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The Daily Beast: "Game of Thrones' Glorious Return"

Season Two of the Emmy-nominated fantasy series Game of Thrones begins on Sunday night. And it’s fantastic.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Game of Thrones' Glorious Return," a review of the first four episodes of Season Two of HBO's superlative drama, based on the A Song of Ice and Fire novel series by George R.R. Martin. "Season Two of Game of Thrones is fantastic, overflowing with majesty and mystery," I write. "The night, we’re told, is dark and full of terror, and so is this provocative and enthralling show."

After the ratings and critical heights scaled by the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, expectations are dangerously high for the launch of Season 2, which begins this Sunday. Based on the second volume (A Clash of Kings) in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, Game of Thrones has a lot to prove to fans of both the books and of the award-winning HBO drama. Can it top the addictive thrill of the first season? Will it prove to be both loyal to the source material and still work for television?

Fortunately, judging from the four episodes sent to critics, Game of Thrones thrills on all levels. The show is a profound achievement, fusing together the taut narrative framework of the novels with a momentous and swift pace that drives the action forward, while writer/executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss manage almost a baker’s dozen of separate storylines.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Game of Thrones Season Two for Dummies"

HBO's fantasy series Game of Thrones returns Sunday for a second season with its jargon and (most of its) vast cast of characters intact. Who is the Red Woman? What's the significance of a white raven? What's the difference between the Lord of Light and the Drowned God? I've got you covered with a new glossary that breaks down the jargon of Season 2 of Game of Thrones, returning Sunday at 9 p.m.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Game of Thrones Season Two for Dummies," in which I break down who's who and what's what in the second season of HBO's sweeping fantasy drama. There are actually two features in one: an alphabetical glossary of terminology, places, and concepts within the second season and a gallery that breaks down the 15 new and newish characters (from Melisandre to Xaro Xhoan Daxos) that we meet this season.

In its first season, Game of Thrones—based on George R.R. Martin’s behemoth A Song of Ice and Fire series and adapted by executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss—became a beast as rare as dragons: a critical and ratings success that also fused together genre roots and mainstream appeal.

Season 2 of Game of Thrones is just a few days away, returning to HBO on Sunday at 9 p.m. for another 10-episode run of betrayal, bloodshed, and, er, scenes intended for a mature audience. But if you haven’t read the books, the world that the show inhabits can be a forbidding place without the maps, family trees, and lineages contained within the novels’ vast appendices. And Season 2 furthers the in-world jargon significantly, while introducing a slew of new concepts and places. What is the difference between the Drowned God and the Lord of Light? Who is the Red Woman? And what is the deal with the White Raven?

We delve into the first four episodes of Game of Thrones Season 2, Martin’s second novel (A Clash of Kings), and beyond to bring you up to speed. A note on spoilers: I spoil many details of Season 1 below. But I do not spoil specifics from Season 2, unless you count knowing settings and themes and characters as spoilers. In which case, spoiler alerts!

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Gillian Anderson is Back!"

Gillian Anderson, famous for The X-Files, stuns as Miss Havisham in Sunday’s Great Expecations. She tells me about turning down Downton Abbey, her British accent—and possibly playing Scully again.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Gillian Anderson is Back!" in which I talk to the former star of The X-Files about whether she's open to reprising her role as Dana Scully, playing Miss Havisham, turning down Downton Abbey, her accent, and her new television project, The Fall.

Gillian Anderson is no stranger to strange worlds.

The former star of The X-Files, which became a worldwide hit and spawned two feature films, Anderson has, for now anyway, traded in Dana Scully’s FBI-issued handgun and severe suits for the tight-laced corsets and flowing frocks of such period dramas as Bleak House, The House of Mirth, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, The Crimson Petal and the White, Moby Dick, and Any Human Heart, in which she played a deliciously conniving Wallace Simpson, complete with a false nose. But it’s Anderson’s jaw-dropping turn as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, which airs Sunday evening on PBS’s Masterpiece Classic after a three-night run in December on BBC One, that erases any trace of Scully’s bravado.

An Anderson role in a period piece seems de rigueur these days: she was also very nearly in ITV’s critically acclaimed costume drama Downton Abbey, but turned down an offer to play Lady Cora Crawley, a role that went to fellow American Elizabeth McGovern. “They’re still mad at me,” Anderson told The Daily Beast. “Every time I see [creator] Julian Fellowes, he says, ‘Why?’ I’m very finicky.”

