While “The Jay Leno Show” performed well in its second night, Tuesday’s broadcast varied a bit in format. In the show’s premiere, Leno was on camera the entire time (excluding the music act), unlike the later years of his “Tonight Show.” Given Leno’s established presence, viewers will tune in regardless. However, Leno’s well aware that producing five hours of comedy on a weekly basis is taxing, especially at this point in his career. Leno, who’s been in the business for decades, can’t and doesn’t need to get any more popular. Safe comedy simply works in America and we’ll just see how it pans out at 10 PM on weeknights. As long as Leno does his monologue and a high-profile interview, he’ll have his core audience there every night with him. Still, an hour is a long time in television and rather than cram his imposing figure into every segment, Leno’s decided to spotlight comedians he admires or who have garnered the attention of his talent scouts. Last night, comedian Jim Norton made his first appearance on the show in a segment called “Uninvited Guest.” We should see more time devoted to these “correspondents” in the near future — it’s the only reason guys like me will give the show a chance.
Month: September 2009 (Page 14 of 29)
Last night’s “Biggest Loser” season premiere featured 16 contestants, some of them among the heaviest the show has ever allowed on. And the theme of the season is “second chances,” including Daniel Wright, the dude who last season was the heaviest competitor ever at 454 pounds. Daniel has returned this season to try and finish his mission and become The Biggest Loser. There are also folks who have had the short end of the stick in life, so to speak, none more dramatic than Abby, who lost her husband and two young children in a horrible car crash a couple of years ago, and let her weight balloon up. She’s been given a second chance to get her life back on track, as have others who have had their lives de-railed in one way or another.
So the episode began with the contestants being bused to the beach, where they met up with show host Alison Sweeney. Mrs. Mike reminded me to mention that Alison looks positively awesome, especially after having a baby last season. Seriously, she does….and I think I speak for all of America when I say I’d like to know what her own diet and workout regimine has been!
Wake up. It’s been a busy day in movie world.
* Plenty of festival happenings up are in the offing up in Toronto, the most high profile of which is the famously award-savvy Weinstein Company’s pick, for a reported $1-2 million, of “A Single Man.” This is a sort of film that would be strictly art-house fare, and low profile art-house fare at that, if it weren’t also potential Oscar fare. From fashion designer-turned director Tom Ford, it’s a drama about a college professor (Colin Firth) dealing with the death of his lover over the course of a single day in 1960s Los Angeles. The film also stars Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode (Adrian Veidt in “Watchmen“) and is based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, the openly gay mid-century English-born writer whose stories about Wiemar-era Berlin eventually became “I Am a Camera” by playwright John van Druten, which eventually became the movie and stage musicals, “Cabaret.” Variety has the details along with more about the activity surrounding a number of other new movies.
The most interesting of these to me is “Harry Brown,” which stars Michael Caine in a film that’s going to be plugged, probably inaccurately, as the Brit “Gran Torino.” I’ve always liked Caine’s movie work, but he became something of a personal hero of mine while I was researching a Bullz-Eye look back at his career not so long ago. If you’ve never seen the original version of “Get Carter,” it’s important to know Caine is capable of being at least twice as tough as Mr. Eastwood or just about anyone else this side of Lee Marvin. That’s largely because he’s an extremely disciplined film actor and also probably partly because his pre-stardom life was, really and truly, no picnic. The man’s known grinding poverty, serious action in the Korean War, and the down and dirty truth of crime in his native London. His acting only gets better as such relatively recent films as “The Quiet American” and “Children of Men” proves. This one really has my attention.
* The new head of DC Entertainment, Diane Nelson, made her rep partly as the manager of the Harry Potter “brand” for Warner Brothers. No word on whether and/or how much she was involved, but Warners is annoucing a deal with the Universal Orlando Resort for a Harry Potter theme park. Nikki Finke has the press release and videos showing the basic layout (it’s essentially Hogsmeade, the town adjacent to Hogwarts from the books and movies), as well as plugs from Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson.
