Category: TV Action (Page 22 of 145)

Your “24” Season 8 refresher guide, damn it

January 14, 2010 /

As we ponder which pop culture reference to use as our opening to the return of Season 8 of “24” – would ‘We love the smell of terror in the morning’ work, or should be go musical and simply say ‘Welcome to the terrordome, again’? – we realized that the seven-month layoff between seasons produces some rather large gaps in memory when it comes to the previous day’s events, and this is coming from the person responsible for blogging the damn show. As a means of getting everyone (especially me) up to speed with both the returning characters and the new ones in anticipation of the upcoming two-day premiere – once again competing with the Golden Globes, ugh – we’ve prepped this handy little refresher guide on what you can expect this season. And as a precaution, we’ve included a SPOILER ALERT! warning when appropriate. Man, IMDb is helpful and all, but sometimes it blatantly gives the game away.

RETURNING FOR DUTY
Name: Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland)
Last seen: In a coma, finally succumbing to the nerve agent that he inadvertently exposed himself to while trying to stop a major attack in Day 7.
Present whereabouts: Seemingly cured of any and all ill effects of the nerve agent and preparing to relocate back to Los Angeles to be closer to his daughter and granddaughter, who’s named after Jack’s dead wife.
Likelihood of surviving to final clock tick: 1,000,000,000%. If they kill Jack Bauer, it won’t be on the small screen. And even if they did decide to kill him on TV, they’re sure as hell not going do it the same year as the final season of “Lost.”

Name: Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajksub)
Last seen: using a laptop, which was practically still smoking from the fire that it was pulled from, to pinpoint the location of Season 7 baddie Alan Wilson.
Present whereabouts: Working her tech magic for the newly reinstated CTU office in New York.
Likelihood of surviving to final clock tick: 90%, though we suspect that should Chloe die, Jack would just fall to the ground like a marionette.

Name: Kim Bauer (Elisha Cuthbert)
Last seen: Going against her father’s wishes and consenting to the doctors’ request to use her stem cells to save Jack.
Present whereabouts: Still on the east coast with the intent to move back west. The mother of an infant at the end of Season 7, her daughter is now roughly four years old, even though we believe only 18 months have passed since this season and last.
Likelihood of surviving to final clock tick: 100%. Like cockroaches, Keith Richards and U2, Kim Bauer cannot be killed.

Name: President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones)
Last seen: Sending her treacherous daughter to the slammer for a laundry list of grotesque offenses, thereby guaranteeing that her husband never has sex with her again.
Present whereabouts: New York, where she will sign a landmark treaty with President Omar Hassan. Or at least that’s the plan.
Likelihood of surviving to final clock tick: 95%. She’s damn tough, and even some of the Presidents that die on camera don’t really die. Take, for example…

Name: President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin)
Last seen: Flatlining in an ambulance after being stabbed by his wife, former First Lady of Crazy Martha Logan.
Present whereabouts: Unknown, but word has leaked that Logan will return at some point this season.
Likelihood of surviving to final clock tick: 100%. Hey, if Martha couldn’t kill him…

Name: Renee Walker (Annie Wersching) (SPOILER ALERT!)
Last seen: Sneaking into the holding room of Alan Wilson, with the intent to make him squeal like a pig for orchestrating the day’s events, not to mention the death of her boss, Larry “Dudley Do Right” Moss.
Present whereabouts: Unknown, but we’re guessing it’s somewhere dark, cold, and ratty.
Likelihood of surviving to final clock tick: 5%. We already had a sneaking suspicion that Renee, a.k.a. Jacqueline Bauer, was destined to fill that ‘dead/damaged lover’ slot in Jack’s life, but then IMDb revealed this, um, revealing fact: as of press date, Wersching was credited for appearing in 47 episodes of “24.” You do the math.

THE ROOKIES
The re-opening of the New York office of CTU will serve much like the introduction of the FBI in Season 7. New bosses, new agents, new techies, and most likely, new moles. But damned if this bunch doesn’t appear to be squeaky clean. For now.

Name: Omar Hassan (Anil Kapoor)
Title: President of the fictional Muslim nation of Kamistan and assassination target.
Potential 24 Blog Nickname: Slumdog President
Likelihood of surviving to final clock tick: 100% Swear to God, I got in a conversation with two Indian men at a local liquor store about Anil Kapoor (an ad for “24” appeared on the TV behind them), and they both proceeded to recite a laundry list of Chuck Norris-type facts about Anil Kapoor. Apparently, Kapoor can do seven lengths in an Olympic swimming pool…underwater. I was going to inquire about Kapoor’s roundhouse kick, but thought better of it, grabbed my booze, and left.

