Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco. Courtesy of WireImage.
Sometimes skepticism gets in the way of everyone’s enjoyment. This idea occupies the same flavor territory as “ignorance is bliss.” It is a vote for the willful flooding of the brain with seratonin and other happiness-inducing substances, something that often happens when we turn off the internal mechanisms that regulate intellect in favor of turning on, say, G4′s late night programming.
The next eleven days are not part of this idea. At the Television Critics Association’s Summer Press Tour, currently underway at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA., skepticism hangs heavily in the air. There are a couple hundred of us here, and we’ve seen the fall pilots. Not only that, we get to confront the people who are bringing them to us — executives, producers, and the stars — and find out what they were thinking.
That, in essence, is the point of TCA: to look under the hood of each network’s programming and see whether the new fall crew has any hope, or if old favorites are worth sticking with. A pilot can look perfectly fine, but unless the people writing it know what they’re doing, it won’t have a chance as a series. The opposite can be true as well; “30 Rock’s” pilot, for example, was mediocre. That’s putting it kindly. But after a chat with Tina Fey, it was easy to have faith that it would improve. Midway through the first season, it did.
All of this is in service of you, the television viewer. You know how difficult it is to decide what to watch in the best of circumstances. Now the networks and cable channels want you to make room for new series, most of which won’t make it through the winter.
Mind you, there are a few CBS shows that we can say, with a degree of certainty, that you’ll be happy to load onto your DVR. CBS’s new crop looks fairly typical and as such, its TCA day was generally painless and free of controversy…save for the panel for “$#*! My Dad Says.” Even that wasn’t awful, per se; rather, it did precisely what a TCA panel is supposed to do. It showed us why that show, in its present incarnation, is destined to crash and burn.
At one point, “$#*!” executive producer Max Mutchnick explained how he and David Kohan came to be a part of the project by saying, and this is a real quote, “We got involved because, when we heard this and we read about this, we saw Justin’s beautiful tw*ts.” Yes, that’s right — he referred to tweets by using a vulgar reference to female genitalia. And he kept on doing it.
By the time Mutchnick tried to correct himself by calling tweets “twits” and about the 10th time series star William Shatner referred to it as “The Twitter,” the panel had lost control of the room. It was a beautiful cringeworthy moment.
Overall, CBS started the day with its greatest assets and stumbled on down the mountain from there. Keep reading for the full diary.
“The Big Bang Theory“ presented the very first panel of the Tour, a welcome entry at 9:15 a.m. While it’s no surprise that the stars Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar and Johnny Galecki were happy to bask in the love-fest — a rare commodity in a room full of critics — even executive producer Chuck Lorre was in a pretty good mood. And why not? Not only is “Big Bang” moving to Thursdays, a TV network programmer’s ultimate show of faith, but Lorre has another series premiering in the fall, “Mike & Molly,” which is getting a relatively warm reception.
Fans will be happy to know that “Big Bang” plans to have a number of familiar guest stars return, including Melissa Rauch and, happily, the very evil, very funny Wil Wheaton.
Also returning is Mayim Bialik, whose character Amy Farrah Fowler is set to have “a very specific relationship” with Sheldon. Interesting.
Billy Gardell and Reno Wilson. Courtesy of WireImage
Moving on to “Mike & Molly,” a comedy starring Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy, things became a tad awkward as some critics tried to dance around the fact that the stars happen to be overweight.
In fact, nobody actually wanted to use the word “fat” or talk about fat jokes until Gardell, a plain-spoken comedian, essentially gave us permission to do so.
“Of course I think I’d like to lose some weight,” he said, talking about his size. “I mean, everybody’d like to be a little bit better than they are, you know, but everybody has a different tick, man. Mine just happens to be pizza.”
When the room stayed silent, he quickly added, “It’s okay. You can laugh at that. I’ve got a mirror. Lighten up.”
The core of “Mike & Molly” is a very sweet love story about people trying to move forward in their lives, and that sweetness permeates the pilot. But as both McCarthy and Gardell point out, it also takes the unusual step of putting two plus-sized actors at the center of a show.
Gardell observed, “when you’re a fat guy in Hollywood, you’re the bad guy, the cop, or the neighbor. That’s what you’re doing. ‘Bring them to me!’ ‘You kids get out of here!’ ‘He’s going to kill us both!’” he vamped as the room broke up with laughter.
Given that experience, to be one of the leads in a CBS comedy is “like I got the Willy Wonka ticket, you know? ‘Run, Charlie. Run home as fast as you can.’”
“Mike & Molly” could be a tougher sell at first, but “Hawaii Five O” is one of those pilots kissed by fortune and good buzz from the jump. From the moment Alex O’Loughlin, Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park were named to the cast, people have been curious about this show. (TV superfans, by the way, were likely just as excited to hear James Marsters and Norman Reedus would appear as the bad guys.)
The only negatives critics could pick at had to do with the pilot’s violence, and it’s true: a lot of auxiliary characters get shot in that first hour. Take into account that this is an action series on CBS, a network that climbed to the top of the ratings on miles of simulated entrails courtesy of “CSI,” and it’s not really a big deal. The scenery is beautiful, and the theme song lovingly resurrected by the same musicians who recorded it the first time.
Also — and this is very important to a number of people — it looks like it’ll keep O’Loughlin on the air for more than half a season. Remember, he’ s the star of “Moonlight” and “Three Rivers,” so CBS has gotten his hopes up before. But with “Hawaii Five-O,” “There’s something special about it,” he admits. “I mean, if this one doesn’t go, I’ll be completely bewildered. I mean, I’ll have no idea how television works at all.”
Those represent CBS’s winners. Another entry, “Blue Bloods,” could go either way. Many agree it’s a well-made pilot, but the actors could not get their New York accents straight. The one thing everyone could get behind is that it gets points for bringing Tom Selleck back to network television. Meanwhile, Selleck was quick to assure us that while “Blue Bloods” is fine and dandy, he still intends to produce more Jesse Stone movies. Great news for your Aunt Doris!
Further down the slide is “The Defenders,” a show starring Jim Belushi and Jerry O’Connell. Both showed up and answered random questions about sets and their enjoyment of gambling, which is what happens when a show is so painful to watch that nobody in the room really wants to engage in a meaningful discussion about it. Rather, we were left to contemplate the shelf-life of a series that represents the meeting of a showkiller (O’Connell) and a man at the center of an unkillable sitcom (Belushi). The good news is Belushi is more fun and palatable here than he was in “According to Jim.” Unfortunately it’s still not a very good show.
Mind you, at least the armada of producers behind “The Defenders” had an inkling of how to present the subject matter. They compared well to “$#*! My Day Says’” executive producers Mutchnick and Kohan, who clearly have no idea how Twitter works and as such, probably should not be driving the “$#*! My Dad Says” party bus.
A lack basic understanding of Twitter isn’t the problem here, though — that tidbit simply illustrates the producers’ overall cluelessness. The main issue is that the real Shatner is far goofier and more engaging than the old guy he’s portraying. The pilot is being re-cast, but unless the producers drastically rewrite the script, we predict this will be one of fall’s first flushes. No, we couldn’t resist.
Thus ended Day 1. Day 2 represents the CBS Corp. cleanup, including Showtime and The CW.
You can follow what Mutchnick would call our “beautiful tw*ts” at http://twitter.com/IMDbTV, where we tweet the freshest TCA news as soon as we get it.