It’s no surprise that after her legendary turn as the emotionally haunted Lady Dedlock in Andrew Davies’s 2005 adaptation of Bleak House, which earned her Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominations, Anderson has a fascination with severe or extreme characters. In Great Expectations, adapted from the Charles Dickens novel by Sarah Phelps and directed by Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones), she stars as the malevolent and tragic Miss Havisham, whose blackened heart leads her to destroy the innocence of young Pip (Douglas Booth) and Estella (Vanessa Kirby), and doom whatever chance of love either has.

There was much grumbling in the British press about Anderson being the youngest actress to play Miss Havisham, who is traditionally portrayed as a skeletal old woman still dressed in the tattered vestiges of her wedding gown, clutching at the last shreds of her youth, while already standing in her grave. (Helena Bonham Carter will play the role in a feature film version of Great Expectations, out later this year.)

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Rewind: Rome Burns in I, Claudius"

Thirty-five years ago, PBS captivated audiences with the blood-and-sex-laden ancient-Roman soap I, Claudius, which is still influential. A new DVD version comes out Tuesday.

Over at The Daily Beast, it's the first of a new series called Rewind, which will look back at a television show or film that has proven to resonate. You can read my latest feature, "Rome Burns in I, Claudius," in which I take a look at PBS' ancient Rome-set drama, which celebrates the 35th anniversary of its U.S. broadcast this year.

I, Claudius celebrates the 35th anniversary of its U.S. broadcast this year. A rapt and devoted audience consumed this spellbinding ancient-Rome period drama when it first aired in 1976 on the BBC in the U.K., and in 1977 on PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre. Starring Derek Jacobi as the titular character and featuring some of the best boldface names in British acting circles, the Emmy Award–winning show—which ran 12 episodes and is today being released as a remastered five-disc DVD box set—is a multigenerational saga about the emperors of ancient Rome and the conspiracies, intrigues, murders, and madness that stood in their shadows.

Despite the fact that the poison-and-plots-laden miniseries, adapted by Jack Pulman (who wrote every episode), is now approaching middle-age, I, Claudius—based on the 1934 novel (and its sequel) by Robert Graves—remains one of the best dramas ever to air on television, a deft masterpiece of story, character, and, perhaps most importantly, vivid atmosphere. Shot on multiple cameras (whereas today it would be shot on a single camera in a more cinematic fashion) and with a budget that didn’t include throngs of rioting plebs, the style lends an overtly theatrical and intimate air to I, Claudius, as though the television set itself were the proscenium of a great theater. It’s here that the court intrigues of several emperors—from Augustus to Caligula—play out episodically; the show itself takes place between the years 24 B.C. and 54 A.D., charting the ups and downs of the Julio-Claudian imperial dynasty as characters breeze in and out of the frame, returning decades later to enact bitter revenges or suffer themselves from the hands of poisoners, assassins, or godly whims.

Narrated by Jacobi’s Claudius, a stuttering, limping man thought by all to be a fool who is nonetheless prophesied to one day rule Rome, I, Claudius dramatizes the period leading up to his birth and through his death, as he—now an old man and fading from this world—writes down the story of his life and that of his conniving family. The show’s opening sequence—which depicts a snake, a venomous adder, slithering over a mosaic tile floor—is both iconic and only too fitting, given the series’ depiction of ancient Rome as a nest of vipers, the most deadly of which is Livia (Siân Phillips), wife of Augustus and grandmother of Claudius.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

Games People Play: Thoughts on the Fifth Season Premiere of Mad Men

"Nobody loves Dick Whitman."

It's been seventeen long months since we last saw Mad Men and the breathless two-hour season premiere goes a long way towards curbing our addiction, quickly bringing us up to speed in the changes within the lives of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks), Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), and the rest of the ad men at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

If Season Four began with a provocative question ("Who is Don Draper?"), the fifth season opener ("A Little Kiss"), written by Matthew Weiner and directed by Jennifer Getzinger, begins with more than a few declarative statements, about both the characters and the era in which they live, and those four little words, uttered by Megan (Jessica Paré), speak volumes about the sort of relationship Don is enmeshed in when Season Five begins.

