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Nov 20 2009 04:58 PM ET

Oprah Winfrey cries on live show announcing the end of 'Oprah'

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Cancellations, News, Talk Shows, Television

With tears in her eyes, Oprah Winfrey said on her Friday “live from Chicago” Oprah show that she will cancel her talk show as of Sept. 9, 2011. Pegging her show’s exit to its 25th anniversary, Winfrey said it “feels right in my bones and it feels right in my spirit.” Her voice breaking, she said haltingly that she valued “the yellow brick road of blessings” her show has brought her. She promised to “knock your socks off” with the “18-month ride.” The audience gave her a standing ovation.

Winfrey waited until we’d watched a grim, wrenching segment on a raped and murdered child, plus interviews with Gabourey Sidibe (the star of Precious, a movie to which Winfrey signed on as a co-producer) and with Ray Romano to make her announcement.

Frankly, during the opening segment, I hit the “mute” button as soon as I heard the phrases “sold into sex slavery” and “cigarette burns on her body.” I just don’t have the stomach for this kind of story, and frankly, was surprised that Winfrey still does segments like this.

But Oprah has done a lot of good that far outweighs the questionable stuff on Oprah. Thus, her announcement had the feeling of an American queen stepping down from her throne, or an unelected president resigning from office. And it’s not as though she’s going to disappear any time soon, which only adds to the pop-culture interest here. Unlike the few major broadcast entertainment figures comparable to her, from Arthur Godfrey to Johnny Carson, Winfrey’s decision to make this a long goodbye will yield a new model for how a beloved celebrity leaves the public stage ( …if only until she starts up her next TV project).

Even when she decides to end something, Oprah does it in a uniquely big way.

Did you watch? What do you think of Oprah ending Oprah?

More on Oprah Winfrey: Oprah says ending her show ‘feels right in my bones’

Nov 20 2009 03:59 PM ET

James Franco's debut on 'General Hospital': 'Should I wear anything special, or nothing at all?'

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Dumb or Smart?, News, Review, Soap Operas, Television

Anyone thinking General Hospital was going to hold James Franco’s debut on the soap opera to a final-seconds tease today was wrong. Dressed as a shabby graffiti artist, Franco — playing a “world-famous photographer and artist” cleverly named “Franco” — put in a monosyllabic appearance in the first two minutes of Friday’s edition, and skulked around during the entire hour. In between, there were scenes of Hospital regulars arguing and emoting lines like, “Neither one of them gets out of here alive!”

Franco was initially seen witnessing an awkwardly staged gangland shoot-out (I had forgotten the way everything on a soap set, right down to the stairs people run down, looks like flimsy cardboard). I’m not going to pretend I’m a regular GH-watcher — you’d figure that out fast, if I tried to pass — but I’m also the sort of person the producers want to attract: that is, a new viewer, to boost the generally sagging ratings of the soap opera genre.

So, as a Franco fan dating back to his Freaks & Geeks days, I was psyched for his role as “an artist whose canvas is murder,” as the promos hyped it. We saw a bit of artist-Franco’s art installation today. The floor had the chalk outline of an absent corpse; there was graffiti on the walls and lots of random metal sculpture. This Franco is a rip-off artist: part-Jean-Michel Basquiat, part-Keith Haring, all-hack.

Oh, and all-evil. He approaches the bleeding body after the shoot-out. The guy asks for help, but Franco steps on his throat, finishing the fellow off. Then Franco the artiste rearranges the corpse’s limbs in a special way, leaving a message for the cops to figure out.

Back in his studio, Franco phones a woman, saying he needs her. She murmurs, “Should I wear anything special, or nothing at all?” Oooh, those rebel artists-of-death — they attract all the babes, don’t they?

The show kept cutting back to some endless argument involving a woman name Olivia, who babbled ceaselessly about her son Dante. She seemed sullen, defensive, and either terribly rattled or else trapped in a terrible storyline.

