Murdoch? Or maybe CBS because otherwise, I have no way to logically account for his actions other than to attribute them to a top secret plan to destroy NBC. Cause that is certainly what he is doing. Amazing!
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Jul 22, 2008 4:07 PM
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NBC's Green Week was shameless commercialism. NBC is owned by GE. GE sells fluorescent light bulbs. GE's stock goes up if/when they ban the regular household lightbulb.
I like Office, Chuck and Heroes. I watched 10 episodes of Bionic Woman, hoping it would get better.
Give me AMC's Mad Men or FX's Damages.
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Jul 22, 2008 6:12 PM
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Life on Mars, Fringe, and Do Not Disturb are the only shows coming on in the fall that I'm interested in viewing, the first two because of the premise and the last because of the cast. I think the ghost of the writer's strike is going to linger until January 2009 at the least unless the freshmen bubble shows (for example: Life and Dirty Sexy Money) can relaunch and splash in a big way.
-C
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Jul 22, 2008 8:46 PM
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somethingreal81, some of thefutoncritic's reviews were of the scripts, not the actual pilots. I think that was the case for "My Own Worst Enemy."
Matt, bless your heart. It doesn't sound like you had much fun. We should probably give the networks a small break since the production schedules were unusually rushed this year due to the strike. However, you still never want your product to be shown looking like crap. It doesn't sound like NBC did anything to help it's case.
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Jul 22, 2008 9:31 PM
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You're right, Ann Marie, some of them were just scripts. But he also got his hands on the pilots for Eleventh Hour and Life on Mars and the presentations for Privileged and Harper's Island even though they weren't sent to critics. Two years ago he even had the original Brothers & Sisters pilot, which none of the critics were sent.
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Jul 23, 2008 9:39 AM
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So basically NBC really has nothing. This is just sad because it has always been my favorite network with innovative series like Freaks and Geeks, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Scrubs, etc. also not to mention the gigantic hits like Friends and Frasier. Oh well, this is what happens when they keep promoting the same people who got them to last place.
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Jul 24, 2008 9:23 AM
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Matt -
I don't know which sounds worse. NBC's fall panels and upcoming season, or the fact that reality show hosts are hosting the Emmys. I am staying away from both.
Matt -
I am so sorry this fall season panel was such a waste of your time.
On the bright side, if the future of TV is moving to the Internet in webisodes like the Sanctuary series, the upcoming Farscape and Whedon's Dr. Horrible, you will have wonderful things to tell us about.
And NBC will wake up when they lose millions of dollars in revenue from shuffling late night hosts and piss poor planning of their tv schedule.
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Jul 27, 2008 2:29 PM
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