For a man who cloaked himself with secrets as a woman might a mink coat, Don Draper is living a life that's far more free and open than we've seen the past four seasons. In fact, his entire identity--previously predicated on a monumental lie--seems far more at ease at both work and home, though it's still, as always, fraught with complication. This is Mad Men, after all, and a Don at peace with the world is very dull indeed...

The world itself is far from at peace with itself when we rejoin the story: riots in three cities, racial tensions, and organized protests right under the windows of SCDP rivals Y&R in the opening sequence of the episode. Said sequence finds Y&R execs callously tossing water-filled bags onto the protestors, soaking a young African-American boy and leading his mother to go up to the executive floor and offer a piece of her mind. While the entire scene seems at first disjoined and separate from the action, the two-hour opener proves just why it was constructed as a double-episode, rather than just two single episodes strung together. Folding in on itself, the episode is bookended by considerations of the protests and of the semblance of equal opportunity.

While Don and Roger's "equal opportunity" ad is meant to be a jape at the expense of Y&R, it has serious implications, not least of which is that SCDP must hire at least one person of color in order to save face. While the show has had African-American characters in the past (Lane's Playboy Bunny girlfriend and Paul Kinsey's girlfriend, to name two, as well as the Drapers' housekeeper, Carla), the office itself has remained a lily-white place of business, populated largely by the old guard and one or two (Peggy, Joan, and Megan to an extent) women who have managed to carve out positions of power. But the doors of the lobby have more or less remained closed to anyone who didn't fit the mold of Roger Sterling and his cronies. Until now.

I'm curious to see just who gets the sole secretary job that Lane (Jared Harris, astonishing as always) has been forced to carve out of the budget, lest SCDP find themselves the subject of a protest, and how this new woman fits into the microcosm of the company amid some very turbulent times.

But while there are clearly external pressures at work here, not all of the changes occurring are taking place from the outside-in. Sally (Kiernan Shipka) is once again adjusting to change in her own life, adjusting to the sight of a naked woman in her father's bed, a woman who is the new "Mrs. Draper," and is drinking black coffee while it's Don who is cooking breakfast for the kids. There's clearly some unease on behalf of Sally towards Megan, a mixture of curiosity and ambivalence, seeing her role as her father's favorite co-opted by a newcomer into the household. She's largely trapped between the half-finished bedroom at her father and Megan's gorgeous new Manhattan apartment and an empty skulking castle of her mother and Henry's in Rye: the city and suburbia, the past and the future, stability or revolution.

Megan herself is entirely grounded in modernity: a modern woman who is the exact opposite of Betty Francis (January Jones) in every respect. She drinks black coffee, works for a living, has her own money, and isn't afraid to engage in provocative and sexually forward behavior, something that would mortify the icy Betty. Megan's surprising performance, at Don's surprise party, of "Zou Bisou Bisou" is a landmark for the show: the ownership by a woman over the male gaze of her partner. While the song is performed for Don, while all eyes (both male and female) in the room are on her, Megan is clearly getting off on the attention and claims ownership over the sexual energy she gives off. (She even tells Peggy earlier in the episode that when she throws a party, people go home and "have sex.")

It's both a sexually charged performance and an intimate gift for Don, offering him a piece of herself in front of his colleagues, bringing the private into the public sphere. It also backfires magnificently. The always-private Don is embarrassed to see his sexually hungry bride so blatantly charged up; it's a collision of the ordered sectors of his own life. And there are casualties as a result.

Don's furious response, as he tries to go to bed while Megan is still keyed up from the party sums up a potential chasm in their nascent marriage, of ideals as well as emotions. If Megan sums up liberty, both sexual and social, she represents the potential and promise of progress. She's the pretty young thing that Don wanted to own, but she's proven that she won't be owned by anyone ("It's my money," she tells him) or controlled. Her sense of fashion, her friends, her outlook are sharp call-outs to the cultural revolution making its first steps here. But unlike Roger and Jane's dreary marriage, Megan won't be captured in a gilded prison, even one of her own making. She's fiercely independent, fiery, and passionate, in touch with her emotions ("I don't like those people") and her own body. (Paré is fantastic, eradicating the sense of Megan as an innocent naif from last season, rendering her a full-blown liberated woman here, all polka-dots and black undergarments, a French coquette with a body and a brain.)

