Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

So, the big day is almost here. I hope you guys have all of your holiday shopping done, your cards are mailed and you’re getting ready for a nice long holiday weekend.

Here are the news items for today:

TELEVISION

Actress Amy Carlson will be promoted to series regular on Blue Bloods should the freshman drama return for a second season. She would continue to play Linda Reagan, the wife of Donnie Wahlberg’s character. (The Futon Critic)

Actress Illeana Douglas will appear in two episodes of the new NBC series The Cape, playing a nurse named Netta who for years has taken care of a mysterious patient inside The Orchard asylum. Netta ends up in a fierce battle with Orwell (Summer Glau) after Orwell’s investigation takes her inside the creepy facility. (William Keck at TV Guide)

Actress Michaela McManus (most recently seen on The Vampire Diaries and One Tree Hill) will appear in a February episode of Hawaii Five-0, playing a tough district attorney named Kathleen Roberts who will work alongside Kono (Grace Park). (William Keck at TV Guide)

Actor Joel David Moore (Bones and Avatar) will also guest star in Hawaii Five-0 as a deputy director of a tsunami tracking center whom the team calls on in a crisis. (Movieline and Hanh Nguyen at Zap2It)

The new costume drama Camelot will debut on Starz on April 1 at 10 PM. The 10-episode retelling of the classic medieval tale of King Arthur stars Joseph Fiennes as Merlin, Jamie Campbell Bower as Arthur, and Eva Green as the darkly powerful Morgan. (Deadline)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Last week the announcement was made that ABC is developing the Canadian cult-hit Being Erica for US television. Now word has broken that the show will be set in Philadelphia. Being Erica will air its third season on SOAPnet starting January 26 at 11 PM. (Jennifer Armstrong at Entertainment Weekly)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Here are the top 10 movies at the box office this past weekend according to Exhibitor Relations:

1. Tron: Legacy, $43.6 million
2. Yogi Bear, $16.7 million
3. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, $12.4 million
4. The Fighter, $12.2 million
5. The Tourist, $8.7 million
6. Tangled, $8.68 million
7. Black Swan, $8.3 million
8. How Do You Know, $7.6 million
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, $4.8 million
10. Unstoppable, $1.8 million

Christina Hendricks (Mad Men), Olivia Munn (Iron Man 2) and Seth Meyers (SNL) have joined the cast of a film adaptation of I Don’t Know How She Does It by author Allison Pearson. The story follows a high-powered financial worker (Sarah Jessica Parker) who is also the mother of two young children, trying to balance the various competing elements of her life. Hendricks would play a friend of Parker’s character while Munn would play a work colleague. Pierce Brosnan and Kelsey Grammer also star. (LA Times and Dark Horizons)

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

Question: Do you think Fox moving Fringe to Fridays is the kiss of death for the show? What’s the reasoning behind the move? — Troy

Matt Roush: In most circumstances, I’d say without hesitation that a move like Fringe to Fridays is a harbinger of failure. But Fox is confronting the situation head-on, cutting an entertaining promo repudiating the gloom-and-doom prognosticators. Fox isn’t doing this blindly. They know the challenges of getting an audience on Friday, and they also know Fringe’s small but fierce fan base is a loyal one, so the hope is that if Fringe can carry enough of its audience to Fridays, factoring in strong DVR playback numbers as well, the network might still see this as a win. Not that anyone who has championed the show during this remarkable season is happy about this. But you ask why this happened, and the answer boils down to two words: American Idol. Nothing is more important to Fox’s bottom line than this show, and with its new scheduling on Wednesdays and Thursdays, something had to give. And that something was Fringe. Which probably has the best chance among any of Fox’s cult series to do business on Fridays, and those with long memories remember that The X-Files did OK on that night (although it did better once it was moved to Sundays). But honestly, spinning this positively is a case of desperately trying to find a silver lining in a pretty dark cloud.

Question: Now I agree with your long-held stance not to pre-judge any show before it has even aired. However, there is an upcoming show I am already concerned about: The Cape. I like the premise; the comic-book nature is right up my alley, and the previews actually look interesting. My concern has to do with one major factor: It’s on NBC. Can anything good come out of NBC these days, besides Chuck and the comedies, that is? The Event is…just OK to me. I was looking so forward to Undercovers and look what happened there. I almost have no expectations when it comes to NBC these days and I wonder whether The Cape will be yet another disappointment. Your thoughts? — Larry

Matt Roush: The good thing about lowered expectations is that there’s always the possibility of being pleasantly surprised. So my advice, as it usually is in these cases, is to give a show a shot if it intrigues you, regardless of the network or the time period. (Look at Community, for instance. It’s in a terrible time period on a bad-luck network, but still is one of the bright spots of the last year.) I’m not saying The Cape is the show that will reverse NBC’s fortunes. In fact, I doubt it. But if you’re a fan of comic-book superhero stories, you could do worse than this one. It’s not bad, but unfortunately, it’s nothing new. And NBC really could use something new and fresh, but I’m not seeing that a lot anywhere on the broadcast networks this season.

That’s it. Enjoy!