BuzzFeed: "Was That Good Wife Twist Cheap Or Profound?"

No one saw that coming, not even BuzzFeed Entertainment Editorial Director Jace Lacob and Senior Editor Louis Peitzman, who discuss the shocking reveal on the legal drama. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD, if you haven’t watched.

Over at BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Was That Good Wife Twist Cheap Or Profound?" in which Louis Peitzman and I debate whether the twist in this week's episode of The Good Wife was warranted or manipulative.

The March 23 episode of The Good Wife (“Dramatics, Your Honor”) pushed the critically acclaimed legal drama into new directions, courtesy of an unexpected plot twist that somehow stayed under wraps until it unfolded on-air.

(If you haven’t yet seen Sunday’s episode, stop reading right now. I mean it. STOP. Just stop. There are MAJOR SPOILERS ahead and if you’ve somehow managed to avoid finding out what happened, this is your last chance to do so.)

On this week’s episode, Will Gardner (Josh Charles) was shot and killed by his client — college student Jeffrey Grant (Hunter Parrish), who had been accused of murdering a woman he claimed was a stranger — during an eruption of gunfire in the courtroom after Jeffrey was seized with panic for his life and reached for a deputy’s gun. What followed was traumatic to watch: Will bleeding out on the floor of the courtroom, and then his body being discovered by Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) and Diane (Christine Baranski) on a gurney in the hospital.

For some, it was the perfect way for Josh Charles’ Will to leave the show, one that closed the door on any reconciliation between him and Julianna Margulies’ Alicia. For others, it felt like a cheap twist. We debate just how well the show handled Will’s death and what it means for The Good Wife.

Jace: I was genuinely shocked by the twist. Jaw-on-the-floor, didn’t-see-that-coming shocked. And for a split-second, I didn’t believe that Robert and Michelle King would actually kill off Will, who is nominally the male lead. But what The Good Wife has proven itself willing to do is to shake the foundations of its narrative in unexpected ways. And that’s what Will’s death has done. And in the Age of Spoilers, that they managed to keep it a secret is another miraculous feat. While I’ll miss Will, I love that the show was able to surprise its viewers in such a kick-to-the-gut sort of way.

Louis: I was surprised, too, though perhaps not as surprised as you were, thanks in part to the fact that CBS was heralding this as, “the episode of The Good Wife that you can’t miss.” I hate that. If you warn me that a big twist is coming, I will spend the entire episode waiting for a major character to die, and that ruins a lot of the suspense. But I digress. I will say that, yes, The Good Wife is willing and able to pull the rug out from under its viewers — and I think that’s why I was a little let down by Will’s abrupt death. It felt cheap, the kind of twist another lesser show would use. The Good Wife doesn’t need a random shootout to shock us.

Jace: Wait a minute: It needs to be said that Josh Charles had decided to leave the show a la Dan Stevens and Downton Abbey and was meant to leave at the end of Season 4 and came back under a short-term deal for the fifth season. To me, there’s no way to write Will out of the show that wouldn’t feel cheap except for him dying, likely in some chance way. To me, the fact that it happened under such unexpected and illogical circumstances compounded the tragedy. This wasn’t a protracted cancer storyline where Will learns he’s dying and has to say goodbye to Alicia. There is no goodbye, no closure, no catharsis about the time they lost fighting. His life ended, sadly and without reason.

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BuzzFeed: "A Lover And A Hater Debate The Veronica Mars Movie"

BuzzFeed’s Entertainment Editorial Director Jace Lacob (that's me!) and Chief Los Angeles Correspondent Kate Aurthur sat down to discuss the sequel film. They agreed on one thing. Maybe two.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "A Lover And A Hater Debate The Veronica Mars Movie," in which I sit down with Kate Aurthur to debate the merits of the new Veronica Mars movie, which opens on March 14.

Jace: Ah, Veronica Mars. A long time ago, we used to be friends… And I’m honestly happy that the former teenage sleuth is back in the Veronica Mars feature film, which I quite enjoyed. Yes, I’m one of those people who has watched all three season of the UPN-CW drama several times over, and that may have played a role in my feelings about the film. But I feel like, while you loved the show, you didn’t feel the same way about the film?

Kate: Yes, I loved the show — or at least the first season, which I thought was close to perfect. After that, I found it sporadically great, with Kristen Bell being wonderful throughout, but the plots and her supporting cast hit-or-miss. (Season 3 was almost all miss, sadly.) As for the movie, I wanted to love it! And there were a few moments when I was transported and delighted, mostly, of course, because of Bell, who has worked steadily but hasn’t yet equalled her Veronica Mars heights. I just thought it all felt so… small. I had other problems with it, but let’s leave it at that for now. What did you like about it?

Jace: Well, I’ll be honest and say that the third season of Veronica Mars was… not very good. But those first two seasons — which had really taut, byzantine mysteries — felt closer in spirit to the film, which offers some genuinely surprising twists and callbacks. But the false note that the show ended on doesn’t diminish the pleasure that comes from catching up with Bell’s Veronica and the rest of the characters in the film, such as Tina Majorino’s Mac, Ryan Hansen’s Dick, and Krysten Ritter’s Gia. Yes, the movie is a bit of fan service (given that it was, well, entirely funded by the fans) and it certainly plays that way, even with the recap at the beginning designed to catch non-viewers up. (Are non-viewers going to see this movie? I doubt it.) And the film does offer a really fascinating look at how these characters have grown and changed in the time since the show concluded… though Neptune seems just as trapped in its noir-tinged class warfare as before.