The sense of the male gaze is reflected back in the cleaning scene after Megan goes home early from work. As Don finds her cleaning up after the party, the tension between them turns into something else: a sex game, in which Megan, stripped down to her bra and panties, begins to "clean up" while flaunting her body, telling Don that he doesn't deserve to touch her, let alone look at her, that he's old and probably can't even have sex. A moment of potential dominance/submission (she tells him to sit and watch her) turns into a moment of sexual release on the white carpet of their palatial place, a far cry from the desperation of Don's bachelor pad on Waverly.

While Don has moved more firmly into a wealthy sphere of Manhattan, it's Pete who has traded his apartment for a house in the suburbs, while Trudy--now a mother herself--waits at home or drops him off at the station. His sense of loss, embodied by his line about hearing the traffic over the party music, said wistfully, is keenly felt here, the "sacrifice" he's made in order for his family. But whether he comes to resent Trudy (as suggested by his commuter train passenger friend) or whether he softens and changes remains to be seen. At work, however, Pete is just as vengeful and territorial as ever, demanding a larger office (he ends up getting Harry Crane's office with its windows, while Harry embarrasses himself in front of Megan, showing his true colors) and tricking Roger into a 6 a.m. meeting.

It's this sense of gamesmanship that powers the episode in several ways: the Y&R ad, Megan/Don on the floor, Lane's efforts to make believe with the "girl" Dolores, another fixation for the sensible Lane, torn once again between his duties as a "gentleman" and family man and that of a man in the 1960s.

Lane is unexpectedly captivated by the sultry promise of Dolores, a kept woman rolling around in bed at 11 a.m. in her undergarments, especially when he sees her slob of a boyfriend, Mr. Polito, who is nothing like the man that Lane had imagined. His decision to keep Dolores' photograph, with its girlish "XXOO" inscription, in his own wallet is the keeping of a talisman, something that connects him to an alternate self, a garter on the arm of a knight, an emblem of both chaste chivalry and of wanton sexuality. He's a man trapped between relationships, between countries, between cultures, something we're reminded of both by Dolores and Polito, who immediately know that Lane isn't "from here."

It's also Joan who finds herself cast adrift. Now a mother, she's torn between the duties of her station and of her own desires. She admits, only to Lane, that she missed work, missed what was happening without her, the jokes (again, that return to games) and the daily goings-on. While she clearly loves her baby, her identity is predicated on more than just her role as a mother and wife; she herself is intrinsically connected to the office and the professional sphere. Her emotional breakdown in Lane's office, as he chivalrously offers her his handkerchief to blot her eyes, comes when she realizes that she has value in the eyes of her coworkers, that she still has a job. It's not so much an escape hatch from her life, as it is part and parcel of it.

There's also a clear connection between her baby being soothed by the movements of the elevator and Don as well: the shot of Joan and her mother rocking the baby to sleep in the elevator is juxtaposed with a shot of Don and Megan in the elevator at the office. If Don is at his best at work, as we've seen the last few seasons, what does it mean that he's now defining himself in terms that go beyond that? That he's not as driven, not as severe (as evidenced by his lack of support in front of the clients of Peggy's "bean ballet" concept for Heinz), and not as decidedly grim? If work isn't everything, than what is to Don? Even after his argument with Megan, there's the sense that these two have something deep and mysterious between them, built on honesty and truth, and that the Don Draper we thought we knew has perhaps changed somewhat.

Who is Don Draper? I feel like we're only just beginning to know the answer to that question. But what we're seeing here is a Don Draper altered by his surroundings, his relationship, and his outlook. A man in summer, casting off the memories of the past, fittingly on Memorial Day weekend. A household of children and a twinkle in his own eye when he looks at Megan holding Joan's newborn son. Personally, I can't wait to see just what happens next: felicity or misery? Opportunity or adversity? Pleasure or pain? Is it true that nobody loves Dick Whitman, or that someone finally does, warts and all?

But regardless of what happens next, Season Five of Mad Men began with enough style and substance to power a season of most other shows. I'm curious to know what you thought: what did you all think of "A Little Kiss"? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Next week on Mad Men ("Tea Leaves"), as Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce tries to build upon its current business, Peggy is given new responsibility; Don and Harry indulge a client.

