Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Did everyone have a nice holiday weekend? I sure hope so!

Of course, because of the holiday weekend spilling into today – since many have today off in lieu of the Fourth of July being a Sunday – there isn’t too much new entertainment news to share with you, but I did find a few good items.

Here they are:

TELEVISION

Jeph Loeb Talks Marvel TV

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=26983

MOVIES

A number of actors have joined Jason Biggs and Joel David Moore in the box office film Grossroots, an independent political comedy that follows a recently fired journalist (Biggs) who reluctantly agrees to spearhead the Seattle City Council campaign of his eccentric friend (Moore), a former pedicab driver with a burning passion for the Monorail. The new cast members include Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother), Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under), Cedric the Entertainer, Christopher McDonald (Happy Gilmore), Emily Bergl (Men In Trees), and Tom Arnold. (The Wrap and First Showing)

With the big holiday weekend just ending, the box office numbers are rolling in from all over the place and depending on what time frame you look at The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is a HUGE winner. Since Wednesday, Eclipse has grossed over $175 million at the box office. Its closest competitor is The Last Airbender, which has made over $70 million from Thursday through Sunday. If we look at the other movies in the top 10 from Friday to Sunday estimates only it looks something like this:

3. Toy Story 3, $30.2 million
4. Grown Ups, $18.5 million
5. Knight and Day, $10.2 million
6. The Karate Kid, $8 million
7. The A-Team, $3 million
8. Get Him to the Greek, $1.2 million
9. Shrek Forever After, $799,000
10. Cyrus, $770,256

Thanks to the LA Times and E! Entertainment Online for these box office estimates.

FIRST LOOK AT THE BOX OFFICE

Badass New Photo of Jason Momoa as Marcus Nispel’s Conan

http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/07/05/badass-new-photo-of-jason-momoa-from-marcus-nispels-conan/

Worth Watching: Trailer for Cairo Time

http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/07/02/worth-watching-trailer-for-cairo-time-with-patricia-clarkson/

Q&A SECTION (with Matt Roush from TV Guide)

Question: While I applaud network TV for trying to tap into the summertime scripted market (a bastion for cable’s success), I can’t help but be pretty unimpressed thus far. ABC’s efforts have been almost universally disappointing. Scoundrels is a disaster, The Gates is painfully derivative (and for a show about vampires, werewolves, witches and who knows what else, is inexplicably boring), and Rookie Blue is a rip-off of Grey’s Anatomy in just about every way (but, you know, with cops instead of surgeons). Based on the ratings for these shows (with the modest exception of Rookie Blue), it seems to me that ABC’s foray into summertime has been a failure. Other networks are faring no better. Fox’s new series The Good Guys really didn’t appeal to me (even though my fidelity to Matt Nix made me really, really want to like it), and given its anemic viewership, I’m not the only one. Lie to Me seems to be one of the few that’s doing reasonably well, but it developed a fan-base during the regular season, so I don’t think it counts exactly.

 That said, I’m wondering if you have any theories as to why basic cable networks like TNT, ABC Family (although I must say I disagree about Huge—I found it dour and charmless, much to my chagrin), FX and, most notably, USA have such a grasp on summertime scripted programming while the basic networks are foundering. What is it that cable is doing so right and the big four are doing so wrong?

I look at USA Network in particular and wonder if it’s primarily an issue of branding. USA seems to have the best grasp on what it is as a network and has built a portfolio of shows that all seem to work together on a schedule (indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who watches one show on USA and doesn’t watch at least two others). I do wish USA would branch out and make some riskier moves at times, but when looking at the success of their programming model, it’s hard to argue. Indeed, USA’s newest series, Covert Affairs, looks like it’ll be yet another fun, light-hearted dramedy feather in USA’s cap that will do very well (pairing it with White Collar was yet another strategic boon). That said, I’m more apprehensive about Covert Affairs than I have been about other USA series. I’ve never been much impressed by Piper Perabo and honestly don’t think she can anchor a show. Have you seen the pilot? Does she pull it off? Or is it more like watching Perabo trying desperately to be Alias’s Jennifer Garner and failing miserably? I’d love to hear your thoughts.—Lacy

Matt Roush: Let’s start with USA. In some ways, I look at that network as the cable equivalent of CBS. It knows what works for its audience and its brand and it stays mostly on message. Which means a lot of sameness from show to show, with a few doing the job better than others. (I’m particularly fond of Burn Notice and White Collar right now, but can make the case for others, while finding few of them qualifying as actual can’t-miss appointment TV). I too wish USA would try a bit harder to surprise us, but like you said (which also applies to CBS’s schedule, excepting the standout rookie The Good Wife), why mess with success? Covert Affairs has the look of another winner. Not because it’s great; it’s a bit too cutesy for my taste—which applies to the lead performance and a few of the more whimsical subplots and characters—but as a harmless caper paired with White Collar’s second season, if it doesn’t click I’ll be surprised. And I tend to enjoy USA’s shows more once they get past setting up the premise in their overstuffed pilot episodes, so I’ll keep an eye on that one.