Kate: Before I criticize it, I want to say a few things I really liked about the movie. Have I mentioned Bell? Bell. Bell’s a ringing, Bell on wheels, Bell and whistles, etc. Her delivery is sharp, and she punctuates everything she says with wit (but not wink), intelligence, and when the scene calls for it, a deep sadness. If only Rob Thomas — who created Veronica Mars and is responsible for its excellence, but has never directed a film before — didn’t squash so many of her jokes with his clunky directing. But back to the praise! Bell and her co-star Jason Dohring, as Logan, still have chemistry, both romantically and by being able to throw ping-pong-fast dialogue at each other. Gaby Hoffmann and James Franco (playing himself) both have inventive little arcs. I also liked the continued menace in Neptune; and I liked the sense that the characters, whom we haven’t seen for years, really have progressed in their lives — they’re all kind of different now, imperceptibly but actually. But, Jace, didn’t seeing the gang back together make you a little sad about the gang? The ensemble was fine for TV, but in a movie, I just got kind of depressed watching the Piz and Wallace of it all.

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The Daily Beast: "Girls Gets Graphic"

This week’s episode of Girls graphically depicted the results of a male character’s climax. Why the scene has outraged some, and why it’s a watershed moment for the HBO comedy.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Girls Gets Graphic," in which I write about Girls, viewer responses, graphic content, and why THAT scene from this week's episode was a watershed moment for the Lena Dunham comedy.

HBO’s Girls has always been a lightning rod for critical reaction, whether it be allegations of nepotism, privilege, or racism. It’s impossible to imagine a week going by without someone, somewhere, having an adverse reaction to the Lena Dunham-created comedy.

And that’s okay: art is meant to trigger emotional responses. I’d far rather watch a television show that stirred up feelings within its viewers—that challenged them to watch something complicated and often uncomfortable—than a show whose main goal was simply to please the most people, across all demographic swaths, week after week.

Girls is the most definitely the former rather than the latter. It’s a show that revels in its own complexity, in the often-unlikable natures of its characters, in the comedy of the awkward that follows. This week’s episode (“On All Fours”)—written by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner and directed by Dunham—expectedly led to all sorts of responses from its viewers, many of which was of the outraged variety.

Joe Flint at the Los Angeles Times yesterday penned a reaction to this week’s episode of Girls, focusing in particular on the graphic sex scene between Adam (Adam Driver) and his new girlfriend, Natalia (Shiri Appleby), which was challenging to watch: after making her crawl to his bedroom on all fours, he proceeded to engage in some disconnected, rough sex with her and then finished himself off on her chest.

“But Sunday's episode was graphic even for those fans used to seeing creator and star Lena Dunham's no-holds-barred approach to story-telling,” wrote Flint. “This was not a first for cable TV, or the movies. An episode of HBO's Sex and the City showed fluid but played it for laughs, as did a well-known scene featuring Cameron Diaz in the comedy There's Something About Mary.”

“However, this time it was a jarring end to a violent and hard-to-watch scene,” he continued. “Even theatrical movies with sexually explicit material and adult pay-per-view channels typically steer clear of such displays, especially if it's not for comic relief."

Flint is right in saying that this was not “a first” for cable television. But he (and an HBO spokeswoman quoted in the story) seem to have a short memory, as HBO’s short-lived drama Tell Me You Love Me featured an even more graphic scene involving “fluids” that was most definitely not played for comic relief.

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The Daily Beast: "Zero Hour: Is This the Dumbest Show Ever to Air on TV?"

ABC tries to get back in the Lost game with the ridiculous Zero Hour. My take on the show, launching Thursday, that just might be the dumbest ever on television.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my review of the first episode of ABC's overhyped adventure drama "Zero Hour" (entitled ""Zero Hour: Is This the Dumbest Show Ever to Air on TV?"), in which I call the Anthony Edwards-led drama "nothing more than stale schlock, an hour full of zeroes.

Ever since Lost went off the air—and, actually, before—the broadcast networks have desperately searched for a show that could tempt viewers eager to get, well, lost in the complexity, mythology, and mystery of the Damon Lindelof/Carlton Cuse drama.

Zero Hour is not that show.

The ABC drama, which begins Thursday night at 10 p.m., recalls fiascos like FlashForward more than Lost. Created by former Prison Break writer Paul Scheuring, Zero Hour is no valentine to television, offering up a ludicrous mash-up of overtly familiar tropes: doomsday devices, the birth of the Anti-Christ, secret societies, and a witch’s cauldron of yawn-inducing fare. Did I mention that there are also goose-stepping Nazis, clocks embedded with treasure maps, demon spawn, and enough nonsense to make The Da Vinci Code seem downright plausible?

The plot—and I use that term lightly—revolves around Hank (Anthony Edwards), the shlubby editor of a paranormal magazine (called Modern Skeptic, no less) whose wife, clock seller Laila (Jacinda Barrett), is kidnapped by a ruthless assassin on the FBI’s most wanted list as part of a conspiracy that involves the end of the world.

There’s also the appearance of 12 mystical clocks, constructed during the rise of the Nazis in Germany, and the Rosicrucians, a secret Catholic mystical sect said to be guarding some sort of device with the power to bring about “zero hour” for the planet. Hank sets out on a world-spanning mission (funded by whom?), heading for the Artic circle after discovering a diamond whose flaw is actually a map to something called “New Bartholomew” in an effort to find Laila and the man who took her.

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The Daily Beast: "House of Cards: Should You Binge-Watch Netflix’s Political Drama?"

Netflix just released all 13 episodes of its first original show. Having binge-watched all 13 episodes this weekend, I ponder whether the strategy behind House of Cards represents a new narrative format for television—and if it could backfire.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "House of Cards: Should You Binge-Watch Netflix’s Political Drama?" in which I discuss binge-viewing and Netflix's strategy regarding House of Cards. Is this television's new narrative form?

Bet you can’t eat just one.

A lot has been written lately about consumer patterns and television, specifically the rise of what has been coined “binge-watching” or “binge-viewing,” the practice of marathoning an entire season or multiple episodes of a television show in a highly concentrated period of time. It might occur during a single evening or over the course of a weekend, but the notion of consumption is apt. Netflix, the streaming video service that started out as a distributor of DVD rentals by mail, has made this practice far easier than ever before, offering a catalog of full seasons of past television shows. Why wait a week to watch another episode when there are 108 more available and you can sate your hunger by just clicking away?