Name: Dana Walsh (Katie Sackhoff)
Title: Director of IT, CTU New York
Potential 24 Blog Nickname: If I don’t call her Starbuck, all hell will break loose.
Likelihood of being mole in disguise: 20%. She appears to be more of a Nasia Yassir (the lovely Marisol Nichols) type. Which is fine with us. After all, why bring in someone like Katie Sackhoff and ask your audience to root against her?

Name: Brian Hastings (Mykelti Williamson)
Title: Director of CTU New York
Potential 24 Blog Nickname: Sorry, Mykelti, but you’ll always be Bubba to us.
Likelihood of of being mole in disguise: 10%, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts he’s dead before the day’s over. Directors of CTU have a higher mortality rate than Jack’s girlfriends. (*pours out 40 in honor of Bill Buchanan*)

Name: Cole Ortiz (Freddie Prinze Jr.)
Title: Agent, CTU New York
Potential 24 Blog Nickname: There is surely a Mr. Buffy Summers joke in there somewhere, but man, that seems too easy.
Likelihood of of being mole in disguise: 15%. He’s an ex-Marine (that’s right, Freddie Prinze Jr. is playing an ex-Marine), so the odds of him betraying his country are highly unlikely. It would be a nice play against type, but “24” doesn’t really play that way. They tend to cast former weasels to play current weasels. See Sean Hillinger, a.k.a. Billy Walsh, from Season 7.

Name: Arlo Glass (John Boyd)
Title: Systems Analyst
Potential 24 Blog Nickname: TBD. Considering his relatively skint resume, including such roles as Drunk Guy and One-Eyebrow Smoker, we’ll need some time together before a nickname presents itself.
Likelihood of of being mole in disguise: 10%, though we wonder if he’ll produce trouble for Chloe and Morris.

That’s all we know for the moment, but the “24” blog will be back open for business Monday morning to discuss the first two hours. Fox, though needs to be slapped silly for scheduling the premiere opposite the Golden Globes, again. Yes, yes, moving the premiere to Monday and Tuesday would mess up “American Idol’s” schedule, blah blah blah. Nobody cares. Heck, the stars of “24” will be at the Golden Globes, for crying out loud. Jeesh.

24, Actors, Actresses, External TV, TV, TV Action

TCA Tour: 24

January 14, 2010 /

Having already seen the first four hours of the new season of “24,” I can tell you without hesitation that it’s absolutely going to be worth your while to tune in when Jack Bauer’s latest day kicks off on January 17th, but, then, if you’re a fan of the show, you’ve probably already had your Sunday night planned out for quite some time now. What you’re likely more interested in knowing is if this will be the last season of “24.” Fortunately, that was the first question posed of Kiefer Sutherland and his fellow executive producer, Howard Gordon, during Fox’s panel for the series.

“We’ve always approached each season, just the task of doing it, as so great that, literally, from the very first season on, we’ve completed that season, and it was really FOX’s decision to pick us up,” said Sutherland. “There’s never been one specific season that the next season was guaranteed or ensured. This has been one of the greatest gifts of my life, the ability to do ’24.’ So for me, yeah, it’s something that is absolutely open. I’ve always said that as long as people wanted us to make it, and people were really interested in watching it, I would be interested. There’s a lot of components involved. The task of writing it is far greater than the task of acting in it, so Howard can talk about that for a moment, but certainly, it’s always open to continue on doing it.”

“I sort of second Kiefer’s thoughts about it,” said Gordon. “It’s always been a very year-to-year, minute-to-minute, day-to-day experience. There’s the intellectual and sort of emotional and creative curiosity. The writers sit around, and in the margins of the time when we aren’t working on Season 8 we do ask ourselves, ‘What if…?’ So it certainly is a possibility.”

So there you go: now you can safely enjoy the new season without feeling a sense of dread that they’re entering it with feelings of finality. We’ll get back to Messrs. Sutherland and Howard in a bit, but with that bit of pressing information out of the way, let’s check in to see what some of the other “24” folks are thinking about as they prepare for the premiere…

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24, External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas

“Fringe” producers, what were you thinking?

January 13, 2010 /

If Monday’s episode of “Fringe” is still sitting unwatched on your DVR, you may want to skip this post for now, and come back when you’re thoroughly confused. In fact, I’ll give this a good ol’ **SPOILER ALERT** for those who skim intros instead of reading them.