While I more or less agree with you about the broadcast networks’ mostly feeble attempts to try scripted shows in the summer—you left out NBC’s burn-offs, which may be the worst of the bunch—I’m glad they’re at least trying something other than mind-numbing reality in a few time slots. One of these days, I’m hoping we’ll witness the next Northern Exposure and have something to celebrate. As I noted in a recent magazine review, the difference between network and cable in the summer is that many cable operations put their very best shows on during the summer, promoting the heck out of them. With the networks, that is certainly not the case. The most we can hope for (and rarely get) is something too offbeat to air during the regular season that can be nurtured during the off-season. Maybe next summer …

Question: Am I crazy or did CBS have a death wish for Three Rivers before it was ever started? They promo’ed it all last summer so we couldn’t wait for it to begin, and our family loved the show. Great cast, good story lines, it just seemed to have everything. Then CBS just killed the show with its scheduling. By putting it on Sunday night during football season, which often ended as late as 7:30 pm/ET, so it had to contend with 60 Minutes, whatever reality show was on and then Cold Case before it ever got on, sometimes as late as 11 pm, who would bother to watch it then? (I would record it on my DVR and watch it the next day, but even that was a challenge since the programming schedule was so thrown off—such a pain!). I’m sure the local news on CBS affiliate stations suffered as well.

Now the rest of the Three Rivers episodes which had not been aired came back on to fill in during the summer hiatus. [The final episode aired Saturday night.] We still love the show and I just wanted to express my displeasure with CBS. For many years now, the overall quality of CBS programming has been far superior to the other major networks and CBS had something to be proud of; but I feel that quality may be slipping away. Bringing back a remake of Hawaii Five-O with Alex O’Loughlin in it, instead of giving him and Three Rivers a fighting chance, is going to backfire, I think. (I read somewhere that Alex O’Loughlin is going to be treated as somewhat of a sex symbol in this remake, which will be the selling point of the show. Too bad, because I think he deserves better than that). Maybe I’ll be proven wrong about that, but my gut tells me it could very well be disappointing. Perhaps you didn’t think much of Three Rivers and we just had poor taste. But I can only say that after it disappeared abruptly partway through the season, off and on since the winter, one or another of us in our family would mention Three Rivers and how much we missed it.—G May

Matt Roush: To play devil’s advocate, the very fact that CBS aired promos all last summer that caught your attention is a sign CBS did not want Three Rivers to fail. (The network brought critics on the set last summer, and it’s clear they spent some money putting this show on its feet.) Though it can appear otherwise, networks don’t have a “death wish” about any show they put on the fall schedule, even the ones CBS chooses to air on Sundays after football. This situation is nothing new for CBS. It has had to deal with those overruns for as many years as I’ve been covering TV, and CBS analyzes the results accordingly. Three Rivers was not a very well reviewed show, that’s true, but lack of media buzz and subpar ratings (coupled with the ill effects of the Sunday scheduling) pretty much doomed it. As for your surprise that CBS is trying to package Alex O’Loughlin as a sex symbol, where have you been? Ever since the short-lived Moonlight, his fan base has been all about the hubba-hubba. That’s only going to intensify once Hawaii gets out there (although on that show, he’s going to have plenty of competition). In the big picture of things, Three Rivers with its transplant storylines always ensuring the death of one character to help another survive may have been too much of a downer for the mass audience.

Question: Why is it that shows that are critically acclaimed but lower on viewership are never recognized with awards or nominations? Shows like Friday Night Lights, Chuck, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars are (or were) cult favorites of fans and critics alike because of their great writing and acting, but you won’t see any of them nominated for an Emmy. Conversely, I can’t name a single person I know who watches Two and a Half Men, but it’s a very popular show for some reason, and its actors seem to be perpetually nominated. Granted, I am a total TV snob, but do the committees who decide award nominees care more about ratings than quality? During Oscar season, it seems that the quirky, little-known, barely-seen movie is nominated over the megabucks blockbuster almost every time. Why are the circumstances different for TV?—Joanna

Matt Roush: A couple of things at play here. We’ve griped for years about the cold shoulder Friday Night Lights got from the start at the Emmys. Maybe if it had aired on cable, it would be different, because the other side of the equation is that many cable series whose numbers pale by comparison to network shows are Emmy darlings (Mad Men as the most obvious example). Shows on the WB and the CW have never been taken seriously by the Emmy voters, perhaps being seen as part of a “youth ghetto” or some such ridiculous notion. But if you make some noise on cable, especially the pay channels (although FX, TNT and USA and a few others break through from time to time), the ratings seem to be immaterial. It is perverse that the Oscars often reward box-office duds while the Emmys tend to ignore terrific shows that are deemed unsuccessful, and that’s especially true with network series, which tend to get canceled quicker than on cable. And while I hear you on Two and a Half Men, I think it’s dangerous to dismiss a show merely because it’s popular. (And I hear gripes quite frequently from fans who wonder why top-rated shows like NCIS and the various CSI shows are snubbed as well.) Case in point: I will personally be very annoyed if The Big Bang Theory, now a monster hit, doesn’t make the cut for best comedy this year.

That’s it. Enjoy!