(GH fans, care to weigh in on Olivia’s story? Thanks.) (Oh, and pardon a newbie’s question, but: Does General Hospital ever have any scenes in a hospital?)

Meanwhile, I’ll be hanging in to watch how James Franco’s storyline plays out next week. What did you think of it so far?

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Nov 20 2009 08:10 AM ET

'The Mentalist': Were the character-deaths last night game-changers for the series?

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Review, TV Last Night, Television

This season, The Mentalist has done two things simultaneously. It’s increased the degree of personal relationships among the regular characters, and it’s sharpened and refocused Simon Baker’s Patrick Jane — made him more intent than ever on solving crimes and, ultimately, getting his ultimate goal: the capture (and death?) of serial-killer Red John.

Last night — and if the headline above didn’t tip you off enough, here ya go: SPOILER ALERT, DON’T READ IF YOU DIDN’T WATCH LAST NIGHT! — we saw the deaths of a few characters, one of whom had been crucial to the season thus far. (Read full post)

Nov 19 2009 09:47 AM ET

'Friday Night Lights' recap: Hunting and fishing for plots

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Last Night, Sports, TV Recap, Television

Friday Night Lights committed some minor sins last night, but I’m willing to forgive almost all of them just for the sight of Tim Riggins in a hunting cap he wore with intentional ironic goofiness while on a hunting trip with Matt Saracen. (Was “33,” the number Tim had written on his deerstalker cap, his football jersey number?)

The hour started out well. I like the way East Dillon Principal Burnwell (very nice, Dickensian name) isn’t cutting Coach Eric Taylor any slack. (His terse dismissal of a pep rally was, “Rah, rah, rah, sis boom bah” — and that last “bah” sounded like the start of “bah, humbug!”)

But I’m already a bit impatient with the Vince-Luke arguing and fighting. The racial tensions here aren’t being played out with nearly the degree of detail and subtlety that FNL used to deploy with brilliant regularity. I ascribe this to the difficulty the producers have set up for themselves in splitting our attention between two schools and two teams. There are simply too many new characters and so many subplots to juggle; it’s inevitable that some of them will be treated abruptly, as this rivalry between Vince and Luke was this week. It’s too bad, because I think both characters could yield nuanced stories, given their backgrounds.

Speaking of subplots, of all the ones to choose when FNL has been spending its initial weeks setting up Eric’s challenges with new players and Tami’s woes with the redistricting, this was the week the series had to pick for Devin to ask Julie to accompany her to a gay bar? Again, I like Devin as a character from last season, but her best-buds friendship with Julie seemed to come out of nowhere. And I get that to some extent, this was a plot device: to have Julie see coach Stan in the gay bar. I’m hoping that this guy, who so far as been depicted as a loud doofus, will now become more three-dimensional as we see how this aspect of his identity plays out. But again, is this a case of too many characters distracting us from our core favorites?

Which brings me to a few faves in particular:

• Tami: How much is it going to take for her to start unloading on Eric to pay as much attention to what she’s going through as she does for his troubles? This week, her car is vandalized, and she… what, cleans off the mess, drives home, and offers to cook dinner for the bunch of team boosters Eric needs to schmooze? This isn’t the emotionally open Tami we know and love. (But all respect, as always, to Connie Britton for making the absolute most of every second of screen time; her reactions do a lot of storytelling the scripts don’t have time for.)

• Riggins and Saracen go hunting: How funny was that? In the midst of Matt’s dolorous worries about his future with Julie, his apprenticeship with that nutty-but-brilliant artist, and his pizza delivery job, it was great to see ol’ Tim pull his pal out into the woods for a little hunting. And even better that Matt proved to be such a klutz at it.

Finally, what did you think of the night’s big emotional payoff, the news of the death of Matt’s father, deployed overseas? The show pulled Kim Dickens in as Matt’s mom for the first time this season just so she could be home when a military team appeared at the door to give her the bad news. Into what sort of emotional spin will this send poor Matt?

Friday Night Lights airs on DirecTV’s 101 network every Wednesday.

