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Sunday, January 14, 2007
Desperate teasers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nashville native James Denton, best known as Mike the plumber on “Desperate Housewives,” is last seen stuck in jail for a murder he may or may not have committed. (Thanks to a handy case of amnesia, Mike can’t remember the situation after getting hit by a car by Bree’s sketchy current husband Orson.)
Denton told the AJC that his storyline will be wrapped up quicker than expected because of Marcia Cross’s pregnancy. Cross, whose pregnancy has not been written into the show, was placed on bedrest for the final three months, earlier than the show had anticipated.
“I’m not in jail very long,” he said. “They had to wrap up the mystery fast.”
And he admitted the whole amnesia was a bit silly:. “In a comedy, they couldn’t dedicate the time to it. He got well a little bit too fast for my taste.”
Earlier, Marc Cherry, creator of “Desperate Housewives,” fed the TV critics some amusing anecdotes.
For instance, his favorite censorship questionw as early on when Eva Longeria had cheated on her husband with the high-school-age gardener. She was holding a cigarette. The censor told him, “Does she have to smoke?” “And I went, ‘So you’re good with the statutory rape thing?’ “
He noted that the has to spend seemingly $100,000 an episode taking nipples out of the show because “Standards & Practices” (the censorship department) is fearful of the Federal Communications Commission post Janet Jackson. A couple of actresses, he said, don’t like to wear bras so that creates a problem. “Then I’l turn on ‘Friends,’ ” he said, “and it’s a nipple-fest!”
Cherry, who was literally living his parent’s basement before “Desperate” became a hit, also said he placed the criticism of his show’s second season into perspective: “People not liking the second season of your hit show, piece of cake. Borrowing $50,000 from your mother, not so easy.”
He also noted that with Bree gone for several episodes, Nicollette Sheridan’s character’s “going to be promoted and be front and center for the remainder of the season. She’s going to have a fascinating romance with someone who already lives on the street and we’re going to be meeting her son that was mentioned in the pilot.”
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How much more Lost can we get?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Why are the Others there and why don’t they just leave the island? What do those lottery numbers really mean? And what the heck is that deathly black cloud?
Naturally, a trio of “Lost” executive directors and 11 actors before more than 100 TV critics Sunday failed to conjure up answers to the dozens of questions swirling in the heads of fans losing patience with the perplexing ABC drama, which returns after a three-month hiatus on Feb. 7.
But they tried to explain why the show moves the plotlines forward so slowly, why so many mysteries are piled on with seemingly no resolution.
“We don’t allow the characters to focus on the mythology,” said executive producer Carlton Cuse. “We want the characters to focus on primarily their relationships with each other.” This means answering why there’s a polar bear or a four-toed statue isn’t the focal point of the show.
Fellow executive producer Damon Lindelof said when they’ve shot scenes where the characters discuss the mysteries, “they are incredible boring.”
But Cuse admitted that a show like this, unlike, say “Law & Order” or “E.R.,” needs an “end point.” “We’ve always discussed it would have a beginning, middle and end,” he said. “Once we figure out when that is going to be, I think a lot of these concerns are going away.”
While Cuse wouldn’t say what he thought was the right end point, Lindelof later told a smaller group of reporters that five seasons seemed to be about right but it will depend on a collaboration between the creators and ABC. In reality, it will depend on the ratings and whether the show will be able to maintain a size audience to make it financially feasible to survive until 2009.
Cuse admits there’s a fine balance trying to please a broad audience where individuals are seeking different things from the show. “People do get angry at us but we’re glad that people care enough to be angry,” he said.
Ratings this past fall were down about 15 percent from a year earlier, averaging about 17 million viewers, which Cuse describes as “natural attrition. This show requires sort of vigilant maintenance… It’s hard to drop in and out.”
The producers meted out very small plot droplets. Cuse said the relationship between surgeon Jack (Matthew Fox) and the Other Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) “is very interesting to us.” And the Claire/Charlie story will too develop. Sawyer’s addiction to nicknames for fellow castaways will be addressed, too.
Plus, the odd addition of characters Nikki and Paulo earlier this season will be addressed on the 14th episode. And though flashbacks just as often drag the stories as provide insight into the characters, the producers have no intention of stopping them.
“We do believe that we have enough stories left to tell for all these characters that will take us through the remainder of the series,” Cuse said.
Dancing away from Idol
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ABC smartly moved “Dancing With the Stars” out of the “American Idol” military assault. The show will launch on Mondays at 8 p.m. starting March 19, with results shows airing Tuesday March 27 from 9 to 10 p.m. In the fall, “Dancing” had aired from 8 to 10 p.m. Tuesdays and 8 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays.
The network had already moved “Lost” to 10 p.m. on Wednesdays to get out of “Idol’s” way.
“We didn’t want people to choose between Idol and Dancing,” said Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment, Sunday morning at the Television Critics Association winter tour in Pasadena. “We spend a lot of time beating up on each other. We think both are good shows. There’s room for both of them on the schedule.”
He’s not worried that “Dancing” will partially compete against “24” since he thinks the audiences are distinct.
He also said that “October Road,” a drama starring Laura Prepon which was shot in Atlanta in November and December, will appear sometime before May but didn’t provide a specific start date. McPherson called it a “male ensemble” show in which a best-selling author returns to the hometown he had written about.
Plus, McPherson said ABC still plans to burn off the remaining episodes of poorly rated “The Nine” and “Six Degrees” this year but wasn’t specifc. And he promised that the remaining “Day Break” episodes will be available online once some music rights issues are cleared.
Sting: armed and famous?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The elegant and positively sublime Sting turned usually hardboiled TV critics into mush Saturday night during a PBS-sponsored concert and Q&A promoting his “Great Performances” set to air Feb. 26. And since dabbling in reggae, world and jazz music wasn’t enough, he’s now promoting his successful “Songs From the Labyrinth” CD packed with classical songs from 16th century lute player John Dowland.
Sting also dangled a carrot in front of hungry Police fans who have been awaiting a reunion tour for more than two decades. Sting told the reporters that 30 years have passed since the Police formed so he would be open to doing something special this year. He just didn’t say what he would be willing to do. Naturally, a reunion tour would rake in incredible amounts of money, but Sting has plenty of loot (or is that lute?) and hasn’t been enticed to cash in the way the Rolling Stones or the Who have done. When a reporter implied that he perhaps didn’t get along with former bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, he said that wasn’t the case at all (at least now) and that he simply left the group back in the ’80s because he felt constricted.
For now, Sting is hitting Europe for a few weeks with the man who taught him the lute, Edin Karamazov. The Bosnian played the instrument (he had several vintage replicas at his grasp) with dexterity and didn’t even blink an eye when a string broke. Sting didn’t look nearly as comfortable when he played his lute, but his vocal stylings fit Dowland’s melancholy tunes.
Surrounded by more than 70 candles, Sting finished off with a bluesy Robert Johnson tune “Hellhound on My Trail” and two hits of his own: 1993’s evocative “Fields of Gold” and a Police classic from 30 years ago (as opposed to, say, 430 years ago), “Message in a Bottle,” which he dedicated to his former bandmates Copeland and Summers.