Binge-watching is not new—IFC’s Portlandia did a sketch about a Battlestar Galactica-obsessed couple whose lives go into freefall after they marathon the entire series—but talk of it has intensified since Friday’s release of House of Cards on Netflix. The streaming-video pioneer released all 13 episodes of Season 1 of House of Cards on the same day, a potentially paradigm-shifting strategy that pokes a sword in the belly of the broadcast networks, who are beholden to advertisers and time slots, and therefore the slow rollout of product.

Netflix doesn’t have these concerns. It features no advertising, is a subscription-based service (like premium cablers HBO and Showtime, original programming exists to drive subscriptions), and doesn’t feel the need to share “ratings” or compete in the same ratings-obsessed pool with the broadcasters. The strategy behind the mass release of House of Cards, the American remake of the seminal 1990 U.K. miniseries of the same name, is that viewers deserve choice. If they want to watch all 13 in a row, more power to them, but the platform isn’t reliant on a single timeframe for viewing. If a consumer decides to watch a few and then pick it up a year from now, it doesn’t matter.

That belief is echoed by Beau Willimon, House of Cards’s showrunner. “It’s fully in the audience’s hands to decide what their own experience is,” Willimon said in an interview with The Daily Beast in January. “The same way that you read a novel. You can read Anna Karenina in two days, or you can read it over a year. And I think that’s better because it personalizes the experience.”

It’s this semblance to the novel that seems particularly apt. The narrative of House of Cards, itself based on a novel by Michael Dobbs, is largely dependent on a novelistic structure. The episodes are even referred to as “chapters” in an effort to underscore this comparison more deeply.

The entire narrative benefits from the close scrutiny of novel-reading, or of similarly ambitious and novelistic shows like Mad Men or Breaking Bad. A paper swan, made of a $20 bill and tossed at Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) in one episode, turns up repeatedly throughout the back half of the season. It represents her own unknowable quality, a tightly bound mystery that’s contorted and bent.

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The Daily Beast: "The Good Wife: Has Season 4’s Kalinda Storyline Gone too Far?"

Has the legal drama’s steamy Kalinda/Nick plot gone too far? Maria Elena Fernandez and I debate the merits and flaws of this season’s most polarizing storyline on The Good Wife.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Good Wife: Has Season 4’s Kalinda Storyline Gone too Far?" in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I offer up a he said/she said-style discussion on the Kalinda/Nick storyline on Season 4 of The Good Wife.

Archie Panjabi’s Emmy-winning turn as Kalinda Sharma has been one of the highlights of CBS’ stellar legal drama, The Good Wife. But something happened on the way to fleshing out the fiercely independent investigator’s storyline—and not everyone is thrilled about it.

Entertainment Weekly’s TV critic Ken Tucker last week criticized the show’s handling of the twisted dynamic between Panjabi’s Kalinda and Marc Warren’s Nick. “The intrusion of Nick, Kalinda’s ex-husband and played by State of Play’s Marc Warren as though he’d wandered in from Trainspotting, has thrown off the balance of the storytelling in the new season’s first two episodes,” wrote Tucker, “… the bickering that followed, along with [Nick] hanging around the law firm to make Kalinda uncomfortable, only served to make the viewer uncomfortable.”

It’s a viewpoint echoed by The A.V. Club’s David Sims, who wrote, “The Good Wife’s writers seem to have introduced her nasty husband Nick just to see how much they can get away with on CBS. The whole thing certainly isn’t dramatically effective, and aside from how gross it can get, it’s not very gripping.”

The Daily Beast’s Jace Lacob and Maria Elena Fernandez are at odds about the storyline and teamed up to discuss the highs and lows of The Good Wife’s Kalinda/Nick plot so far. (WARNING: The conversation below contains plot points from the season’s third episode, “Two Girls, One Code.” If you have yet to watch that episode, read at your own peril.)

He Said: I am taken aback by some of the reactions to this season’s Kalinda storyline, which I’m finding to be really revealing and intriguing. Kalinda has always been a fairly enigmatic, dark character and Season 4 of The Good Wife has begun to strip away the armor she wears in order to reveal why she is so damaged. We’re not meant to like Nick or root for him, but I am utterly captivated by their screwed up dynamic.

She Said: We’ve waited a long time to learn more about Kalinda, why she created another identity, and why she likes to keep a mysterious quality. My main complaint is that there’s no payoff. I don’t buy their relationship or the predicament she finds herself in at all. It has not been set up for us. And while we are not supposed to root for Nick, we are supposed to root for Kalinda. I don’t. I don’t feel anything for her.

He Said: You really don’t feel anything for Kalinda? That surprises me, because I feel a great deal for her during this storyline. The way that she looks at her wrist after her rough sex with Nick speaks volumes about her past as an abused wife who was little more than a possession for her obsessed, Svengali-like husband. The fact that he has tracked her down to Chicago to (A) get her back and reclaim her, and (B) get back the money she stole from him while he was in prison speaks a lot about the relationship here, as does the great skillet scene from last night’s episode. Their struggle—his of proto-traditional husband/wife dominance and submission and hers of freedom and independence—are at cross-purposes. He wants to own her and Kalinda wants to remind him that she can’t be owned. That it plays out in such a domestic setting, in a kitchen and he demands that she make him an omelet, is telling as well. There is real darkness in him and within her: he’s the source of her angst and why she can’t get close to anybody.

She Said: First of all, there’s nothing traditional going on here. This is a completely sadomasochistic, sick relationship.

He Said: Yes, but I only meant traditional in the sense of patriarchy: he wants her to fall in line with his whims and appetites, whether it is public sexual contact or, well, eggs.

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The Daily Beast: "Community: The NBC Comedy is Shelved Until Later, But Why?"

