Normally, I avoid Barbara Walters celebrity interviews like the timorous suck-ups they usually are. But I tuned in last night, because I’ve found admirable many of the blunt, articulate statements Patrick Swayze has made about his stage-4 pancreatic cancer. True to form last night, Swayze scoffed at trite cliches about false comfort, saying, “the cancer isn’t going away.” Avoiding all self-pity, he declared, “I’m not going to chase [the idea of] ‘staying alive.’”
With Walters, Swayze used the clearest language possible about having a fatal disease. He spoke with educational precision about his symptoms and his courses of treatment. When Walters tried a well-meaning, mawkish sign-off, saying she’d be back in a couple of years to do another interview with him, Swayze didn’t blink: “I’ll be here, or I won’t.” All this, plus you’ve gotta love a guy who’s taken to quoting a George Clinton funk lyric as a personal credo: “S—, god—, get off your a– and dance.” Dirty dancer? No: admirable, enduring dancer.
I hadn’t watched Scrubs much the past few seasons (and NBC certainly did not do much to remind me to check it out). But last night’s two new episodes on its new network, ABC, were aces, top-notch, silly ("Steak Night!") and funny (the episode-closing bit with barely-inside-jokes about Tony Shaloub’s universe-baffling multiple Emmy-wins) and a wee bit touching without being maudlin.
In short, the show proved decisively why it should continue. And as creator Bill Lawrence proved in his interview with my esteemed colleague Monsieur Ausiello, the show is likely to maintain this comic momentum for the rest of its season, and NBC made yet another boneheaded programming mistake in showing the show so little support over the years.
Scrubs fans and Scrubs skeptics: agree about last night? Disagree? Will you keep watching?
So that Scottish slyboots Craig Ferguson waggled his fingers in front of the camera last night and revealed he’d gotten married over the holidays. He wed his girlfriend Megan Wallace Cunningham, an art dealer. (He suggested we start referring to the couple by their celebrity-contraction, “Cragan.”)
“I know I said I’d never get married again but apparently I can’t even abide by my own rules,” said the twice-before-hitched Ferguson. Noting that his finger “went into toxic shock” upon the reapplication of a wedding ring, America’s favorite brogue-babbler promised a lot of take-my-wife-please jokes from now on.
If the yuks are as amusingly impertinent as the ones he made Monday (what did Megan have that the other wives didn’t?, he asked rhetorically: “a penis!” he crowed, cracking up at his risque silliness), we’re in for some fine opening-monologue tales of newly-married life. Throughout the evening, he seemed genuinely exhilarated, slipping in references to his new life with a giddiness that transcended foolishness: this was the sight of one happy fellow. And as a talk-show host unafraid to share the details of his life–Ferguson has in the past spoken movingly of the deaths of his parents and of his U.S. citizenship–you couldn’t help but watch last night and feel as though he was making you part of the wedding reception.
Congratulations, Craig. Long may your fingers, and everything else, wave.
Today, the woman we remember most fondly as the apple-cheeked Ann Romano in the 1975-84 sitcom One Day At A Time is celebrating her birthday — she’s a mere 65. As Ann — the divorced mother of daughters Julie (Mackenzie Phillips) and Barbara (Valerie Bertinelli) — Franklin always exuded pluckiness, intelligence, wryness, and common sense, qualities she needed in abundance while dealing not only with her fractious teenage girls but also in fending off the ludicrous romantic delusions of her apartment-building super, Dwayne Schneider (the wily Pat Harrington, Jr.).
Let’s keep things in perspective: One Day At A Time isn’t by any stretch a classic sitcom, but it was a thoroughly engaging, charming one in its early seasons, and that’s largely due to Franklin, who managed a winsome sexiness in the initial seasons that never detracted from her character’s firm authority as a mom. An independent woman, our Ann Romano was.
And so on this day, when prime-time is offering a new episode of (gag) The Real Housewives of Orange County, I salute a much more convincing ex-wife and mother in Ann Romano. On a day when we’ll be asked to believe the increasingly ludicrous decadence in new episodes of (rip, stitch) Nip/Tuck, I reach out to Bonnie Franklin and thank her for embodying a character who now seems a lot more vividly realistic, and fun, than so many of the miserable, grasping characters that fill prime time. If I could play matchmaker for Ann Romano with any fictional figure now, I’d fix her up with tonight’s other hero, Simon Baker’s Patrick Jane, of The Mentalist. His smooth charm and her brainy pluck would make a good match, don’t you think? And together they might have been able to keep Julie/Mackenzie and Barbara/Valerie out of trouble, on camera and off.
Last night it wasn’t just ABC’s housewives who were desperate. (And they were indeed pretty desperate: having Teri Hatcher sleep with her gay neighbor, but then reassuring us there was no sex? Rather lame.) On the premiere of VH-1′s Confessions of a Teen Idol, we were supposed to think it was an act of grand tragedy when Adrien Zmed rued the day he “walked away from TJ Hooker” instead of this just being an ego-fed bad career move. Now Zmed performs on cruise ships. Boo-hoo. Failure can often be fascinating when it happens to someone else: VH-1 has built its entire programming schedule around this idea. And if Christopher Atkins–whose sole claim to fame is co-starring with Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon–really does break his back these days toting wheelbarrows full of cement mix for steady employment, well, who can blame him for wanting to spend some time back in front of cameras, and living in a cushy reality-show house?
