Category: TV (Page 382 of 595)

A Chat with Kevin Falls, producer of “Journeyman”

November 23, 2007 /

If the only names that catch your eye during a television show’s opening credits are those of the actors, you probably aren’t aware that Kevin Falls is the creator and an executive producer (not to mention show runner) of NBC’s “Journeyman.” And if that’s the case, then you almost certainly wouldn’t have been aware that he’s also had a hand in “Sports Night,” “Arli$$,” “The West Wing,” “The Lyon’s Den,” “North Shore,” and “Shark” over the years as well. Given recent rumblings that Falls’ current gig isn’t nearly as secure as “Journeyman” fans would prefer, I jumped into action to give the show as much publicity as possible, starting with an attempt to secure an interview with the man who created the series. Things fell into place quickly, but after the established time of our conversation came and went, I got a little antsy. I needn’t have worried: Falls readily set up a new time for us to chat, and within moments of getting on the line, he had launched into an apology for the delay.

Bullz-Eye: Hello?

Kevin Falls: (Laughs) Hey, Will!

BE: Hey!

KF: I’m all yours! I’m so sorry about yesterday; there was a communication breakdown, and it was my fault. I just totally dropped the ball, so I apologize. But how are you?

BE: I’m doing good. How are you?

KF: Good!

BE: I think we met for about two seconds back in July, at the TCA Press Tour.

KF: Oh, right! I met a lot of people, but I think I do vaguely remember you. But it’s been a wild couple of months!

BE: I’m sure! Well, I’ll start off with some specific questions about the show before I move into the inevitable writer’s strike questions.

KF: Sure! And, hey, I checked out your site today, and it’s really cool! It’s kind of like a “Maxim”-styled website!

BE: Yeah, that’s usually the point of reference we give people, to kind of sum it up in a nutshell.

KF: Hey, man, that’s where I wanna live!

BE: Yeah, the bikini girls pay the bills, but they give us the opportunity to do whatever pop culture stuff we want to tackle on the site.

KF: That’s great! Well, I was flattered that you guys put us in your TV Power Rankings. That was a shot in the arm, and we really appreciated it.

BE: Absolutely. We love the show. Ross (Ruediger) is our resident blogger for the show, but there are several fans among the writing staff, including myself.

KF: Great. Well, that’s nice. Thanks!

BE: Well, when I was at the panel for “Journeyman” back in July, one of the big points of discussion was the comparison to “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” which led you to pointedly declare for the record that you’d absolutely never read the book… (Laughs) …but did those comparisons finally start to die down once critics actually had a chance to watch the show beyond the pilot?

KF: Yeah, I think once they started watching it…you know, certainly, early on, actually, when the issue was more of the domestic problem of time traveling and its impact on the marriage, I think we kind started there ‘cause we wanted it to start with how it would feel to a family, and then get into more of the mythology of it. But once we got deeper into it, all that stuff fell away. And the “Quantum Leap” (comparison) hung around for awhile, and then that fell away, and it seemed like everybody kind of realized it was its own show.

BE: So were you indeed influenced by any specific shows, or just kind of the concept of time travel in general?

KF: No, the whole genesis of the idea came from my agent. Every spring, I would meet with my agent, and he would ask, “What are you going to do for pilot season?” And I said, “I don’t know. I’m just out of ideas.” (Laughs) I didn’t want to a law show or a cop show, and I just didn’t know what to do. And he said, “How about trying something different and breaking into a new genre?” And that’s how we got into time travel. I’ve seen movies I’ve liked, like Malcolm McDowell in…what was that movie called?

BE: “Time After Time”!

KF: Yeah, “Time After Time,” which I thought was really good. And some other shows. And my brothers were the sci-fi geeks in my house, and I was always impressed but never converted. It was, like, my brothers were always smarter than me, so I felt like, “Okay, these guys get it, but I’m not worthy,” y’know? But I’ve always been someone who likes to do things over, whether it’s a bad date or a job or a rewrite. Whatever. But I’m definitely one of those guys who likes to look in the rear view mirror a lot.

BE: Okay, I should probably warn you that some of these questions might come off as a little disjointed, since they’re coming from a couple of different writers.