Did you watch? What sublot are you finding the most interesting? The most frustrating?

Nov 19 2009 08:17 AM ET

Janet Jackson interview: Michael Jackson was 'in denial,' and why she won't see 'This Is It'

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Michael Jackson, Music, News, Review, TV Last Night, TV News, Television

Janet Jackson told Robin Roberts last night that her brother Michael Jackson was “in denial” about his dependence on drugs. The ABC special inevitably focussed a lot on Michael, even as it gave us a more complete picture of the 43 year-old Janet herself.

Of Michael, she said of his recent documentary, This Is It: “I definitely won’t [see it] right now or [perhaps]  ever… [it's] too soon, too hard. It’s hard when I even see the posters for it.” As for his death, she brought up Michael’s physician, Dr. Conrad Murray:  ”He was the one who was administering [drugs to Michael]. I think he was responsible.” (To see video of the interview, go here.)

Jackson kept a fixed smile on her face throughout most of the hour and apologized at one point to Roberts, saying, “I have this thing where I tend to smile when things get uncomfortable.” If so, this hour was pretty uncomfortable for her.

Janet talked about the conflicting feelings she’s had over the years about her body, but that now she feels comfortable  ”with my booty,” and is writing a book that addresses some of these issues, called True You.

She described the notorious discipline her father, Joe, imposed upon his children as “old-school” bordering on “being a little abusive.” No matter who you talk to, this guy seems just plain cruel. That notion came through even when Roberts asked her why she calls her father “Joseph” and not “Dad”: “He said, ‘I’m Joe, not dad’… It is what it is… I’ve never questioned it.” She said this was true before she was four years old. As is sometimes the case with the Jackson children, one gets the feeling that they’ve tamped down a lot of emotional (and in some cases, physical) abuse.

It was Joe who steered her away from acting in TV shows such as Good Times and Diff’rent Strokes. “He said, ‘I think you could make more money singing.’” Tellingly, she now says while she hasn’t given up music — the hour showed a bit of the video for her new single, “Make Me” — she’s most interested in acting, signing on for Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too.

Janet Jackson will open this year’s American Music Awards on Sunday night.

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Nov 18 2009 11:27 AM ET

Sarah Palin loves tea-baggers, holds warm eyeballs for Barbara Walters

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Current Affairs, News, Politics, TV News, Television, The President

Continuing to lob softballs — or in this case, eyeballs — at Sarah Palin, Barbara Walters, last night on Nightline and this morning on Good Morning America, asked questions such as whether President Obama should have women playing in the White House basketball games the President occasionally has.

Yes she certainly thinks he should, said Palin, for whom “basketball was my life” during high school.

Of the so-called “teabagger” movement that objects, according to Walters, to “the government bail-out,” Palin had nothing but praise: “That tea party movement is beautiful; the tea-baggers, they’re speaking out, using their freedom of speech.”

By this second day of promoting her Going Rogue book, Walters already seemed to be scraping the bottom of the conversational barrel. By which I mean, do we care that Palin considered herself a “tough hunting buddy” with her father?

Her dad, both a science teacher as well as a hunter, used to “shoot and carve up” the moose they shot. Palin said her father asked her “to hold the warm eyeballs” of one dead moose, but she declined.

Are we getting tired of The Daily Palin pervading the TV schedule these days?

Nov 18 2009 07:29 AM ET

'Sons of Anarchy' recap: Is there a better TV love story than Gemma and Clay's?

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Fall TV 2009, Review, TV Last Night, TV Recap, Television

Sons of Anarchy is a lot of things, but a romance is not one category I think of first. So it was all the more startling to realize that last night’s episode, titled “Service,” had as its core the relationship between Gemma and Clay.

