MagneticMediaFed

One year ago I spent the entire upfronts week feverishly clicking my refresh button looking for the latest information on the coming fall television season. What a difference a year makes. After the 100-day writer’s strike left most of the network’s schedules flopping on the dock like a hooked but forgotten flounder, no one (not the advertisers, not the networks, and certainly not the audience) seems particularly thrilled about the network announcements (or lack of announcements) for their future plans. This week is, after all, FOR the advertisers, and since network television is no longer viewed as being all that lucrative those advertising dollars are looking for something more than the typical slate of potential prime-time disasters. Take ABC, for example. The network plans on adding a whopping TWO new programs to its fall prime-time line-up, choosing instead to bring back almost all of it’s fall ‘08 slate (minus, Carpoolers, Cavemen and October Road). But who cares, especially this early in the process? More after the jump…

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So, I’m not entirely sure if I’m supposed to be posting this or not, but it was sent to me by CBS yesterday as promotion for Monday’s episode of How I Met Your Mother, so I guess this is me “promoting.”

Enjoy Sandcastles, a new song from 80s Canadian Pop-Legend Robin Sparkles. A clip from the video is available on her MySpace page.

Check out the show Monday for, presumably, more.

Stunt casting!

Kind of a perfect episode last night on the HIMYM front, no? What worked so well with the Britney stunt-casting was how her roll was so easily replaceable. It worked because she didn’t need to be there and was utterly forgettable. Had things been reversed and she played the Sarah Chalke character it would have been an unmitigated disaster for reasons aside from the fact that she is clearly a horrible actor. Most sitcoms put the guest star front and center. I respect HIMYM for dropping her into the background (to and extent).

But that is not the most interesting thing about Monday’s episode. Clearly the noteworthy addition was the fact that we might have “met the mother.” There were certainly a few clues, the most significant being Stella’s declaration that she “went out on St. Patrick’s Day,” where we, the audience, know the mother happened to be. What is interesting about all of this is the fail-safe the series’ creators have build into the show. As of right now they don’t if they are coming back next season. If Moonves decides to pull the plug in a month or so, all of the groundwork is laid for an easy wrap-up. Now, if things get carried out for another season (or even another two) they are also in great shape because nothing is in stone, it can all just be written off as coincidence.

If you have the time I encourage you to check out Whitney Matheson’s Pop Candy Podcast from two weeks back where she talks with series co-creator Carter Bays about the show’s future and plans on how they hope to reveal “the mother” (with varying degrees of vague response).

Better to burn out or to fade away?

This thing is killing me. We all knew the writers’ strike was going to be a major inconvenience, but I never suspected it would have the effect it’s currently having on my psyche. Ever since the writers took to the picket line three weeks ago, television has kind of sucked, and not just because my beloved late-night shows immediately went into reruns. Despite the fact that we’ve still been getting new scripted episodes these past few weeks, the strike has, in a way, highlighted just how solidly mediocre this fall has been. The new series, while marked by very few cancellations (honestly, who would have thought Cavemen would still be airing new episodes three weeks into November?), have generated no significant hits (with the exception of Samantha Who?, but it’s hard to say if it is the show that is successful or its Dancing With the Stars lead-in) while our favorite returning series from years past have either been wildly inconsistent (How I Met Your Mother), shockingly awful (Weeds) or just kind of a mess (Friday Night Lights). To top it all off the two series that have been consistantly good and occasionally great in The Office and 30 Rock are the first to run out of episodes. The whole mess can put your average television viewer into something of an existential conundrum: if interesting stories can vanish as quickly as they appear, what’s the point of it all? More after the jump…

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Pic via Flickr

I’m going to forgo the usual episode recaps today as I 1) haven’t actually watched anything from last night and 2) feel like dedicating some space to the WGA strike as tomorrow night will mark the first significant casualty of the work-stoppage. Thursday’s episode of The Office entitle “The Deposition” will be the last new episode we can expect from the show until the strike ends. The Office was one of the first series to close up shop due in large part to the fact that a good chunk of the cast happens to also write for the show.

The Futon Critic has a really handy guide with the amount of episodes each show has left to air before going dark. Most of the networks biggest series will have trouble making it past the first week in December (which, luckily for them, is traditionally dark). We should expect little (if any) scripted programming come 2008.