KF: No problem. I’m in a car on the L.A. freeway.

BE: So you’ve got all the time in the world, then.

KF: Yeah. And I don’t have a job at the moment. So it’s perfect.

BE: Well, there you go. Okay, so what challenges does the time travel part of the show present as far as story and continuity, and how do you go about tackling them?

Continue reading »

Actors, External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, Journeyman, News, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Journeyman 1.9: “Emily”

November 20, 2007 /

I wondered some time ago when Dan would botch his first job. While he didn’t necessarily screw up this week’s mission, he certainly went off on a tangent that’s going to haunt him next week (and maybe even beyond.)

For the second time in two weeks, Dan traveled into one hell of a party scene – only this time it was an early-90’s rave (boy, did that take me back…). Amidst the club kids dosing on ecstasy and acid, he sees Livia – but it’s Livia from ’92! When he asks her what they’re doing there, she’s blissed out and doesn’t even recognize him. Once he realizes that this a version of Livia that’s never even met him, he moves on to do his token sleuthing. He notices a brick wall that seems unstable due to the thumping rave beats. He quite easily knocks a few bricks out of place and sees a young girl on the other side.

Afterwards, it becomes clear (at least to Livia and the viewer) that the mission is to protect the young girl, Emily, who grows up to be played by Indigo of “Weeds”. It’s Dan’s job to keep her on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, back in the present, Zack is acting up both at home and at school. In one of the episode’s biggest leaps of faith, we’re asked to believe that Dan in turn acts out on his mission because of the way his son is acting up.

Anyway, Dan becomes convinced that this creepy realtor who holed up Emily will strike again. He enlists Jack in the present in his quest to put this guy away. Livia repeatedly warns him not play outside the Journeyman rulebook. He ignores her by insisting that he can do his mission and right this other wrong as well. He seemingly accomplishes both, but it all comes back to bite him in the ass in the episode’s final moments. In the present, the timeline has been altered: Jack has no memories of helping Dan and the creepy realtor guy has been released from prison and knows where Dan and his family live.

If it all sounds confusing, that’s because my recap didn’t do the episode justice. It played out in as uncomplicated a manner as one could imagine and delivered a true time travel mind fuck ending (although, admittedly, I kinda saw it coming). But certainly critics of the series who wonder about screwing things up in the past and the consequences they might have on the present should feel better after this episode. And the previews for next week – which showed Livia revealing herself to Jack – make “Journeyman’s” future look quite bright indeed.

And no – I’m not speaking of ratings…according to AICN, the show is on the precipice of cancellation (click here for this tidbit).

Keep an eye out here at Premium Hollywood for Will Harris’ upcoming interview with “Journeyman” creator Kevin Falls.

Journeyman, TV, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Heroes 2.9 – Aren’t You The Guy Who Hit Me In The Eye?

November 19, 2007 /

Let’s just lay it on the line right here, baby: this was the best episode of the season to date…and then some.

Claire’s such a teenager, particularly the way she totally shrugged off her father’s highly valid point that her troubles didn’t really begin in earnest until she and Flyboy pulled their stunt with the head cheerleader, but, really, her melodramatic speech to her winged beau could only have been uttered by someone in their teens. After their encounter, you knew he was going to have a tête-à-tête with HRG; I appreciated the throwaway line from Flyboy about how he didn’t have super strength and wasn’t going to be able to hold HRG for long, along with the incredibly crappy way they landed, which also rang true.

(Sidebar: Right before Claire got snaked by Bob, I discovered just how much of a music geek I am. I’m sitting there, watching a squadron of high school cheerleaders doing a routine, and yet the thing that was first and foremost on my mind was, “Damn, that song they’re doing cheering to is catchy! Who sings that?” How embarrassing.)

I actually rather liked Flyboy this episode…which is definitely a change, since my opinion of him has pretty much ranged from indifference to annoyance…but the scene with him swooping in and knocking the hell out of Elle was pretty awesome, and his delivery of the line, “Hi, Mrs. Butler, it’s…good to, uh, see you again,” was perfect. For that matter, I also liked that small conversation between him and HRG about cars.

