it was only a matter of time

sing it with me kids: "so long, farewell blah blah blah and good night!" bye bye pushing daisies, au revoir eli stone, adios dirtysexymoney.

inevitable decision from the disney network. i remain donald sutherland's loyal servant and already anxiously await his next project. after all, anyone who could make the spine-shudderingly bad commander-in-chief with geena davis worth watching will come back to the small screen again and again.

jericho jr.... sort of

per THR: "FX is looking at a drama project called AR2, focused on a group of college aged kids in the midwest who begin a second American Revolution. The project is from a couple of notables: Prison Break's Paul Scheuring, and West Wing's Tommy Schlamme."

well, we all know that i just LOVE tommy schlamme. i love his name. i find myself including it in otherwise unrelated sentences just to hear it said out loud. i also love his work - the whole wide breadth of it from chicago hope to studio 60. i do NOT like his prediliction for shoving his wife into every drama he has in some manner or another. however, i think this show definitely skews too young for her to show up unless she is someone's mom. the verdict is obviously out until i see how the casting lines up, but if they can get a fairly decent group of sort of knowns, i see good things.

FX is definitely the network where a show like this belongs because timeslot shuffling isn't an issue and any ratings in the 1.xx arena are considered decent. this is the network that hung in there with The Riches and Dirt, after all.

bunker hill

The upcoming Bunker Hill on TNT is sounding better and better with every new casting addition I read - Veteran actor Brian Dennehy was just added to costar with Donnie Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan, per THR. The pilot is set in the Bunker Hill area of Boston and explores crime corruption and deceit with Wahlberg as a cop who returns to his childhood home, Moynahan as his sister-in-law and Dennehy playing a former mobster who now runs a flower shop. I think this show is starting in spring 2009, when Raising the Bar and Damages return... I think TNT used to be the poor man's FX, but now TNT is the new FX for me.

the iconoclasts indulgence

season 4 begins tonight on the sundance channel and includes a few surprises:
desmond tutu + richard branson
stella mccartney + edward ruscha
the overwhelming number of hollywood types throughout the series has me wondering though, has iconoclasts missed its mark??? season 1 was solid and set the show up to be at the very least, an interesting diversion. i am not sure they've been able to capture my attention quite as much since.
season 1 pairings:
brian grazer + sumner redstone
mario batali + michael stipe (they cooked and sang together!)
robert redford + paul newman (this one was AMAZING)
samuel l jackson + bill russell
tom ford + jeff koons
renee zellwegger + christine amanpour
season 2 was entirely forgettable. even the pairing that had the most potential, alice waters + mikhail baryshnikov was fairly mundane.
season 3 reads like a guest list to a movie premiere. i'll keep it up for at least the 2 episodes mentioned above, but may skip those like mike myers + deepak chopra.

save the cheerleader, save the world. when did heroes get so bad?

this show started out so well. underrated concept (what was the last live action comic book show on tv? wonderwoman or incredible hulk?), interesting story arcs, a myriad of characters to relate to.. season 2 sort of lost me a little, but i was still committed. now i find myself 5 or 6 episodes into the 22 episodes of season 3 and i am wondering what happened. why is this one of the last shows i gravitate to on my weekly tivo list? too many characters, especially too much of the brother/sister where the sister cries black tears and kills everyone. too much arcing and rearcing and time travelling. too little repetition of the original cheerleader saves the world overarching theme. in short, it moved so far away from where it started.
it was an interesting mystery you honestly felt you could figure out - who were the heroes?, how did they get their powers?, was claire's dad really bad? was the company working for or against the heroes? how would the cheerleader save the world?. the good vs evil themes do make for successful tv ratings. other viewers must have been finding themselves in the same place because ratings have dropped (aka plummeted). from daily cynopsis - "Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb, co-executive producers on NBC's Heroes were laid off Sunday. Both had been with the show since its inception and led the daily production operation reporting to Tim Kring, creator/executive producer. In its third season, Heroes, produced by Universal Media Studios, has posted lower than expected ratings and the show is dealing with budget overruns this season. Alexander and Loeb were apparently cut because NBC's executives are concerned about the creative direction of the show. "

i fully expected the peacock to look for a fall guy (or guys) when their 'can't miss' show starts missing. but am surprised they didn't pick Tim Kring - the guy has 54 writing credits under his belt while the other 2 have total combined writing creds of 7 episodes. ultimately, Kring holds the creative direction as the shows creator, exec producer and overwhelmingly primary writer and would have been the better choice if they were looking to revamp. my guess is contractually they couldn't get rid of him. perhaps they should change the tagline to fire the producer, save the show....

additional episode requests and cancellations

ABC: 7 new episodes of Samantha Who?. This order takes the total number of episodes this season to 20. Normally, a full-season order consists of 22 episodes, however ABC indicated it has enough episodes in the pipeline from other sitcoms, such as Scrubs and According to Jim and does not need as many episodes of Samantha Who?. imo, a great move by ABC - this show rocks and is one of the last funny shows on tv. samantha is sort of a modern day mary tyler moore.
NBC: 9 new episodes of Kath & Kim, giving it a full-season order. To date, Kath & Kim, starring Molly Shannon and Selma Blair has averaged a 2.6/6 among A18-49 and 6.0 million viewers. i can't be the only person thinking WTF right now... this show is just not that good.
CW: Media Rights Capital is pulling the plug on its Sunday night shows - Valentine and Easy Money. MRC programs Sunday nights on The CW this season, and to continue to fill these two slots, will clearly have to come up with two new shows... per recommendation of my brother, i tried watching easy money, but i just couldn't get into it. as a result, i also caught an episode of valentine and it was so weekday afternoon bad scifi romance crossover from WPIX channel 11 i couldn't believe that MRC paid for it. or that the chick from The OC ended up there!!!