In the meantime, treat yourself to the endless supply of strike blogs popping up on the internet, the most informative being the guild’s official blog United Hollywood. Here are some others:

Late Show Writers on Strike
Scribe Vibe (Variety)
Show Tracker (LA Times)

One last note: since the major sticking point for this strike is writer’s compensation for ad-supported material posted on the web, I would encourage everyone to avoid using the networks’ video services until a deal is made.

It sounds like you’re carrying gravel in a metal pail.

This one snuck up on me. The first act was very Friends ‘97, with the cast getting into some wacky and crazy situations, certain to be resolved in a cool twenty minutes. Marshall wanted to check if he passed the Bar exam, but lost his password. Ted was excited about a new girlfriend but couldn’t understand why his friends hated her. Typical sitcomy stuff, and not terribly funny. More after the jump…

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Nick Andopolis?

The moment I had been waiting for all season happened about two-thirds of the way through Monday’s episode as Ted, Barney and Robin sat on the kitchen floor debating who would get whom in a possible divorce of Marshall and Lily. Robin seemed to think she would end up with Lily and Ted and Barney would get Marshall. This lead to the following exchange:

TED: We used to be together and still hang out. It’s not weird.
ROBIN: It’s a little weird.
TED: Yeah, it is a little weird.

I loved that, and as far as I’m concerned the sentiment really corrected a lot of the problems I had been having with this season. More after the jump…

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I checked in this morning with what those crazy kids over at Bonanza City to see if they were still alive, kickin’ and speaking with adorable speech impediments. Having missed the past two episodes I was certain Wednesday’s episode would open with a series of cabins flames and thick black smoke pouring out of the windows. The streets would be riddled with corpses with one naked youngster beating another naked younger with a wooden plank off by the church. The rest of the town would be covered in mud, faces painted and attacking the film crew, who they have decided serve no purpose other than that of food. These images were quickly put to rest as the kids continued doing/not doing dishes, complaining about not getting paid enough, and looking generally chilly.

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I know a great burger joint!

That was a bit of a disappointment, no? John Cho aside, this episode felt especially flat despite having plenty of material to work with. Ted Mosby the porn star? That’s kind of funny, right? Marshall having to decide between working for a major corporation versus working for a non-profit? Surely there are some comedic situations to be mined. Lily with credit card debt? That’s relatable. And yet, so rarely did it make me laugh. Perhaps the best way to sum up how “I’m Not That Guy” played out was “sitcomian.” Aside from a few clever cutaways, what separated this episode from your typical late-season Friends? Not much.

I think this week’s episode, compared to last week’s hilarious entry in the HIMYM canon, really illustrated why the show works when it works and why it doesn’t when it doesn’t. The classic sitcom form no longer elicits laughs. This is not because the writing is any worse than it once was or that everyone forgot the lessons taught to us by the classics like Cheers and Taxi and Mary Tyler Moore, but the fact that audiences have spent so much time watching sitcoms over the past sixty years there is very little room left for the form to provide genuine surprise (which in turn provides genuine laughter). The best episodes of How I Met Your Mother have been as much about turning the form on its head as writing a witty comeback to be spoken by a character. Where the two come together is where the shear pleasure of the series is able to shine through.

This? This was low-stakes comedy.

It’s been a month since new shows started popping up and my god has it been a rough ride. I was able to keep for the better part of two weeks, but lately I’ve had to throw my hands up and declare that once again, the television has won. Part of the problem, for me at least, is this fall seems to have more decent shows than season’s past. There are always one or two really good new programs, but typically the rest of it is just dreck. This year there have only been a small handful of shows I would consider abdominal, but with an unusually large amount resting somewhere in the middle. But how does one justify sticking with a series that is at its very best just OK. I think now would be as good a time as any to look at where we are and decide how to move forward.

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About a week ago, I went on a rant about the depressing nature of the CBS network. For a company so comfortable in first place, it seemed to refuse any risk-taking whatsoever. This was, of course, especially true as rumors about the cancellation of How I Met Your Mother began to circulate. Well here we are a short time later, HIMYM is safe and CBS’s fall schedule adds the most ambitious (if smallest number of) new shows of any network.