After the events of last week’s episode, it didn’t seem like Kurt Sutter was going to waste any time in getting to the showdown between the Sons of Anarchy and the Neo-Nazis, but when I actually had the time to sit down and think about it, I wondered if Gemma would actually tell Clay about what happened to her. Fast-forward a couple of days to tonight’s episode, and sure enough, Gemma is keeping mum on the subject. For the time being, the only people that know about Gemma’s attack are Wayne and Tara, and even they don’t know who was responsible. She’s made them swear not to tell anyone else, either, and in order to cover it up, Wayne wrecks Gemma’s car to make it look like she was in a crash. It’s only a matter of time before Clay finds out, however, because she’s acting really vulnerable around him, and he’s gotta know that someone as headstrong as Gemma wouldn’t be that shaken up over something like a car crash.
If nothing else, Gemma has certainly succeeded in pissing off Charming’s newest residents – namely AJ, who can’t believe that Gemma hasn’t told Clay the truth. When he runs back to tell Ethan (henceforth known as Mr. White) the bad news, Mr. White suggests they might have underestimated Gemma. Whether that means they’re going to attack her again remains unseen, but they’re definitely not about to give up after one failed attempt. In fact, Mr. White already has another plan in play (providing intel to the Mayans about a gun deal going down between the Sons and the One-Niners), though I have to think that goes against everything he believes in. After all, he didn’t tell AJ that he was working with them, and we already know his feelings on that subject matter.
The shootout at the aforementioned gun deal happened as a result of Jax’s decision to pin the Mayan murder on the One-Niners, and though Clay wasn’t happy about it to begin with, he was doubly pissed when it resulted in Bobby taking a bullet to the shoulder. Jax’s reasoning for the frame-up was great (“Spur of the moment, seemed like the right thing. Sure you can understand.”), but I can’t help but feel like Clay still came out on top when it was all over. He really does seem to know what he’s doing when it comes to running the club, and though Jax is going to continue to crucify him for Donna’s death, he still needs to learn a few things before he takes over. Then again, it was going to end up badly for the Sons no matter what Jax did with the body, so he really had no choice.
Plus, he quickly redeemed himself by coming up with a new way for the club to make some extra cash. When Otto’s wife, Luanne, has to shut down her porn studio due to an investigation by ATF (no doubt ordered by Agent Stahl out of spite), a rival producer known for the sleazy treatment of his female stars (Tom Arnold) tries to steal Luanne’s girls. Jax and Co. effectively persuade him to back off with the help of some baseball bats, and in return, the Sons get a 50% stake in everything Luanne earns. It’s kind of a shit deal for her, but it’s better than what she was expecting when she agreed to meet Jax at the abandoned warehouse, to which he replied, “You think I brought you here to Adrianna you?”
Comparisons to “The Sopranos” be damned, it’s nice to see the writers have finally begun to embrace the similarities between their show and the former HBO hit. Casting Drea de Matteo was certainly a coup from the start, but this easily trumps her guest appearance any day of the week.
Can a late night talk show work at 10 PM? That was the question NBC executives were asking themselves when they picked up “The Jay Leno Show,” the veteran comedian’s newest venture into television. “The Jay Leno Show” would esentially test people’s willingness to choose a network comedy during a time slot historically reserved for dramas. Though it’s too early to celebrate a resounding success, the show’s premiere certainly exceeded expectations.
According to Nielsen preliminary estimates, “Jay Leno,” whose premiere night guest was Jerry Seinfeld, averaged a 5.1 rating/13 share in adults 18-49 and 17.7 million viewers overall during the 10 o’clock hour. This is a larger audience than any episode of an NBC series from last season, and the best overall for NBC in the timeslot since the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.
A big premiere rating was expected, but it will probably take a few weeks to see where the show’s number settles, or what kind of a local news lead-in it provides for the network’s affiliates. The 5.1 rating is a bit above industry expectations for the premiere and is about three times what NBC has said it could do on an annual basis to generate a profit.
This is all very impressive, but one has to consider the large audience tuning in to see what would happen with Kanye West. Still, drawing 17.7 million viewers for any TV premiere should be huge news, so it’s curious to note how quiet NBC is being about it. Remember, they did claim Conan was the new “King of Late Night” when they handed him “The Tonight Show.” If Leno keeps these numbers up, they’ll have to eat their words. Conan will be fine, but it’s a bittersweet predicament.
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