So Elle’s Bob’s daughter? No shock there…and no electrical-powers pun intended, either. “He’s adorable! Can I keep him?” God, I love Kristen Bell. Way to work that straw, baby.

HRG once again came through as a guy who, for as dark as his soul might be, really and truly does love his daughter. I loved the way he growled, “No-one’s taking my little girl,” though it ended up being superseded as my favorite line of the episode at the precise moment he looked into the camera and sneered, “Stings like a bitch, doesn’t it?” Hey, it’s nothing compared to taking a bullet in the eye from Mohinder Surersh! Whether you figured HRG was gonna get a transfusion from Claire or not (as I must admit that I did), it didn’t change the sunset beauty of how that whole death sequence played out; Bob’s expression was more pained than I would’ve expected, but the look on Mohinder’s face was just right. Just because you know you’re doing the right thing doesn’t mean it’s easy to live with the repercussions…especially when, in this case, the guy you’ve just killed is now back from the dead and has rarely been known to keep a cool head when it comes to extracting revenge.

Hiro going back in time to try and save his dad? Not too surprising. I mean, really, has anything ever happened that Hiro didn’t try to go back and fix? For such a sci-fi nerd, he really doesn’t seem to grasp how much trouble he’s potentially causing by mucking with the space-time continuum so often. George Takei seemed like he was about a hairsbreadth away from telling Hiro, “With great power comes great responsibility,” on several different occasions, but it was still a nice moment in the end, when Hiro asked his pops to tell Mom “hi.” It also wasn’t terribly surprising to find that Adam had been Mr. Nakamura’s killer, but maybe we were just supposed to appreciate Hiro’s shock at the revelation.

So after all the mental issues Molly’s suffered through over the past few episodes, what does Matt do? Test his newly enhanced mental abilities by forcing her to eat cereal. Once he used them to make his boss change his mind, I realized that, yeah, this might explain why he was so dark in that alternate future we saw back in Season 1. I was a little surprised that he actually got a fair amount of answers out of Mama Petrelli (along with that great line, “Our generation mortgaged our souls to protect yours!”), but I’m as curious as I’m sure everyone else is to find out who this mystery woman from the picture is…though by episode’s end, we did at least know that her name was Victoria Pratt. That was a very subtle thing at the end, with the post-it quietly but noticeably now on the photo above her face, but it means that Matt crossed the line, and all bets are off.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Heroes, Reviews, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Doc of the Day: “Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream”

November 19, 2007 /

Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire episode of “The George Lopez Show,” but after having watched this documentary, I think I’m gonna have to check it out; I don’t have any idea whether it’ll actually be funny or not, but just listening to the guy’s comments in “Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream” makes me predisposed to liking him. (Mind you, I was already pretty much in that camp after I heard that he’d gotten into a physical altercation with Carlos Mencia over Mencia purportedly stealing some of his material, but, still, this really sealed the deal for me.)

“Brown is the New Green” focuses on Latinos as they’re perceived on the small screen, and while it probably won’t come as any surprise that they haven’t always had the best representatives on the American airwaves – for awhile, their big three were Jose Jiminez, Speedy Gonzales, and The Frito Bandito – it’s heartening to realize that they’re finally getting their due. Now, if you’re one of those folks who gets pissed off every time they reach a voicemail menu that says, “For English, press 1,” I’m sure you’re already seething mad at the mere thought of what this documentary discusses; in fact, some of you may have stopped reading altogether while you work out a diatribe for the comments section about how giving Latinos airtime to trumpet their culture is akin to setting Old Glory afire and watching her burn.

Well, hang onto your hat, muchacho, because you may be surprised to find that a lot of Latinos aren’t so remarkably different from John Smith, Average American.

For instance, when George Lopez was casting his TV show, many actors came in to audition and, when doing so, they’d put on a heavy Spanish accent. “George would say, ‘Brother, cool down, you don’t need to do that,'” said producer Bruce Helford, “and they’d say, ‘Oh, cool, thank you,’ and then they’d do it in perfect English, with no accent at all!” Lopez himself reveals that, while building the sets for his series, the network complained that the kitchen didn’t look like a Mexican kitchen. “They said, ‘There’s nothing here that indicates that a Mexican family lives here. There’s not a tortilla maker.’ I said, ‘My tortilla maker was my grandmother!'”

