Gosling made the confession during the BBC program Inside Out. He spoke of a lover who had AIDS and was in a hospital. “The doctor said, ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ and he went away. I picked up a pillow and smothered him until he was dead.”
Gosling, a familiar media figure in Britain, has been arrested; assisted suicide is illegal in England and Wales. He has been released on bail.
The controversy over assisted suicide is complex, to say the least. But it’s rare indeed for a TV broadcaster to admit to committing this act publicly. In a subsequent news interview, Gosling said, “I have no views on euthanasia… I’m surprised at all the fuss”:
It’s difficult to watch these clips without feeling sympathy for Gosling, but it seems likely that his television admission is going to stir up new debate about euthanasia, don’t you think? I also cannot imagine the host of any American documentary making such an on-air admission, can you?
So by now, there’s a full-on frenzy over what Tiger Woods will or won’t say at his five-minute Friday apology and press conference. Or rather, his press statement: He’s reportedly not taking any questions.
Which is why this is kind of a non-event. But that, of course, becomes an event in itself: Pundits everywhere, from Fox News to MSNBC, have slammed Woods in advance for not answering reporters’ questions. On the network side, ABC’s Good Morning America featured segments from co-hosts Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos that did a solid job of examining the pros and cons, with interviews with sports and media analysts who said, basically, if Woods is doing this just so he can get on with his golf career, it’ll be perceived as a cynical, insincere move. I’m not at all sure about that.
Nightline last night also had this thorough summary of the quandary Woods faces:
That report concludes with the phrase, “Admit, apologize, and advance.”
As some of you have already commented, to whom does Woods need to apologize, except to his wife and family? And wouldn’t it be good if Woods just did “advance” — that is, simply got on with his job of playing golf, and not play any further into the frenzy?
Abby Elliott, who’s been given far too little to do on Saturday Night Live this season, made a funny, charming, and dare I say hotsy appearance on The Late Show last night. For Letterman, it was almost a family affair, since Elliott is the daughter of Letterman grad Chris Elliott, who made a funny cameo appearance during Abby’s segment:
You know Chris, right? The Man Under The Stairs? The star of the short-lived cult masterwork Get A Life? The man who did one of the best Jay Leno impersonations ever?:
And of course I don’t need to tell you that Abby’s grandfather is Bob Elliott, half of the great comedy team Bob and Ray. Their low-key, poker-faced routines were the exact opposite of the broader comedy that Chris and Abby do, but no less funny, as on this old Johnny Carson Tonight Show clip (Bob is on the right):
The news that Kevin Eubanks won’t be Jay Leno’s Tonight Show bandleader much longer makes me wonder who’ll take over that position. Eubanks brought to the job a Wes Montgomery-meets-George Benson soft-jazz lassitude that was made physical by Eubanks’ literally laid-back posture on the bandstand. He also chuckled dutifully at Jay’s jokes, and that was about it.
As far as the history of The Tonight Show is concerned, Eubanks was no Doc Severinsen. Which is to say, Eubanks isn’t a flamboyant showman the way Johnny Carson’s trumpet-playing bandleader was, and he’s rarely called upon by Leno to deliver solo showcases the way Carson used to use Doc — to give the guy some camera time, or to just fill time.
So who will Leno pick as a replacement? He can’t go “hip” — Jimmy Fallon cornered that market with The Roots. Leno can’t head for heartland-rock — Max Weinberg moonlighting from the E-Street Band for Conan O’Brien removes that option. And since irony is alien to Jay, he’ll never search out an equivalent to the multiple levels of put-on and scholarship that Paul Shaffer pulls off at The Late Show.
Leno, being a man of the ordinary people, might want to hire whoever it is who leads the band on American Idol, the ultmate ordinary-people show.
I saw a commercial recently touting a concert tour by “Dennis DeYoung featuring the music of Styx” — no doubt careful legal wording. It occurs to me that Leno might like to use a middle-of-the-road purveyor of oldies like DeYoung, or maybe even Journey (with whoever their latest lead singer is) as his house-band.
Or how about Gene Simmons? You just know he’d dump KISS in a second for an easy paycheck like The Tonight Show, and instead of laughing at all of Leno’s jokes, he could waggle his tongue in approval.
Then I thought of the perfect Tonight Show bandleader: Randy Newman. He loves L.A., and The Tonight Show is by now an L.A. institution.
Newman knows how to lead an orchestra, for pete’s sake, so he’d have no trouble presiding over a talk-show band.
Plus: He’s the sour to Leno’s sweet. Every time the camera cuts to him after a Leno punchline, we’d see that great Newman glare, the down-turned mouth, the grumpy give-me-something-better gaze.
I know: Newman is also a brilliant ironist capable of genius songwriting. But this should not be held against him as a Tonight Show regular. He’s also a self-proclaimed lazy person who takes years and years between albums, so why not spare us the latest knock-off of “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” in his umpteenth movie soundtrack, and pour a little vinegary wit onto The Tonight Show?
Glenn Beck’s swipe at Bill Nye the Science Guy, who apparently has the gall to believe there’s such a thing a global warming, did not go unnoticed by Rachel Maddow. She broke down the beef between Beck, Nye, and Maddow herself, whom Beck also accused of lying and selective editing. As they say, judge for yourself, and tell me who the winners and losers are in this brawl:
Last night, after his opening-monolgue jokes, David Letterman sat down at his desk and delivered a casually stinging rebuke to the Olympics official who accused dead luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili of making “a mistake… that had fatal consequences.”
“A ‘mistake’?” said Letterman witheringly. “I just wonder if it had anything to do with those exposed steel girders… Don’t blame the kid, for god’s sake,” the host said, referring to READ FULL STORY »
There’s no new Chuck tonight, because of NBC’s Olympics coverage, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the current Chuck controversy. Some of you are pretty steamed about the way the most recent episode, Feb. 8′s “Chuck Versus the Mask,” pushed Chuck into the arms of Hannah (guest star Kristin Kreuk), and Sarah into the arms of Daniel Shaw (guest star Brandon Routh).
I have to admit I watched last week’s episode not really considering the idea that the series was making some major READ FULL STORY »
You can bet I tuned in to Undercover Boss again this week, eager to see what paragon of upper-management would lower himself to mingle with the hoi polloi. It was the CEO of Hooters, Coby Brooks, who passed as “Scotty,” entering the neon nether-world of chicken wings, beer, and female employees in orange-and-white hot-pants and tight t-shirts.
In this “tough economy,” Brooks told us, he needs to “increase my customer base.” So in addition to what now looks like an Undercover Boss stand-by — footage of the boss doing grunt-work such as trash-hauling — he took to the streets of Texas with a couple of “Hooter girls” to READ FULL STORY »
This week’s Big Love saw the return of Ana, the “fourth wife” who I had hoped would not be returning to the Love-nest this season. I thought her subplot dragged down last season, as good as Branka Katic was at capturing the mixture of attraction she felt toward Bill and her dismayed outsider-perspective on the polygamist marriage into which she was invited. It turned out that [SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN THIS WEEK'S BIG LOVE] Ana READ FULL STORY »
You can’t miss the promotion NBC is giving The Marriage Ref during the Olympics broadcast. This game show produced by Jerry Seinfeld — “Thursdays, after the Olympics!” – recently announced that one of its guest “referees” will be Madonna, making a rare non-music-related, non-talk-show TV appearance.
