Why AMC fired Darabont from THE WALKING DEAD…
In the good ol’ days, Hollywood kept its fights behind the scenes. We’d wait a few years, maybe decades, for a good storyteller to come along and really put the pieces together. Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution and Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures are just two recent examples. Those days are long over, of course. But even by today’s standards, AMC’s battles with the creators and studios behind Mad Men and Breaking Bad were highly-publicized. (Nobody in Hollywood likes a winner, especially a creative upstart like AMC.) Nothing, however, disrupted the basic cable network’s public reputation like its recent falling out with Frank Darabont over The Walking Dead. There’s been a lot of talk about why Darabont and AMC parted ways. I’ve mentioned to people that Darabont, a writer who directs only every few years, might not have made the transition to the...
Read MoreHow to Fix ‘True Blood’ (or Please, Please Kill Sam Merlotte)
True Blood is the hottest show on television, scoring the highest ratings HBO has seen since The Sopranos. I doubt that the execs at HBO are looking to tweak the two-parts-sex, one-part-blood (with a pinch of weirdness) recipe. Still, there’s something very wrong in Bon Temps. At the end of season two’s penultimate episode, I had that itch I get when a show is no longer the show I fell in love with. It happened with The X-Files when the alien conspiracy became the show’s focus. It happened with Weeds when Nancy moved to Ren Mar. It happened with The West Wing when Aaron Sorkin left. Now, with weak love triangles, one-dimensional characters, and ridiculous storylines, True Blood feels like the life has been sucked out of it. So as the second season finale approaches, here are three ways...
Read MoreTrue Blood Season 2 Trailer featuring Bob Dylan
As we established earlier in the year with the Watchmen title credits, I’m a sucker for anything with a little Bob Dylan in it. It helps when that anything is worthy of the music God’s assistance. That’s what makes this True Blood season two promo so great. True Blood got off to a rocky start. But by the episodes where Jason Stackhouse started hitting the vampire blood and the serial killer plot line begins to take shape, damn it if this show didn’t become a must watch every week. I’m already counting down the days to June 14 when season two premieres on...
Read MoreGossip Girl Redeems Itself… For Now
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Gossip Girl is one of those shows that is really bad when it’s bad, but so good when it’s good. Yesterday’s GG episode was another make or break episode, at least for me. It started to take itself too seriously. It tried to make you care for the characters like they were real people or something. Please. Gossip Girl’s appeal is in its scheming, its bitchitude, its scandal and its wars. Rufus and Lily searching for the kid Lily secretly gave away 20 years ago… boring. Serena ripping that bow off Blair’s head… brilliance. Nate Archibald and Vanessa’s on and off relationship… boring. Chuck Bass doing pretty much anything… brilliance. Gossip Girl is most fun when its characters are pit against each other in epic gladiatorial battles....
Read MoreTheWB expands, but what about Hulu?
Just got an email from TheWB.com, Warner’s ad-supported streaming video website. Looks like the paltry selection of TV shows on the potential Hulu.com (News Corp and NBCUni‘s site) competitor is adding some fan favorites to the mix. The titles that will be added starting on Aug. 27 include: -Everwood (!) -Veronica Mars -Roswell -Angel -In Living Color (clips) -MadTV -Firefly -The Loop At first, I was just excited to see Everwood on the list, but then I noticed something. Angel, MadTV, Firefly and The Loop are already offered on Hulu. Does that mean Warner is pulling the plug on the Hulu distribution of its shows? TheWB.com already launched with Warner’s mega-hit Friends, which was televised on the NBC Network. If that’s the case, bad news for Hulu. TheWB has its fingers in some big TV shows, including ER (not currently streaming) and Nip/Tuck (on Hulu). And what about ABC’s Pushing Daisies and CBS’s Cold Case, also Warner shows? Granted there...
Read MoreJericho’s Half-Life
Jericho fans will make one concession when it comes to their favorite post-nuclear drama. That is the first half of the show’s debut season, the Everwood-wannabe, sci-fi, family-drama half, wasn’t good. No, it was bad. Why then did fans send 20 tons of nuts (a reference to what was the “Jericho” series finale) to CBS? Because the second half of the season, starting with the show’s return in February, was stellar TV. For most of the audience, the show was dead in November after months of petty, soap opera-esque drama. A three-month hiatus, however, reorganized the show’s priorities, focusing on the spirit and sacrifice of a community in the face of threats to its very existence. A sense of urgency was created as the conspiracy behind the nuclear explosions in U.S. cities unraveled with renewed fervor. That’s what makes...
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