For the most part, the so-called “Latino audience” is something which, more often than not, the entertainment industry views as an advertising demographic rather than a group of individuals who are looking for their own brand of entertainment. There’s an ongoing battle between trying to portray real Latino life versus what producers think middle America can handle; one guy mentions how, from his experience, the average Latino family doesn’t always have a father present, but TV can’t hang with the idea of a fatherless family scenario, while Lopez speaks about how absolutely no-one in his family was supportive of his attempts to build an American TV career. The most interesting interview, at least for me, wasn’t with Lopez but, rather, with Bill Dana, the comedian who portrayed Jose Jimenez. He was hugely popular for many years, but he wasn’t actually Latino, and as the tide of public opinion turned, the popularity waned dramatically…like, to the point where, when he announced that he was retiring the character, he was stunned at the resulting cheers.

“Brown is the New Green” is another fine PBS production, providing an interesting, educational, and – ultimately – depressing look at how little love the Latino community gets on television. Sure, it’s nice that “Ugly Betty” is a success, but you can’t really call that a step forward when, in virtually the same breath, ABC canceled “The George Lopez Show” in favor of “Cavemen.” Still, when the doc ends with the revelation that Lopez earned $5 million from the show’s final season, $15 million from the series’ syndication deal, and $9 million from his stand-up shows that year, at least you can’t say that his chapter of the story hasn’t had a happy ending.

Actors, Actresses, Doc of the Day, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, External TV, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews, TV, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV DVDs

Friday Night Lights: “Pantherama!”

November 17, 2007 /

Much of this week’s episode revolved around Smash’s foray into the world of recruiting. He and his mom differ on what college is supposed to mean to him, but someone should tell him that you can go to a good football school and get a degree. In fact, if Smash were to go to any school in the Pac-10 or Big 10, he’s pretty much guaranteed exposure to NFL scouts and a good education, if he wants one. I don’t blame his mom for riding his butt, especially with the way that his face lit up when that “white girl” he brought over told the story about her brother getting a free Porsche. There’s a middle ground between Miami Southern and Whitmore, and Smash needs to find it.

Last week, I commented on the lack of progression in the Matt/Carlota relationship, but this week’s episode made up for it. Her reaction to the kiss probably gave Matt the impression that she wasn’t at all into him, but the next morning it was obvious that she is. It’s funny how much of an impact a plate of warm food and hand on the shoulder can have on a person (and the flirtatious glances didn’t hurt, either). Matt now finds himself in a romantic square, with Lauren, Carlota and Julie all in the picture to different extents. Ah, the life of a Panther QB1.

Speaking of Julie, she is obviously headed for trouble (or embarrassment) with her rapidly growing relationship with Mr. Noah Bennett (played by Austin Nichols, who also plays the title character on HBO’s great drama, “John from Cincinnati”). Whether it’s trouble or embarrassment depend almost entirely on how Noah reacts to her advances (or if he makes a move on her). It’s obvious that Tami has the same thought, so it would be quite ballsy for him to try to take advantage with her mom as one of his co-workers. For his part, he hasn’t done anything wrong…yet.

Santiago continues to play a major role in the show, and now he’s moving in with Buddy Garrity, and the duo make quite the odd couple. I loved Buddy’s line in Tami’s office: “I came up with a moment of scintillating clarity. He should move in with me.”

Scintillating clarity?

Who knows, maybe Riggins will end up with the top bunk. He has moved out of his house because he can’t deal with his brother’s relationship with the neighbor. (Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s walking around the place with wet hair and giant cleavage.) Now he’s moving in with a guy who wants him to help take care of his parrots. I have no idea where this storyline is going, but one thing’s for sure – Riggins needs to get back on the team. There was no talk of that this week.

Eric had a couple of great lines when he asked Tami not to “whisper yell” at him and when Julie asked him for a comment “through the bathroom door.” The look he gave Tami at Pantherama was priceless.

Nothing major happened in the Landry/Tyra storyline, though he did tell her about his dad’s decision to torch the wagon. But the scenes for the next episode showed that things are definitely about to change.

External Entertainment, External TV, Friday Night Lights, TV

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