While I wouldn’t by any means say I’m going to become a regular viewer of CBS programming come the fall (look, I don’t like police procedurals), I’ll certainly be checking out more of their new programming than the other guys. Why? Because they took some risks and that’s about all you can (or should) ask from broadcast television. I have the CBS vitals after this break…

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You can’t have a sit-com, in this age, about young people living in an apartment. You can try, but people won’t watch it. Whether its last season’s Four Kings, or the dreadful Happy Hour on FOX, there will always be sit-coms produced in this model, but for the foreseeable future they simply won’t stick. Instead, the newer three-camera comedies that are succeeding all seem to be fairly conceptual (they also seem to be on CBS, for some reason). If ‘degree of conceptuality’ is proportional to a shows success with the public, then no series will have a bigger audience this season than CBS’s [natch] new comedy The Class. Here’s the set-up:

A guy throws a party for his fiance. The two of them were in the same third grade class, but met years later and fell in love. His idea is to invite all of his classmates from third grade to the party. About a dozen show up. When his fiance arrives, she’s shocked by his effort, feels smothered, and dumps him in front of all these now-twenty-somethings. We’re left with eight characters who kind of know each other and all the hilarity that these connections can produce.

That’s the show, and dare I say I liked it? A lot*. Keep reading by clicking below…

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When I first moved to New York City I had few possessions. I was sleeping on the floor by night and playing solitaire and listening to internet radio courtesy or an errant wifi signal by day. It was also the dead of winter, and I had no job. I would have killed to have had cable, let alone an actual television in which to watch the cable programming. At the time, my day was spent online going from media outlet to media outlet looking for whatever content had been uploaded for streaming the night before. I watched everything The Daily Show posted (which amounts to most of the good bits from the show), listened to just about every Terry Gross interview of the 21st century (and many of the 20th’s as well), and checked out whatever video-of-the-day was popular at CNN. There was enough content to keep me from going crazy, but hardy enough to stay entertained (that’s why I’d go to Barnes and Noble and read graphic novels without paying for them — devilish!).

Today, things have shifted in favor of the poor-kid with broadband. Even without cable television, there’s enough video online right now to completely pass as a TV junkie, and I’m not just talking about YouTube. There’s more on internet TV (and cartoons) by clicking below…

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I’m listening to a conference call right now with Jeff Probst, host of CBS’s reality-centerpiece Survivor. He’s on the line to address the show’s decision to split the new cast into racial “tribes.” His go-to line, and one I’ve read before, is that this is “the most ethnically diverse cast in the history of reality TV.” This may be true, though I feel like the first few seasons of The Real World would argue otherwise.

As expected, he’s 100% in favor of this decision and is certain it will revive the brand. He also calls out those who may criticize the decision without ever seeing the show– pretty standard responses whenever a show is confronted with controversy.

The series usually picks its contestants from videos mailed in by people who want to be on the show. It just so happens that the type of person who applies for a reality show in this manor is frequently white. Because of this, the casting for the new season was much more aggressive. They went out into the communities and sought out the contestants.

In response to questions about Mark Burnett’s sordid history with diversity and reality programming Probst argued that the apparent stereotypes seen in previous seasons (and shows), might have been caused by the overwhelming white presence these shows have had over the past six years. When there’s only one African-American on a show of sixteen people, anything they do that fits into a stereotype gets magnified.

It should also be noted that while various advertisers have dropped their spots from the show, in recent months (weeks?), Jeff Probst is just the show’s host and really doesn’t know all that much about the CBS balance sheet. Should he? Seems like a lot to ask from the guy.

This thing is now reaching the hour-mark, and I have to go to work. So I’m jumping ship…

I hate James Woods. I hate the snide, know-it-all character he always plays. I hate those devil-eyes of his that seem to shiv your ribs while you watch him screech his way through his roles*. All that being said, when you cast him as blood-sucking, high profile, defense attorney, he’s just about perfect.

In comparison to the just-awful Justice, which covers basically the same kind of “law” (that kind being the high profile anything-for-a-win kind), Shark at least seems to have some sort of conscious about things. Woods plays Sebastian Stark (because y’know, calling him Sebastian “Shark” would just be too silly), a confident defense-attorney who switches sides after a troubling outcome on one of his cases. That’s right! A defense attorney turning the tables on the system!

Everything here is by the numbers, luckily the show doesn’t take itself all that seriously (he has a courtroom built in his basement to practice — he claims to have the bench from “To Kill A Mockingbird” and Ito’s gavel) and thus the hour is mostly a fun time. The series even gives Mr. Stark some plot-lines revolving around his home-life and his daughter giving us a bit more than your typical law-procedural.

This isn’t Perry Mason or Matlock or hell, even Ally McBeal, but it isn’t an entirely unpleasant way to spend a hour on a nondescript Thursday evening.

Shark premieres on CBS Thursday, September 21st at 10:00pm et.

*With the exception being his role as the father in The Virgin Suicides, which I found delightfully understated.