I explore NBC’s decision to hold Community until an undisclosed later date, which arrives during a television season that lowers the bar on expectations and on success.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Community: The NBC Comedy is Shelved Until Later, But Why?" in which I explore some of the reasons why NBC opted to hold Community until a later date.

Community will not be returning on Friday, October 19, and will instead remain in limbo for the foreseeable future. While the news left Greendale fans panicking, the network claims it has made the late decision because NBC had focused promotional support on the network’s Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday lineups, apparently forgetting about the existence of Community and Whitney, which were meant to return next Friday. The two low-rated comedies may instead end up filling in for the network’s other trouble spots in the coming weeks or months.

While this sort of network scheduling second-guessing is only too common these days, it comes at an odd time, both for Community and for NBC and for the broadcasters in general. While a handful of shows have received full season orders, it is head scratching that the networks have still yet to even cancel a single underperforming new series this year. (Yes, even The Mob Doctor remains on the air.) Usually, by this time, one or several shows have gotten the axe, sometimes after just as little as two episodes on air.

But the 2012-13 season proves that the bar for keeping a show on is much, much lower than perhaps ever before. Fox’s The Mob Doctor is clinging to life with a 0.9 in the demo on a Monday night. Even CBS has had to make do with a 0.8 in the adults 18-49 demo for its barely-hanging on legal drama Made in Jersey on a Friday night (beaten even by Fox’s Fringe), opting to keep the show on the air instead of canning it. And when things are sinking at CBS, the television equivalent of the land of milk and honey, things are really, really bad.

Despite the fact that the networks all have held back a number of shows for midseason, they appear to be fearful of swapping them out for what they’ve got on air now. (After all, they’ve already spent millions in advertising, promotion, and press for these duds.) So it might be a case of trying to recoup ad money while they still can while saving their later shows for when things really get bad. But that doesn’t change the fact that many of these shows—as least as largely determined by the outmoded viewership metrics that remain in place—are being more or less rejected by America.

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The Daily Beast: "2012 Emmy Nomination Snubs & Surprises"

The nominations are out: Homeland, Downtown Abbey, and Girls get their shot at the awards, while The Good Wife, Community, Louie, Justified, and many others are shut out.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "2012 Emmy Nomination Snubs & Surprises," in which I discuss which shows and actors were snubbed by the TV Academy as well as a few surprise nominations. Plus, view our gallery of the nominees.

The Television Academy has today announced its nominations for the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards and, looking at the list, you may be forgiven for thinking that every single member of the casts of Downton Abbey and Modern Family had walked away with nominations. (It just seems that way.)


AMC’s Mad Men and FX’s American Horror Story tied for the most nominations, with 17 apiece, while PBS’ cultural phenomenon Downton Abbey—which shifted from the miniseries category into Best Drama this year—grabbed 16 nominations (tying with History’s Hatfields & McCoys), including many in the acting categories. Also getting a lot of love this year: Game of Thrones, Homeland, Modern Family, and Sherlock. Not getting a lot of love: network dramas.

Once again, the dramatic categories are fierce competitions, including the dramatic actress races, which boast Julianna Margulies, Michelle Dockery, Elisabeth Moss, Kathy Bates, Claire Danes, and Glenn Close for Lead Actress and Archie Panjabi, Anna Gunn, Maggie Smith, Joanne Froggatt, Christina Hendricks, and Christine Baranski for Supporting. But for those shows that managed to score a bounty of nominations, there were those that were shut out in the cold altogether.

Hugh Laurie, an Emmy mainstay, failed to get a nomination for the final season of Fox’s House, while Justified didn’t get any love as a show or for its stars, Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins. (The show scored only two nominations overall, none in the main categories.) With Downton Abbey in the best drama series mix, CBS’ The Good Wife didn’t score a nomination, and the comedy list, heavy on HBO contenders, failed to include Community, Louie, and Parks and Recreation. (Speaking of which, will Parks’ Nick Offerman EVER get a nomination at this rate?)

Some oversights, however, are more egregious than others, and the nominations this year had their fair share of surprises as well. Here are some of the biggest snubs and most shocking surprises of this year’s Emmy nominations…

SNUB: Parks and Recreation (NBC)
This year’s Best Comedy category boasts no less than three HBO shows—including two newcomers in Girls and Veep, and returnee Curb Your Enthusiasm—leaving little room for much else to break through. The rest of the positions went to 30 Rock, Modern Family, and The Big Bang Theory, all of which have proven over the years to be irresistible catnip to Emmy voters. But to leave out Parks and Recreation, which had one of its best and most nuanced seasons to date, is particularly myopic. Revolving around the campaign of Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler, who was rightly nominated), Season 4 was tremendous, examining the hope and optimism of one political candidate against whom the odds were stacked, thanks to a spoiled candy company offspring (Paul Rudd) and his manipulative campaign manager (the ubiquitous Kathryn Hahn). Omitting Parks from the list of nominees is a slap in the face given just how deserving this show is of some awards recognition.

SNUB: Community (NBC)
Likewise, the final Dan Harmon season of Community was also shut out of the awards process. Putting aside the fact that none (NONE!) of its commendable actors managed to secure nominations in their respective categories, the gonzo and wildly imaginative comedy was also denied a Best Comedy nomination, despite the fact that this season proved to be one of its most absurd and inventive yet, delving into chaos theory, the mystery of a murdered yam (presented as a Law & Order episode), a Civil War parody, 8-bit video games, and a scathing Glee takedown. Perhaps Community is simply too good for the Emmys; perhaps it belongs not to awards committees, but rather to the people instead: to those individuals who appreciate and understand the warped genius of this show.

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The Daily Beast: "HBO’s The Newsroom: Aaron Sorkin’s Woman Problem"

HBO's The Newsroom transforms its female characters into hysterics and fools. In a critics’ conversation, Maureen Ryan and I dissect the woman problem embedded in Aaron Sorkin’s troubling drama.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "HBO’s The Newsroom: Aaron Sorkin’s Woman Problem," a critics' conversation in which The Huffington Post's Maureen Ryan and I explore the women problem within The Newsroom.