Yes, there were many other satisfying moments. If there’s one thing Sons gets you in the mood for, it’s experiencing some cathartic revenge. After Clay and Jax made their gruff apologies to each other (“I’m sorry, son”; “I am, too”), there was a moment when I sorta hoped they and the rest of SAMCRO would hop on their bikes and do some awful things to Zobelle and his League as repayment for Gemma’s gang-rape — only the worst of the many things Zobelle has caused. Jax probably spoke for all of us when he expressed his wish: (Read full post)

Nov 17 2009 12:22 PM ET

'V': The subplot that ought to be dropped to help this show's future

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Fall TV 2009, TV Tonight, Television

So tonight is the third episode of V, and the ratings for last week’s episode dropped quite a bit from the series premiere.

I like the show, and I’d like to see it exist beyond its initial run of four episodes. So in the spirit of constructive criticism, I offer this advice to the producers:

Drop the subplot with Tyler and Lisa. No offense to Logan Huffman, who plays the son of Elizabeth Mitchell’s Erica, or Laura Vandervoort, who plays the lissome Visitor to whom Tyler is attracted.

This is one dead-end storyline. We know that Lisa is there to entice Tyler to join the Visitors, initially without the knowledge of his anti-Visitor mom. But every time there’s a Tyler-Lisa scene, all action on V grinds to a halt. Instead of seeing what Erica or Morris Chestnut’s Ryan or Scott Wolf’s Chad are up to, we have to sit around while Tyler gazes at Lisa with a moo-cow gaze, knowing no good (or much in the way of a romantic future) can come of this.

To keep viewers, V has to zip right along these next couple of weeks. And if it returns, I hope the Tyler-Lisa storyline cools, and the writers find something else for these characters to do.

Agree? Disagree?

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Nov 17 2009 10:56 AM ET

David Letterman, media critic: The New York Times and 'douche'

by Ken Tucker
Categories:

Why does David Letterman remain the guy you want to see first on any random night? Because when he goes over to his desk after the monologue, you never know what’s going emerge from what’s stuck in Dave’s craw that evening.

Last night’s spontaneous combustion occurred over a story that had me scratching my head over this past Saturday: The New York Times’ front page story on the increasing use of the word “douche” on TV. I was so glad to see it struck someone else as an odd, irrelevant, off-key piece of investigative journalism. Plus, the stuff in this clip below about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s shifting personality in photographs was a choice bit of deconstructing media images:

“Who knew The New York Times had enough money to pay a guy to count the word ‘douche’?”

Exactly. Journalism students, this is how to read a newspaper.

Nov 17 2009 09:11 AM ET

On 'Good Morning America,' Barbara Walters to Sarah Palin's kids: 'How do you feel when people criticize Mommy?' Ick...

by Ken Tucker
Categories: Current Affairs, News, Politics, Television, The President

Sarah Palin says that when it comes to Sarah Palin, “there’s so much bullcrap out there.” Then she and Barbara Walters contributed to the pile. I’m not surprised Palin had Walters interview her for Good Morning America; who else would have asked this question?:

“How do you feel when people criticize Mommy?”

Willow, 15 and Piper, eight years old, had been ushered onto a sofa next to “Mommy” for part of the interview. They squirmed a bit, as who would not?

“It’s kind of sad,” said Willow.

“Painful?” prodded Walters. Objection: leading the witness, your honor!

“Yeah,” sighed Willow, giving up.

Palin repeated a lot of the things she said on Oprah yesterday while promoting her book Going Rogue, out today. That running for President “isn’t on my radar”; more whining about Katie Couric’s “badgering” interview.

Asked by Walters to grade, on a scale from one to 10, President Obama’s performance in office so far, Palin assigned him “a four.”

Palin said she’d been offered “reality shows,” but turned them down. When asked by Walters whether she wants a talk show, Palin said, “I’d probably rather write than talk.” Oprah had asked her the same thing; are Winfrey and Walters really worried about the competition?

Walters showed Palin a David Letterman clip making fun of the former governor, and asked whether Palin would go on Dave’s show. “I don’t want to boost his ratings,” she said. (Note: This is not the clip Walters played Palin, but, from last night’s Late Show, it’s just as amusing.)

What do you think of Palin’s media blitz so far?

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