Anyway, Monday’s episode of “Fringe” started like any other episode of the series — with some sort of strange or creepy event. This time, it was a young girl who was considered brain dead and was about to have her organs harvested for donation when she woke up and started spewing military codes to the surgeon.

Fine, no problem. But then something strange happened — Charlie Francis appeared on screen! And it didn’t seem to be Shapeshifter Charlie (the one who looks dastardly no matter what he’s doing), it was the actual Charlie Francis. I paused the show and had the following conversation with my wife:

Me: “Wait, isn’t he dead?”
Her: “Yeah, didn’t she shoot him in the alley?”
Me: “The shapeshifter guy killed the original Charlie, right?”
Her: “I thought so.”

My guess is that some form of this conversation happened in millions of living rooms around the country during the first 15 minutes of the episode. I hit play and pulled out my trusty laptop, determined to find out what exactly was going on.

Can zombies do math? Find out on the next episode of “Fringe.”

As it turns out, this episode (“Unearthed”) was an unaired episode from Season 1, before Charlie was replaced by Shapeshifter Charlie. Why the producers would decide to air this episode as the first of 2010 is beyond me. Wouldn’t it be better not to thoroughly confuse your audience as you try to retain all those viewers that lived just fine without “Fringe” during the holiday break?

I don’t mind the unaired episode (I guess), but how about reshooting the scenes without Charlie? Or, at the very least, how about a graphic that says “15 months ago” or somesuch thing? Better yet, let’s have Kirk Acevedo (who plays Charlie) introduce the episode by telling people not to be alarmed when Zombie Charlie appears out of nowhere.

For their part, Fox put out the following press release before the episode aired:

While the girl’s mind-bending condition intensifies, Walter dusts off some old lab videos and hypothesizes the unthinkable, sending Olivia and Peter to investigate the bewildering case in an original “Unearthed” episode of FRINGE and here’s another mystery: is it an unaired episode from Season One or is it from an alternate universe?

Wait…what?

This sounds like a half-baked justification of airing an old episode in the middle of a new season. Normally, that would be somewhat acceptable, but what percentage of the audience was aware that this was an unaired episode (or one from an alternate universe–oooh) before they sat down to watch it? One percent? Two percent?

“Fringe” producers, what were you thinking?

External Entertainment, External TV, TV, TV Action, TV Sci-Fi

TCA Tour: Lost

January 13, 2010 /

Let us begin our coverage of ABC’s “Lost” panel by giving all due props to Jonathan Storm, TV critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, who kicked things off with the following statement: “Hello, I’d like to ask each one of you to tell exactly what happens in the final season.”

Nice try, Mr. Storm.

Fortunately, Storm had a back-up question ready to ask of the panel – which consisted of Emilie de Ravin (Claire), Daniel Dae Kim (Jin), Josh Holloway (Sawyer), Evangeline Lilly (Kate), executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Terry O’Quinn (Locke), Michael Emerson (Ben), and Jorge Garcia (Hurley) – once the laughter stopped: how are you feeling as this comes to an end?

“As we were walking out onto the stage and this montage was playing, I was whispering to my cast members, ‘I am going to cry like a baby when this show ends,'” said Lilly. “It’s become so nostalgic for us to look back over six years and have grown up together and grown up in front of all of you together. It’s been so intense that for it to come to an end is going to be life-changing.”

Garcia instantly agreed. “Certain places that we shoot, it’s, like, ‘Wow, I haven’t been here since season three,'” he said. “Right now, it’s very appreciative and precious.”

“There’s a lot of camaraderie on set now,” acknowledged Holloway. “It feels…a lot of magic, like the first season. It was an incredibly magical year, and the whole experience, of course, has been incredible, but this last year, everyone’s really getting that sense of camaraderie and nostalgia, and it’s just been fabulous.”

“You know, personally, I’m just feeling a tremendous amount of gratitude,” said Lindelof, “and the idea that we’re getting to end something while anybody still cares and while we still kind of love each other, as opposed to everybody saying, ‘It’s about time.’ This is sort of a once-in-a-lifetime or once-in-a-career experience, for a show that’s still performing, for the network to allow us to end it, is a tremendous gift. As Evangeline was saying, as I was walking onto the stage, I was sort of experiencing a sense of, ‘I can’t believe they’re going to actually let us get away with this.'”