In certain circles, HBO’s latest drama, The Newsroom, from creator Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network), has been the galvanizing event of the summer, eliciting no shortage of strong responses both pro and con. In a critics’ conversation reprinted below, The Daily Beast’s Jace Lacob and the Huffington Post’s Maureen Ryan delve into the troubling issue of women within the HBO drama.

MAUREEN RYAN: One of the bigger problems with The Newsroom is that so many scenes involve men setting women straight, men supervising women, a man teaching a woman how to use email (and the woman getting it spectacularly wrong regardless), a hapless woman seesawing between two different men, etc. It’s not that I can't buy Will McAvoy, Jeff Daniels’s lead character, as a fully realized human being, but it’s pretty clear that the show thinks he is right, admirable, or brave most, if not all, of the time. 



We’re supposed to believe that MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) covered conflicts in the Middle East and won multiple awards for her work, yet she doesn’t understand how email works? She can’t get through a meeting without knocking over a poster? But one of the most troubling things is the way she’s used to prop up Will’s martyr complex: she cheated on him, and yet she clearly still adores him, despite the way he repeatedly berates her. She is the Woman Who Done the Man Wrong yet can’t quit him (really?). He’s clearly our hero, and she’s capable on occasion, but as ditzy and needy as the show needs her to be whenever it suits Sorkin. 



JACE LACOB: It’s hard to know what’s more infuriating: that MacKenzie is written as though she hasn’t even heard of a war zone or that she’s presented as alternately hysterical and incompetent. Her email gaffe in the second episode is unbelievable and galling. If you’re thinking, well, who hasn’t sent an errant email? Why does it have to be some symbol of misogyny? Then picture a male character in Sorkin’s world who doesn’t know the difference between the “*” and “s” keys on his BlackBerry. Impossible. 



The pratfalls hardly help solidify her character, nor does the near-constant yelling that Mortimer’s MacKenzie indulges in. She’s strident in a way that Sorkin refuses to let McAvoy be. Where he’s ambitious and visionary, she’s shrill. In fact, The Newsroom seems to relish putting loud women in their place or to render them helpless and histrionic. If the message of News Night is “we can do better,” surely that can apply to Sorkin as well here?

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The Darkest Timeline: Quick Thoughts on Dan Harmon's Firing from Community

On Thursday evening, NBC burned off the final three episodes of Community’s third season, 90 minutes of the remainder of the season haphazardly arranged around the 30 Rock finale. These well-received episodes tapped into the heart of what makes the offbeat comedy tick: 8-bit video games, an elaborate heist, and a trial over ownership rights to a sandwich shop.

If this all seems gonzo and out there, that’s the point: Community blazed creative trails that were largely heretofore unseen on American broadcast network television. If this had marked the end of Community, it would have gone out with a bang that was both joyous and triumphant. NBC had rescued the show with an eleventh hour reprieve, granting it a 13-episode renewal and moving it to the graveyard of Friday nights. But whether Dan Harmon, whose contract expired at the end of the third season, would be returning to the show he created was still very much unknown when the end credits ran on the final episode.

It was reported late last night, less than 24 hours after the show wrapped up its latest season, that Harmon would be replaced on Community: writers David Guarascio and Moses Port (Aliens in America) would be stepping in as showrunners, and Harmon would shift to a “consulting producer” position on Community.

Harmon confirmed the news this morning with a post on his Tumblr blog, Dan Harmon Poops. “Why’d Sony want me gone? I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have,” wrote Harmon. “They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business. Community is their property, I only own ten percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free.”

Earlier in the week, NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt spoke to press about the ongoing discussions between NBC, studio Sony Pictures Television, and Harmon, saying that Harmon might not be running the day-to-day on the show anymore. "I expect Dan's voice to a part of the show somehow," Greenblatt said.

The news is less of a shock than it is a disappointment, creatively at least. Under Harmon’s aegis, Community has amassed a small but rabidly loyal fanbase and pushed the boundaries of the American sitcom format. But, despite Harmon’s creative accomplishments, he had often run afoul of NBC and Sony during the course of the first three seasons. I was on set during one of these confrontations, in which a combative Harmon screamed at an NBC executive on the phone. (Afterward, he turned to me and said, “And that’s how the sausage gets made.”)

The show hasn’t been without controversy: there has been a revolving door of writers, rumors of budget overages and lateness (former executive producer Neil Goldman denied the former issue, telling me that the "show was not overbudget."), that public feud between Dan Harmon and Chevy Chase. Harmon himself admitted on his blog that he was often “damn bad” at the management aspects of his job. But for the show’s audience (at least that sizeable contingent that doesn’t also work within the industry or cover it), this matters very little in the grand scheme of things.

Showrunners get replaced all the time, Greenblatt said ominously last Sunday. His words echo all the more in my head today, now that I’ve had time to more fully process Harmon’s removal from the show.

There are a few shows that I directly associate with their creators. Community is one of those and Harmon’s vision for the show is impossible to untangle from the show itself. (Another is Gilmore Girls, which went off the rails a bit in Season 6 and then become unwatchable altogether in its final season once Amy Sherman Palladino left. Twin Peaks, the brainchild of David Lynch and Mark Frost, is another.)

Sony’s decision raises certain creative questions: Is Community really Community without Dan Harmon? Can two outsiders come in and fulfill the vision that Harmon had for the show without Harmon? If you rip out the heart of the show, can it still be called Community? As writer Megan Ganz tweeted last night, “Some people think there are a lot of synonyms for the word ‘irreplaceable.’ I don't.”

This is, in many ways, the darkest timeline: a pyrrhic victory for the show and its fans that saw the show renewed, only to see its creator pushed out of his position of creative power, taking away the impetus and drive behind the show’s spirit, and removing any real agency from Harmon, reduced to more a less a “consultant” on a show that he birthed.