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: "Amy Poehler Talks to Rachel Dratch About Her Memoir"

If you're at all like me, you love Amy Poehler. And if you're at all like me and Amy Poehler, you also love Rachel Dratch.

At The Daily Beast, I had a hand in today's interview feature, in which Parks and Recreation's Poehler interviews her former Saturday Night Live colleague and long-time friend about her new memoir, out this week, as well as about motherhood, ghosts, the prairie, and more.

In her new autobiography, Girl Walks Into a Bar…: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle, former Saturday Night Live star Rachel Dratch—the rubber-faced comedian behind Debbie Downer and Abe Scheinwald, to name two of her creations—comes clean about growing up, life behind the scenes on SNL, what happened with 30 Rock, dating possible cannibals, and her life now that she’s in her forties and a first-time mother.

When Dratch was performing with improv comedy troupe Second City in Chicago, her understudy was an up-and-comer named Amy Poehler, who would go on to perform with Dratch on SNL and star in NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

Poehler first saw Dratch on stage and was struck by her comedic ability. “I thought Dratch was the funniest person in the room,” she said, “keeping up with all of the guys while still being herself. We hit it off instantly, and we went on to become lovers, and then finally, we’re just friends.”

Last week, Poehler interviewed Dratch and asked her friend about why she wrote her memoir now, their children’s future plans, and whether she’s seen a ghost, among other topics.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Mad Men: Where We Left Off"

Who remembers what happened 17 months ago? No one!

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature,"Mad Men: Where We Left Off," for which I re-watched every episode of Season 4 of Mad Men (in a 36-hour period) in order to remind you where we left Don Draper, Peggy Olson, Joan, and the rest of the characters when the season ended.

Television, like advertising, is typically a swift-moving beast. But it’s been a staggering 17 months since Mad Men aired its last episode. At the time, no one could have predicted that it would be March 2012 before AMC aired the highly anticipated fifth season of Mad Men, which returns this Sunday evening with a sensational two-hour season premiere.

The reasons behind the delay are known far and wide, as protracted and very public contract renegotiations behind the scenes of Mad Men resulted in a longer than expected hiatus between seasons, and the show’s devoted audience is only too keen to catch up with the staffers of 1960s advertising agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Strict embargoes on the content of the season premiere (“A Little Kiss”) prevent us from spilling too much about the long-awaited return, but creator Matthew Weiner will surely allow it to be described as gorgeous, provocative, and well worth the wait. Despite its, er, rest, Mad Men isn’t at all sluggish; in fact, Season 5 kicks off with an installment that propels the plot, the characters, and some of the show’s most important themes, amid a turbulent time of change that is personal, political, and social.

Given the lag between seasons, it’s only natural that you’ve forgotten the details about what happened during Season 4. Just who did Don (Jon Hamm) end up with at the end of the season: was it vivacious secretary Megan (Jessica Paré) or driven career woman Dr. Faye Miller (Carla Buono)? Why was Lane (Jared Harris) beaten by his severe father? What passed between Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Roger (John Slattery)? Who was Miss Blankenship (Randee Heller)? From Don and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) to Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) and Sally (Kiernan Shipka), get back up to speed on all of the players before the new season of Mad Men begins.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "From J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels to Real Life: The Sport of Quidditch Takes Flight"

In the Harry Potter universe as created by J.K. Rowling, the sport of Quidditch plays an important and exciting role. On college campuses around the country, a generation of young adults who grew up reading about the exploits of Harry and his friends, have transformed the fictional sport into reality.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled, "From J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels to Real Life: The Sport of Quidditch Takes Flight." While it's off my usual beat, I decided to delve into the real-world sport of Quidditch and attend the Western Cup last weekend (along with a practice or two with the UCLA Quidditch team beforehand) and write about this cult phenomenon, a blend of rugby, basketball, and dodgeball. (And, yes, a little bit of tag as well.) There's also a gallery-based second feature that includes photography from the tournament, as well as more details about the rules, players, and world of "Muggle Quidditch."

The bone-crushing thud of a body hitting the ground. The splintering sound of a broom breaking. I’m at my first Quidditch match and am discovering it’s not for the faint-hearted.

