Author: John Paulsen (Page 22 of 79)

TV.com’s top 10 Conan O’Brien sketches

Conan left “Late Night” last week, and TV.com put together a list of his funniest creations…

6. In the Year 2000
Using flashlights for the worst special effect ever, Conan and Andy (or a guest) donned robes and what looked like jingle bells around their necks for a look into the future. First started before the turn of the millennium, the absurdity of the sketch got even better in 2001 and beyond. And big ups to band member Richie “LaBamba” Rosenburg for providing the haunting chorus.

I’m looking forward to Conan taking over the “Tonight Show,” though I am nervous for him. It’s going to be interesting to see how he scales back his quirky/semi-offensive humor for the 11:30 crowd. He’s scheduled to take over the show in June.

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock

After last week’s jam-packed episode, the series downshifted a bit, delving into the minutiae (i.e. the food shortage) that played such a prominent role in the first two seasons. While Baltar and Paula were arguing about food, I was wondering if this was really how we were going to spend the last five episodes. This detail-oriented stuff was interesting when the show was finding its feet, but with all that has happened, it just feels trivial. The major plot points to come out of Baltar’s storyline is that Caprica Six is back in his head (yay!) and that he managed to convince Bill to give him a trunk load of guns to defend their food stock. (I’ll admit that it was funny to see how Baltar picked the prettiest mom to help, resulting in a major eye-roll from Paula. Some things never change.)

It was nice of Boomer to bring Ellen back to the fleet, but their arrival has all sorts of consequences. First and foremost, Ellen is still an annoying bitch. When she finds out that Tigh and Caprica Six are expecting, it throws her into a jealous rage and she tries to manipulate the situation to get back into Saul’s arms. The plan may have worked too, as it could have been the stress of Ellen’s return that sent Caprica’s pregnancy off the rails. Now that the baby is out of the picture, I’d expect Tigh and Ellen to pick up where they left off. (Baltar and Caprica Six may too, for that matter.)

Tory, Tyrol and some of the numbered Cylons suddenly want to leave the fleet, and given what Sam said before his surgery — “Don’t leave the fleet!” — Tigh is more than a little reluctant. Since Caprica lost the baby, the whole Cylons-can-procreate argument doesn’t really hold much water, so they may decide to stick around for a while. Bill’s worried about Galactica’s dependence on Cylon technology, but the lesson (probably) is that humans and Cylons need each other to survive.

Boomer’s return creates another issue — what does Bill do with her? She tried to assassinate him and then defected from the other 8’s to join Cavil in the Cylon civil war. As one of our readers suggested last week, she may have come back to rejoin Tyrol. He’s single and obviously still has feelings for her. This could drive a wedge between Bill and Tyrol, and that’s not good.

Finally, I have to mention a subtle yet hilarious exchange in Bill’s quarters when Baltar was pleading for help…

Bill: The two of you can listen to this.
Lee: Where are you going?
Bill: To the head, to do something constructive. A little project I’ve been working on.

The term “head” of course means the toilet, so Bill is saying that taking a dump is more constructive than listening to Baltar speak. That’s some dry humor there. Great stuff.

The ultimate Oscar acceptance speech, by Denis Leary

Variety has the best acceptance speech…ever…as written by “Rescue Me” star Denis Leary. (Keep in mind this is from the POV of an actress, not an actor.)

Okay. First of all — I’d like to thank God for just taking time out of His busy schedule curing cancer and feeding the hungry and solving the crisis in Darfur with George Clooney and helping so many different wide receivers and quarterbacks to throw and catch footballs and instead making sure that I got singled out of such a wonderful group of actors like Meryl and Mary-Louise and Cate Blanchett and Angelina and Marcia Gay and Kate Winslet and just – all the Kates and the Kevins and the two name and the three name people I feel so honored just to be up here while they are all down there and I’d like to just thank the Academy and the people who hated me and treated me like such dirt and who made me stab them in the back just to get here and now you can suck it and Botox! I almost forgot Botox! And Restylin and Cosmoderm and Prestocheek and Instatit and all the other animal agents I’ve had injected into my face and stuff. Oh my god my agents — I almost forgot the entire squad of agents and managers and hangers-on whose asses I have kissed and coddled for so many long B and C movie years now and also — it would be so bad not to thank my team of surgeons who have stretched and sculpted and pulled and pressure-pointed every aspect of my face, neck and armfat until I look so young and ripe and yet somehow still able to move my forehead and eyebrows just enough to frown and laugh and look focused which is a huge part of why I just won this!

And that’s just about a third of it…

Friday night — where good shows go to die

In theory, Fox had a solid idea. Pair Joss Whedon’s new hour-long drama, “Dollhouse,” with “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” to create a male-skewing sci-fi block on Friday night. They’ve had success on Friday’s in the past with sci-fi; “The X-Files” flourished there (or at least paid for itself) for several years. But The Live Feed reports that ratings for both shows were a disappointment.

The series premiere of Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” was seen by 4.7 million viewers Friday night and garnered a 2.0 preliminary adults 18-49 rating and 6 share. It was beaten in the 9 p.m. hour by ABC’s “Supernanny” (6.1 million viewers, 2.2/7) and is the lowest-rated scripted series premiere on a major broadcast network this season aside from NBC’s now-defunct “Crusoe.”

“Dollhouse” was paired with the midseason return of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (3.7 million, 1.3/5), which was shifted from its previous Monday post. “Terminator” came in third place in the hour and hit a series low (by like 27%). “Terminator” beat NBC’s “Howie Do It” (3.9 million, 1.2/4), but not by much. Both “Ghost Whisperer” (10.3 million, 2.4/8) and “Wife Swap” (4.3 million, 1.5/5) did better.

I thought “Dollhouse” had a pretty solid premiere, but I was by no means blown away. The premise is interesting — that there’s a business that can reprogram “dolls” to become whatever its clients need. In the premiere, Echo (Eliza Dushku), started out as a party girl meant to entertain a rich playboy, but was reprogrammed to become an expert in kidnapping scenarios. Dushku looks great in a dress, but was a little stiff when she was trying to convince the father of a kidnapped girl that she was the right person for the job. I’m not sure that she’s the right one to carry the series, though future episodes will decide this. Stepping back a bit, I’m not sure how some viewers may react to seeing this pretty girl having her brain wiped at least once per episode. If the heroine doesn’t have some consistent character traits week-to-week, she may be tough to relate to.

I’ve liked “Terminator” all along, and I’m surprised that it is struggling in the ratings. I suppose this has to do with the collective attention span of fans of the movie series. Maybe stringing out a serialized plot over 20+ episodes is just too slow of a pace for those that fell in love with the action-packed “Terminator” films. This is a perfect example of a series that should have a 13-episode season, like many of the series on HBO, Showtime, FX and TNT. Shorter seasons means a compact season-long story arc and no filler, which is the main reason that a series loses viewership. When people get bored they naturally move on.

Another Friday show that is dying a slow death is “Friday Night Lights.” It consistently scored in the 4.0-5.0 range in its first season, and that fell to the 3.0-4.0 range in its second foray. Now, after premiering on DirecTV this fall, the show is garnering ratings in the 2.2-2.8 range as NBC runs the episodes for the non-DirecTV folks. Is this enough to keep this stellar show on the air for another season? Only the big-wigs at DirecTV and NBC know for sure, but given the state of the economy, it would be surprising if it were granted a fourth season.

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