Harmon is, at the end of the day, a mad genius, a tortured artist whose natural state of being misunderstood connected the show with millions of viewers who themselves perhaps felt out of place at times. He’ll be missed in many ways.

Back in September 2010, while visiting the set of Community for a story I was writing for The Daily Beast, Dan Harmon jokingly told me, "My job is to dream and smile." Those words are all the more difficult to read today, past tense as they are now.

The Daily Beast: "Sweet Genius: Ron Ben-Israel is the Scariest Man on Television"

Ron Ben-Israel may be a renowned pastry chef in real life, but as the host of Food Network’s cooking show Sweet Genius, he terrifies me.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Creepiest Man on Television," in which I discuss just why Ben-Israel freaks me out and review his Food Network show, Sweet Genius, a bizarre and often head-scratching mishmash of styles, tones, and freaky weirdness.

The scariest man on television is obsessed with cakes.

Ron Ben-Israel, the host of Food Network’s bizarre culinary competition series Sweet Genius, absolutely terrifies me. Watching the show reduces me to cold sweat, imagining that Ben-Israel has forced me into the Saw-like confines of the Sweet Genius set, where I must bake a génoise while he cackles eagerly at my misery before murdering me.

Sweet Genius is a variation on the network’s highly successful Chopped: Four chefs—pastry chefs and confectionary makers in this case—must cook three courses from pre-selected mystery ingredients, and one chef gets eliminated each round, leading to a final showdown between the last two competitors. This is hardly a novel conceit (in fact the entire show seems to be a direct reaction to Bravo’s Top Chef: Just Desserts), but here the courses—or “tests” to borrow the Sweet Genius parlance—are composed of chocolate, candy, and cake rounds, and the judge may cause you to wet your pants in fright, even if you’re not appearing on the show.

Overseeing the action from a thronelike place of power on a raised dais, Ben-Israel seems to be a cross between Fringe’s Observers—chromelike baldpates whose alienlike eyes skim over the action but never quite connect with it—and Austin Powers’s Bond-villain spoof Dr. Evil, given their similar physical appearances, fondness for wearing purple-blue and self-serious natures.

It’s the last element that’s the most troubling. While there’s clearly an overt aura of enforced theatricality to the proceedings, Ben-Israel takes his persona a little too far. There’s the spine-chilling way in which he tastes elements of the contestants’ dishes with an insane amount of fastidiousness, as though he were solving a complex differential equation or dissecting a victim rather than, well, eating candy. Adding to this sense of unease is the way with which Ben-Israel speaks, an exaggerated blend of winking coyness and thunderous voice of evil, announcing the inspiration for the dish (Ballerinas! Live baby chicks! A ventriloquist dummy!) and the way in which he slams his hand down on the large, overtly cake-shaped button that controls the show’s conveyer belt.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "What Happened to NBC’s Smash?"

While the pilot was a hit with critics, few have been happy with NBC’s Smash since. How could things have gone so wrong, so quickly?

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, in which I offer my take on NBC's Smash, which started out with such promise but has turned into a head-scratching mess of a show. (Also, said story is being advertised on the site as, "A Jace Lacob rant." Ha!)

What has happened to Smash?


Despite a pilot episode that was praised by critics, Smash went from must-see TV to stumbling, face first, into the orchestra pit in a matter of weeks. While the show will be back next season after a renewal last week, the show’s creator, Theresa Rebeck, won’t be returning.

That has to be a boon, given how uneven Smash has been. For every well-done and lavish musical number, there have been countless appalling elements each week.

One of the concerns about Smash going in was that it would be too insular: that its depiction of the rush to stage the Broadway launch of Marilyn: The Musical would prove to be too inside for a mass audience. But, in an effort to downplay the specificity of its world, Smash has instead spent the majority of each week’s episode focusing on the home lives of the characters and on the often tedious battle between the two would-be Monroes, jaded Ivy (Megan Hilty) and sunny ingénue Karen (Katharine McPhee).

Even in that retreat, Smash has proven itself to be weak-willed, attempting to cram earnest drama and over-the-top soap operatics into 40 minutes. When unstable Ivy began to suffer prednisone-derived hallucinations and fantasy musical numbers kept cropping up in the midst of rehearsals (not to mention that ghastly Karen-does-karaoke number in Iowa), well, that’s when the ability to suspend disbelief in Smash began to falter considerably.

Continue reading on The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Community on Hiatus: Why NBC Is Making a Mistake"

Community fans, this is your St. Crispin’s Day moment. Dumping Community in favor of shifting around the Thursday-night comedies feels a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Community, after all, is not the iceberg that’s sinking NBC.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story, "Community on Hiatus: Why NBC Is Making a Mistake," in which I look at the case for and against keeping the brilliant and subversive comedy around.

For right now, Community airs Thursday evening at 8 p.m. on NBC.

The Daily Beast: "Super 8: Stop Being So Secretive, J.J."

J.J. Abrams' Super 8 falls into some of the same traps as his other projects, setting up expectations of mysteries it can't possibly fulfill.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Super 8: Stop Being So Secretive, J.J.," in which I offer a memo to Abrams and discuss why the director needs to move on.

And, just in case you haven't yet seen Super 8, I'll offer up the following caveat. WARNING: Contains spoilers!

What do you think? Has J.J. Abrams outgrown the mystery box? Does he need to stop cloaking his projects in such shrouds of secrecy that audiences come to expect the delivery of a major twist or surprise reveal that he's setting himself up to fail? Head to the comments section to discuss.

The Daily Beast: "Charlie Sheen: Stop Putting Him on TV!"

The Charlie Sheen media frenzy continues onwards, it seems, with no end in sight.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, a strongly-worded essay entitled "Charlie Sheen: Stop Putting Him on TV!"

As the dek reads, "It’s not strange that people want to see Sheen’s crazed rants wherever they can... but it sure is disgusting that mainstream media outlets are giving him a platform."