The sport, brought to life from J.K. Rowling’s seven-volume Harry Potter novel series, has quickly become a permanent fixture on many college campuses, including UCLA, which last weekend hosted the third annual Western Cup. Nineteen teams—including the Power Grangers, Dirigible Plums, Narwhals, and The Prisoners of Kickasskaban—faced off in a grueling two-day tournament that pitted their strength, speed, endurance, and hand-eye coordination—not to mention the ability to keep a broomstick between their legs at all times.

Quidditch, as Harry Potter fans know, is played flying atop broomsticks. While I saw no one soar through the air, experiencing the nascent and theatrical sport firsthand gives you the opportunity to see just how brutal, competitive, and unique it is—a combination of rugby, basketball, and dodgeball, mixed in a witch’s cauldron.

Despite misconceptions about “Muggle” (i.e., nonmagical types) or “Ground” Quidditch, it is not a sport for nerds. “It’s really competitive and it’s not a sissy sport,” said UCLA freshman Sarah Coleman, a beater—they play defense—on the Wizards of Westwood team. “There’s blood … It is full-contact, with no pads, and it’s more intense than rugby.” Many Quidditch players are serious athletes who, to borrow parlance from the books, look more like Cedric Diggory than, say, Neville Longbottom.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "HBO Axes Michael Mann/David Milch Drama Luck"

Nick Nolte in HBO's 'Luck', Gusmano Cesaretti / HBO

After the death of a third horse on set, HBO has announced the end of Luck.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my take on HBO's decision to cancel Luck, just weeks after a second-season renewal on the Michael Mann-David Milch horseracing drama.

Luck has appeared to run out for HBO's Luck. Following a third horse death on the set of the racetrack drama, as first reported Tuesday by TMZ, premium cable network HBO today announced that it has decided to stop production on the low-rated show, citing animal-safety concerns. Luck, created by Michael Mann and David Milch, had already been renewed for a second season, despite meager ratings. “The two of us loved this series, loved the cast, crew and writers," Milch and Mann wrote in a joint statement. "This has been a tremendous collaboration and one that we plan to continue in the future.”

The nine episodes comprising Season 1 of Luck were already completed and sent to critics late last year. The production shutdown will affect only the show's second season, which was scheduled to air in 2013; the network will reportedly air all the remaining episodes from the first season.

"Safety is always of paramount concern," said HBO in a prepared statement that went out to press this afternoon. "We maintained the highest safety standards throughout production, higher in fact than any protocols existing in horseracing anywhere with many fewer incidents than occur in racing or than befall horses normally in barns at night or pastures. While we maintained the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible to guarantee they won’t in the future. Accordingly, we have reached this difficult decision."

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Spring TV Preview: 9 Shows to Watch, 4 Shows to Skip"

With the return of Mad Men and Game of Thrones, spring is officially here.

Over at The Daily Beast, I offer a rundown of what’s worth watching over the next few months, and what you can skip altogether.

You can read my Spring TV Preview intro here, which puts the next few months into perspective, and then head over to the gallery feature to read "9 Shows to Watch, 4 Shows to Skip," which includes such notables as Mad Men, Community, Game of Thrones, VEEP, Girls, Bent, and others... and those you should just skip, like Magic City, Missing, etc.

What shows are you most looking forward to this spring? And which ones are you pretending don't exist at all? Head to the comments section to discuss...

The Daily Beast: "The Good Wife: Robert and Michelle King on Alicia, Kalinda, Renewal Prospects, and More"

After a few missteps at the beginning of the season, Season Three of CBS' The Good Wife has settled into its groove.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Good Wife Gets Back on Track," in which I sit down with the show’s husband-and-wife creators, Robert and Michelle King, and discuss the highs and lows of the season, the Alicia/Kalinda dynamic, the handling of various romances, Will, Cary, Wendy Scott-Carr, Caitlin, renewal prospects, and what’s to come. (Along with much more, including the answer to "What ever happened to Imani?")

Coming off of a taut and provocative second season, CBS’s The Good Wife reset itself in many ways when Season 3 began in September: pushing together prim Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies)—who had struggled to remain faithful to her husband, Peter (Chris Noth)—with her boss and former flame, Will Gardner (Josh Charles), while creating a chasm in what might be the drama’s most central dynamic, the friendship between the titular character and legal snoop Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi).