The washed-up 80s stars in Confessions of a Teen Idol call each other “bro” and “dude” incessantly, and are all pretty tedious (most amusing: MTV leech Eric Nies and his raw-food proselytizing), but the only person who interests me isn’t one of the washed-up–it’s one of this series’ producers, Jason Hervey. Yes, Wayne on The Wonder Years. When Hervey and the other producers pulled a stunt on the ex-teen idols too boring to detail here, it was the stubby, defensive Hervey who marched out to justify the show and mollify the craggy housemates. Unlike the teen idols here, Hervey has managed to stay involved in show-biz–not, for the most part, as a performer but as a producer of this and other shows. In that role, he comes across as likably pugnacious; he seems like a tougher dude than the whiny bros on Confessions of a Teen Idol.
Happy Monday. Did you watch this thing? Will you watch it again?
Tonight, NBC presents the Saturday Night Live Sports Extra (7 pm, EST), a clip collection. I’m guessing it’ll include fairly recent smart sketches such as Peyton Manning nailing some kids with footballs all in the name of mentoring — a fine example of a celebrity unafraid to spoof himself. And I’d guarantee that you’ll see Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri as Spartan cheerleaders. But the one clip SNL had better show is perhaps my favorite sports-related bit, Harry Shearer, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest’s brilliant 1984 parody of synchronized swimming.
So, sports fans (and are there many of you out there reading this? EW doesn’t cover sports TV very much — should we?): What Saturday Night Live sports-related sketches will you be looking for tonight?
Coming out of a few weeks of mostly reruns, my appetite for new shows is ravenous. Here’s a quick run-down of some brand-new series premiering over the next few months, roughly in the order of my curiosity about them.
1. Dollhouse (Fox, premiering Feb. 13) Joss Whedon in the (doll)house! With Buffy‘s Eliza Dushku as part of a group of humans whose personality is erased and imprinted with a new one each time she goes on a new mission for a client. Sheesh, it sounds complicated, doesn’t it? But there’s no one I’d trust more to guide me into a tricky TV series than creator-producer-writer Whedon. Bring on the mind-bending…
2. Castle (ABC, premiering Mar. 9) Another Whedon alum–Nathan Fillion, from the great cult series Firefly–stars as a mystery-writer turned mystery-solver. Could be a lot of wry fun, or could be Murder, He Wrote; can’t wait to find out.
3. Lie To Me (Fox, premiering Jan. 21) Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction) stars as a scientist who specializes in reading people’s faces and body language to determine whether they’re telling the truth. He uses his ability to help cops solve crimes. I’ve seen this pilot, and suspect Fox is right in thinking it’s got itself a possible big hit. Roth is charmingly sardonic, and Kelli Williams, who’s kept herself pretty hidden since co-starring in David E. Kelley’s The Practice, radiates a smart glow.
4. Cupid (ABC, premiering Mar. 14) A guy claims to be the earthly manifestation of the Roman love-god Cupid (Will & Grace‘s Bobby Cavanale), and tries to match up people destined for each other. Some folks think he’s crazy–including co-star Sarah Paulson (Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip) as his psychiatrist. If this show sounds familiar, it’s because its creator, Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars) did a show a decade ago called Cupid starring Jeremy Piven in the title role. Same premise. It bombed. Maybe this concept’s time has come now?
5. Kings (NBC, premieres Mar. 19) I’ll be honest: Tell me this is about a mythical kingdom of kings and princes but set in the present-day, and I’ll give you a "Get outta here!" But tell me that the king is played by Deadwood‘s Ian McShane, and involves a lot of ruthless plotting, and I’ll be in front of my TV, hoping it is good and worthy of the great McShane.
Which of these new shows are you looking forward to?
Was it Bromance? (Happy new year, Brody Jenner: No one wants to see you on TV anymore.)
Was it flipping channels on New Year’s Eve and seeing Robbie Knievel on Fox endlessly hype his lame motorcycle-jump over a Las Vegas volcano?
Was it watching the new episodes of everything on NBC? You know, fresh editions of crapterpieces Deal Or No Deal, Knight Rider, or Momma’s Boys?
This is the day we dump on everything we hated on TV this week. Come on, readers and fellow viewers: What was the worst thing the assaulted your eyeballs this week?
1. Get to the bottom of this ‘Supernatural’ business. So many of you, as I scan EW.com, are into this show, I have clearly been missing something. So I’m gonna watch a batch of this season’s already aired episodes, and you’ll explain to me why you dig Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles so much in this series, right?
2. Give Kathy Griffin another chance, based on her CNN co-hosting with Anderson Cooper. My colleague Mike Bruno provides a thoroughly entertaining summary (and a clip) of the gleeful chaos Griffin wreaked here. I, as you may recall from yesterday’s post, had promised not to watch CNN last night, but, flipping the channels, I was stopped dead upon hearing Griffin ask Cooper, “Can I get a pap smear from Dr. Sanjay Gupta?” and was hooked and hooting for about an hour. I used to think of Griffin as an unfunny vulgarian. Now I think she may be a very funny vulgarian: clearly, a Subject For Further Study.
3. Try and keep and open mind about Jimmy Fallon’s new talk show, premiering Mar. 2. On the one hand, the guy’s webisodes running up to his debut have been thuddingly unfunny. On the other hand, his house band is The Roots. Good taste, but not good humor? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and watch closely for at least the first week.
What about you? What are your New Year’s TV Resolutions? Any shows you plan to watch that you’ve been avoiding? Any shows you resolve to quit watching?