What's your take on the media's role in this feeding frenzy? When it is time to say enough?

The Daily Beast: "Skins Is Not Kiddie Porn!"

There's been a lot of furor in the last few days about MTV's adaptation of British teen drama Skins, particularly whether the show crosses the line into "child pornography."

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Skins Is Not Kiddie Porn!" As you might expect from the title, I examine, whether or not, despite the hype, MTV’s Skins breaks child-pornography laws. While I'm of the firm mind that it does not legally do so, I say that the show, a pale imitation of the original, still has plenty to be ashamed of.

The conversation reminds me that just because you might disagree with something, or find it to be immoral, doesn't mean that it is in fact illegal. And that the parties who are throwing around the term "child porn" might actually have better things to do with their time: such as actually focusing on preventing and prosecuting distributors, producers, and suppliers of actual child pornography, rather than point the finger of accusation at this bargain-basement adaptation. While this is smutty (what isn't on MTV), the assertion that the network didn't have all of these legally vetted ahead of time is absolutely absurd.

But that's just my two cents, really. What do you make of the nontroversy?

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.

Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it.

I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey, which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic; my advance review of the first season can be read here, while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here.)

Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the project and the work done by creator Julian Fellowes and the series' cast and crew that I relented after several email exchanges.

The journalist in question--that would be Chris Hastings--wanted to talk about Downton's journey across the pond and specifically the cuts that had taken place along the way. When ITV aired Downton Abbey, it did so as seven episodes of varying length, while PBS was airing it as four 90-minute episodes. Which brings us to the main point of this post: despite the fact that I spelled out for Hastings that barely any cuts had been made to Downton Abbey, he wrote a now much-publicized piece for The Daily Mail in which he alleges, according to the hyperbolic lede, that "Downton downsized... by two hours because American TV executives fear its intricate plot will baffle U.S. viewers."

To put it bluntly: it's simply not true.

While I would be incensed about the article to begin with--given that Hastings took up my time on vacation, interrupted me incessantly while I was answering his questions, refused to listen to me, clearly had an agenda of his own, and then had the temerity to quote my review without proper attribution--I'm most angry about the fact that I actually did the math for Hastings during the interview, demonstrating in no uncertain terms that there weren't two hours missing from the US broadcast of the series.

The only thing missing here are, in fact, the commercials themselves.

Let's take a closer look. PBS is airing Downton Abbey as four 90-minute episodes, bringing it to a run-time of roughly 6 hours. Removing the ad breaks, ITV's run of Downton Abbey ran for--wait for it--roughly six hours. (Two episodes ran as 60 minute installments, while five ran for 45 minutes excluding the commercials, of course.)

I pointed this out to Hastings, who countered by saying that the two episodes were 90 minutes. Yes, I said, with commercials. And I countered again by saying that ITV received complaints after the first episode that there were too many ad breaks. The numbers that Hastings was using to make his case about widespread cuts failed to take into account the commercials, which don't air on PBS, even though he himself admits this in his piece.

But Hastings clearly already had an agenda and he clearly wanted to make a point about "simple" Americans "in the land of the notoriously short attention span."

Furthermore, comments made by executive producer Rebecca Eaton of WGBH Boston, which co-produced Downton Abbey, were taken out of context and misunderstood.

In reorganizing Downton into four installments, editors altered the episodes' structures in order to accommodate the altered timeslot. When Eaton said that heir Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) came into the storyline in the first episode rather than the second, she's speaking truthfully. He does now appear in the longer-running first 90-minute episode, but it's not that the first hour has been excised from the show. Rather, he appears in the last 30 minutes, which does, yes, quicken the pace of the entail/inheritance storyline by dint of his appearance in Episode One.

Small changes were made in order to get Downton to fit precisely into the running time allotted by PBS. Hastings goes so far as to admit this ("Ms Eaton insisted that any changes were minor and did not affect the quality of the programme."), even though it seems to be at odds with his thesis. And the internet comments that he quotes--again, unattributed--were in fact addressed to me over Twitter and I reassured those involved that it wasn't the case.

He even repeated Eaton's comments about having only made small cuts of dialogue to me on the phone.

Hastings went on to discuss the fact that Masterpiece host Laura Linney explains matters of the entail and of the Buccaneers (American heiresses who married into the British aristocracy during the Gilded Age), using it once again to attempt to slap U.S. viewers. Hastings writes, "PBS also believes its audiences will need an American to outline the key themes of the show."

First, Masterpiece's hosts typically do explore the historical and social contexts for the series. This would include the matter of the entail (which Hastings admits was confusing for British audiences as well) and Lady Cora's role as one of those Buccaneers. Nothing new there as Linney is performing the same role that all of Masterpiece's hosts ably step into before each episode of a program. Second, Linney might be American but her fellow hosts--among them, past and present, David Tennant, Alan Cumming, Matthew Goode, etc.--are not. So I'm not sure what to make of the "Americans need Americans to explain things to them" comment, which just comes across as ill-informed and mean-spirited.

But that seems to be the point of Hastings' piece as a whole, really. His insistence that "two hours" have been cut from the runtime run counter to our interview and mathematics as well. His attempts to get both me and Lord Fellowes to come up with a predicted audience number for Downton in the US failed as neither of us would offer him a guess as to how many people would be tuning in.

It's safe to say, however, that Hastings' wrong-headed article could actually cut that number, as readers of the Daily Mail piece have been up in arms about the (false) loss of two hours of material and the perceived brazenness of PBS executives for altering the show. (Again, untrue.)

But Hastings may have wanted to do the maths for himself, confirm his findings, or actually sit down to watch the imported version of Downton Abbey before writing his article.

His messy article is, in some ways, awfully similar to Mrs. Patmore's salty meringue, and just as unappetizing.

Downton Abbey launches Sunday evening at 9 pm ET/PT on PBS' Masterpiece Classic. Check your local listings for details.