Alicia started Season 3 with a new hairstyle (bangs!) and a new outlook as well as a new lover, but she and Will were quickly broken up by the show’s married creators, Robert and Michelle King, and Alicia and Kalinda circled each other warily, attempting to stay far apart.

Some viewers rebelled as a result. But The Good Wife’s third season has fortunately found its footing after several behind-the-scenes changes, including unexpected cast departures and narrative recalibration.

The Daily Beast caught up with the Kings at their offices in Culver City, Calif., as the final episode of the season was being started by the writing staff in the next room. While the two took a break on a long green sofa in the office they share, the Kings spoke candidly about Sunday’s episode (spoiler alert!), the Alicia/Kalinda dynamic, mistakes made, whether there will be a fourth season, and more. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

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(What's your take on the season thus far? Agree with what the Kings have to say about Alicia and Kalinda, Alicia/Will, and other topics? Head to the comments section to discuss.)

The Daily Beast: "Revenge is not only winking noir, it’s a retribution fantasy for the 99 percent"

ABC’s hit nighttime soap Revenge is not only winking noir, it’s a retribution fantasy for the 99 percent.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, in which I visit the set of Revenge and talk to its creator, Mike Kelley, and cast members--including Emily VanCamp, Madeleine Stowe, and Gabriel Mann--about the show’s popularity.

It’s difficult to escape the narrative lure that ABC’s nighttime soap Revenge—equal parts vengeance fantasy, noir-tinged thriller, and sprawling character-based soap—casts in its wake. The drama (Wednesdays at 10 p.m), inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, has been featured everywhere from the cover of Entertainment Weekly to a sumptuous Oscar-night promo.

Every one of its deliriously unexpected plot twists is voraciously dissected on Twitter by the Revenge faithful, captivated by the show’s premise: a young woman, Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp), returns to the Hamptons to wreak havoc on those who destroyed her family, exacting a bitter, um, revenge that tightens a noose around the necks of the wealthy residents of the Long Island community, even as she finds herself caught in a love triangle between Daniel (Joshua Bowman), the son of femme fatale Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) who destroyed her family’s fragile happiness, and her childhood crush, Jack (Nick Wechsler). Emily—criminal mastermind, computer hacker, cat burglar, and willing arsonist, not to mention a ronin in Giuseppe Zanotti stilettos—recalls Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander as much as she does Dumas’s Edmond Dantès. Forget about the Hamptons, this show is firmly based in Crazy Town, as Emily commits every crime short of murder to achieve her ends.

“She wants them to suffer the way that she has suffered her entire life,” said VanCamp, sitting in a smoke-filled dive bar a few blocks from the ocean, which is standing in as a low-rent meeting place for her character. “That’s the only satisfaction that she can ever get. She’s missing that forgiveness is ultimately the best way out.”

While VanCamp said this, she was wearing a brown wig, sapphire-blue contact lenses, and the sort of low-cut skimpy dress that would have landed Lindsay Lohan in the tabloids back in the day, a disguise pulled from Emily Thorne’s figuratively bottomless bag of tricks. This costume is fairly standard fare for Revenge, which deals easily in vertiginous doubles and assumed identities, among other tropes. An attempted murder is caught on tape from the belly of a whale statuette; two characters are revealed to be unlikely siblings; a down-and-out stripper bludgeons a private investigator to death. It’s heady and out-there stuff, the show’s innate campiness fusing with a dose of actual homoeroticism at times. From the outside, Revenge is a show that should never have succeeded, one with a seemingly ludicrous and close-ended plot, stuck in a dead-end time slot, and with a star who had made her bones in earnest fare like Everwood and Brothers & Sisters. Yet it’s getting roughly 8 million viewers per week, with just the right sort of audience in these ratings-starved times.

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The Daily Beast: "The Women of Community"

At The Daily Beast, Community’s female stars—and one of its writers—sit down for a roundtable discussion about being a woman in comedy, the show’s legacy, slut shaming, and more. Tears are shed!