When asked how long the conclusion of “Lost” had been determined, Cuse acknowledged that there really wasn’t a definitive answer to that question. “We came up with the final image of the show a long time ago back when we were first plotting out the mythology in the first season, then we started adding elements to that as we went along…and, really, between the first and the second season is when we cooked the mythology,” he said. “We kind of knew what the end point was, but as you move towards the end point, you add elements. Obviously, the end is not yet written, and there are certain sort of mythological, architectural elements that are intact for that ending, but a lot of character stuff will get worked out as we go along. I mean, that’s part of the discovery process of writing. For instance, Michael Emerson wasn’t on the show at that point. It’s a fun process because we sort of have a concept of where we’re going to end the show, but there is still the process of actually executing it and there still is the process of discovery, particularly on a character level, that will come into play as we finish the show.”

“So if you guys have any ideas,” said Lindelof, “we’re open-minded.”

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External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, Lost, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

TCA Tour: NBC Executive Session

January 10, 2010 /

I think it’s fair to say that there wasn’t a single member of the Television Critics Associate who wasn’t chomping at the bit to see how this session was going to go down. With all of the controversy breaking about the reported cancellation of “The Jay Leno Show” and rumors of its host moving to a half-hour slot at 11:35 PM, thereby moving the other members of the late-night line-up – “The Tonight Show starring Conan O’Brien” and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” back by an hour, everybody wanted to know how NBC was going to handle damage control.

“I see we have a full house,” said NBC Universal TV chairman Jeff Gaspin, as he walked onto the stage and stood before a ballroom filled with TV critics, many of whom were poised to pounce. “I heard there were some scalpers outside.”

The levity quickly went by the wayside, however, as Gaspin went into the recitation of what one can only presume was a well-tweaked statement, confirming that, starting February 12th, “The Jay Leno Show” will no longer air at 10 PM. He admitted that, although the series performed at acceptable levels for the network, it did not meet the needs of the network’s affiliates, hence the change in programming strategy. He also stated that NBC’s goal was to keep all three of its hosts as part of the late-night landscape – “The Jay Leno Show” at 11:35 PM, “The Tonight Show starring Conan O’Brien” at 12:05 AM, and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” at 1:05 AM – while acknowledging that this plan was in no way a done deal and that talks are still ongoing.

“It’s a fluid situation,” said Gaspin. “Everybody has the weekend to think about it, and we’ll see what happens when we start the new week tomorrow.”

While he would not confirm the hosts’ specific reactions to the new plan, Gaspin said that all three gentlemen were “incredibly gracious and professional” and that they acknowledged that they knew it was a difficult situation. As for anything else that went down during the discussions, he merely described it as a “private conversation,” adding, “When it’s all settled, you can go and ask them what their feelings were.”

Gaspin expects that the new late-night line-up will be in place by the time NBC’s coverage of the Olympics begins in February.

Unsurprisingly, the critics’ claws were soon out, with one wanting to know exactly what happened with the network’s assurances during the summer TCA tour that the success or failure of “The Jay Leno Show” would not be determined fully until the series had run for a full 52-week cycle. Gaspin maintained that the 52-week plan still would’ve been his preference but again cited the affiliates’ concerns as being the driving force behind the comparatively-quick removal of the series from its prime-time berth.

“Starting in November, the affiliates started calling, saying that local news was being affected more than expected,” said Gaspin. By the end of the month, the stations which utilized people meters for their ratings continued their complaints, now citing statistics where, in some cases, #1 local news broadcasts had dropped to #3. Gaspin continued his constant dialogue with the affiliates, requesting that they wait and see how the show would do against repeats…and, indeed, “The Jay Leno Show” did do better, but only by about a tenth of a rating point, still coming in second to either CBS or ABC on a regular basis. When the smaller affiliates without people meters got their November book numbers, “the drum beat started getting louder,” Gaspin said, and as it became progressively more clear that they were only going to be getting more vocal about their displeasure, throwing around comments about possible preemption, “we realized things were not going to go well if it was kept in place.”

Gaspin continued to clarify, however, that despite the feelings of the affiliates, NBC did not feel that “The Jay Leno Show” was a disappointment on a network level. “It was working at acceptable levels financially, making money at 10 PM,” he said. “For the network, it was not a wrong decision.”

He also underlined that, insofar as he was concerned, the reason behind the limited viewership had nothing to do with the show or its level of quality. “There’s a lot of choice at 10 PM,” he said. “We thought it could be everybody’s second choice, but there were just so many other choices that people thought were better.” In the end, Gaspin conceded that “The Jay Leno Show,” while being easy entertainment, simply wasn’t the first or even second choice of enough viewers.

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External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas

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