Rant: Dear Bravo, Please Stop The Obvious Editing on Top Chef

Gee, I wonder who was going to pack their knives last night?

Honestly, I was going to do a Top Chef culinary recap today, but I'm just not feeling it, especially after last night's episode ("Capitol Grill") fell into the same trap that recent episodes of Top Chef have (which I bemoaned last week at length).

I understand that we're in the early rounds right now and there are still a lot of contestants to cover but I've officially had it with the editing on Top Chef this season as within five minutes of each episode beginning, it's painfully obvious to anyone who has ever watched a reality competition series just who will be getting eliminated that week.

Is Top Chef about more than just who packs their knives and who walks away the winner that week? Sure. It's a culinary-themed competition and as a voracious foodie, I love watching the chefs at work. But it also can't lose sight of the fact that it's also a reality competition series and that much of tension derived from such a format emanates from the fact that someone will be going home that week.

To erase that possibility by cheating attention to the eliminated party and focusing on them throughout the episode denies the viewer that hook. I'll still be watching Top Chef and likely writing about it but this week the continued trend just irked me to such a degree that I can't bring myself to actually discuss the, you know, food.

Magical Elves and Top Chef editors: please get it together and stop tipping your hand at the top of every installment. I'm begging you.

Next week on Top Chef ("Room Service"), the chefs are tasked with creating baby food for Padma's newborn baby; later, the chefs are tested on their hospitality service.

Office Over-Expansion: Why "The Office" Hour-Long Eps Concern Me

Everyone here knows how much I love The Office. I loved the British original way back when before anyone over on this side of the pond had even so much as heard of the thing; I bemoaned NBC's attempt to adapt the series for a US audience, following the debacle that was Coupling; and I grew to love the US Office after its first season. In my spare time, I create wish lists for Season Four of my beloved comedy series.

Clearly, I am an Office fanatic in every sense of the word. So what is making me so worried that I can't get the very fear off of my mind grapes? It's those hour-long episodes that former NBC entertainment president Kevin Reilly had touted at the network upfronts in May, right before he got the axe and Office executive producer Ben Silverman was brought in as the new man on the top of the totem pole.

You might be asking yourself why I'm so up in arms about the one-hour episodes if I'm a fan of the series. After all, isn't an hour-long episode just more of the show I love so much? Not quite. The Office is very distinctly a series that works best within its strict half-hour format. Sure, The Office can maintain its humor through an occasional one-hour installment ("The Job" and "A Benihana Christmas" were two examples of just that) or a super-sized episode when the story dictates the expansion, but more often than not, it's difficult to keep up the level of humor that we've come to know and love over a format that's more suited to dramas. Especially when you're dealing with the subtle and often squirm-inducing humor that has become The Office's bread and butter.

I don't blame the writers for this change in format; this decision was not an organic one created by Greg Daniels and the talented writing staff on the series, but rather, as Michael Scott himself might say, one handed down to them directly from Corporate. It's not easy to construct Office storylines--which tend to be rather about minutiae at first glance--around a one-hour structure, especially when your series has been a half-hour comedy for the past three seasons. How do you wring an hour out of such previous exploits as a funeral for a bird (a metaphor, really, for Michael's own fears of mortality) or the smaller stuff that makes The Office the cerebral treat that it is: a sales call, a birthday party, a game of office Olympics, an awards ceremony, a field trip. Can it be done? Sure. But why would you want to mess with something that already works so well the way it is?

Even more alarming to me is the decision to front-load the majority of these behemoth Office episodes at the beginning of the season, a choice that will undoubtedly put a strain on even the most coordinated production crew, affecting everything from the writers (imagine breaking nearly all of the one-hours right at the start) to the actors and everyone in between. Hell, it even puts a strain on the audience as well. (I'm betting that most viewers out there haven't even realized yet that the format of the series is being altered.) Sure, these episodes can later be broken down into two segments for repeats and syndication (the series will air on TBS this fall), but I find it hard to stomach starting a season, not with the half-hour format that the audience has grown accustomed to, but with one-hour double episodes.

Besides, wouldn't it make more sense, both creatively and from a marketing standpoint, to hold these super-duper-sized Office episodes for things like... sweeps? With five one-hour installments, why not start with a single one-hour and then post one in November, one at Christmas, one in February, and save one for the season finale in May? Then these might feel more like a reward to the audience rather than a capricious move by a network that seems to have greedily realized that the audience in hungry for more Office.

But rather than have a glutton's feast of Dunder-Mifflin upfront, I'd much rather space out these meals into tasty morsels along the way. Or just have more, regular-sized entrees along the way. But that's just me. I'm curious as to what you think about these one-hour installments. Are they a sign of positive change or an indication that Michael Scott himself is running this network?

"The Office" launches its fourth season on September 27th on NBC.

Televisionary Rant: "MI:5" (a.k.a. "Spooks") Vanishes Right Off A&E Schedule

I was all excited to watch MI-5 tonight. While it's on at 11 pm and, though preceded by two and a half hours of Doctor Who tonight, I couldn't wait to catch up on those daring Brit spies and whatever dastardly plot they're foiling this week. Hell, I even wrote about the espionage drama this morning.

And then A&E had to go and mess up all of my carefully laid TiVo plans. The cabler, better known for reality fare like Dog the Bounty Hunter and Criss Angel, Mindfreak than top-notch quality programming from across the pond, has decided in its infinite wisdom to pull tonight's episode of MI-5--and all subsequent episodes--and burn off the fourth series on Saturday, October 21st, airing the remaining episodes (um, that would be all of them other than the two-part premiere) in a single eight-hour block during the day.

Um, wow. Really, thanks, A&E, for depriving the American audience of a quality drama like MI-5 and relegating it to burn-off status on a weekend a few weeks from now. A move like that really shows a healthy appreciation for your audience. Fortunately, there's absolutely nothing on this network that I'll ever plan on watching.