You can read my latest feature, entitled "The Women of Community," in which I visit the set of NBC's Community on the final night of shooting Season 3 to sit down with Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs, and writer Megan Ganz to discuss being a woman in comedy, the “dark night of the soul” ahead, and the Bridesmaids effect, among other topics.

Fans of NBC’s Community—the wildly inventive yet criminally unwatched critical darling, now in its third season—were shocked when the network unceremoniously placed it on an indeterminate hiatus. Those same loyal viewers turned to Twitter hashtags, flash mobs, and original pieces of artwork (depicting the Greendale gang alternately as Batman villains, X-Men, Star Wars characters, and even Calvin and Hobbes), all in an effort to keep the adventures of a group of disparate community-college students alive.

Last week, NBC finally gave the Dan Harmon–created comedy a return date of March 15, when it will retake its old haunt of 8 p.m. on Thursdays for 12 episodes that had been produced while the show’s fate was still unknown.

On the final night of shooting for Season 3, The Daily Beast visited the set of Community to sit at the study-room table, its surface marred from ax blows, for a roundtable discussion with its female stars—Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Gillian Jacobs—and one of its female writers, Megan Ganz, for a discussion about being a woman in comedy, the “dark night of the soul” ahead, and the Bridesmaids effect, among other topics. What follows is an edited transcript of that discussion, which ended in tears for more than one of its participants.

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The Daily Beast: "NBC's Community Returns March 15"

While fans of NBC's beloved--if low-rated--comedy Community, which went on an indefinite hiatus in December, have had to make due these last few months with casting news (Giancarlo Esposito! John Hodgman! A Law & Order-themed episode!) and ++fan-generated art++ [http://critormiss.tumblr.com/post/17727815698/savecommunity], there is some good news to be had for the loyal followers of the Greendale study group.

Community will return Thursday, March 15 at 8 p.m. with the first of twelve all-new episodes. Multiple sources close to the production confirmed the news, first tweeted by Community creator Dan Harmon, that the Sony Pictures Television-produced show would be returning to its old Thursday night stomping ground next month.

Read it at The Daily Beast

The Daily Beast: "Little People, Big Controversy: Game of Thrones and Life’s Too Short"

Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage used the Golden Globes last month to draw attention to a dwarf-tossing attack in England. But with the launch of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s Life’s Too Short on HBO, it’s hard to imagine a stranger time to be premiering a potentially exploitative comedy about a dwarf.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Little People, Big Controversy: Game of Thrones and Life’s Too Short," in which I look at Ricky Gervais' new HBO comedy Life's Too Short and ponder its exploitative potential.

When Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor last month, he used the award show’s significant global viewing audience to name-check Martin Henderson, to whom he dedicated his award.

While millions of viewers raced to Google Henderson at Dinklage’s suggestion, it quickly became clear that he was not speaking of the Australian actor (who costarred in The Ring), but rather a 37-year-old English dwarf who was the victim of a vicious pub attack in October that left him forced to use a wheelchair and crutches after a patron tossed him through the air.

The attack against the 4-foot-2 Henderson was news to Americans, but it came on the heels of a well-publicized incident in the U.K., in which media reports surfaced that England’s rugby World Cup team had attended a dwarf-tossing event in New Zealand. Henderson has indicated that the two incidents could be related, with the rugby players’ behavior perhaps giving his attacker the idea. (Dwarf tossing is currently illegal in several U.S. states, including New York and Florida.)

Given that the majority of awards-show acceptance speeches are laundry lists of thanks, it was refreshing to see Dinklage use the opportunity to shine a spotlight on a story of which few were aware. Dinklage, best known until now as the star of The Station Agent, was born with achondroplasia, a genetic disorder that causes dwarfism, and at 4 foot 5 is just slightly taller than Henderson. He currently stars as Tyrion Lannister on the HBO fantasy drama Game of Thrones (based on the A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin), and has so far won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the cunning, ruthless, and charismatic schemer.

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The Daily Beast: "Downton Abbey: How PBS Got Cool" (Again)

At The Daily Beast, my colleague Maria Elena Fernandez and I examine how PBS got cool: the massive success of Downton Abbey has brought PBS an increase in donations, funding for Masterpiece, a boost in ratings for other programs, and an unlikely place in the zeitgeist. (Plus, RuPaul on Downton's appeal.)

You can read my latest feature, entitled "Downton Abbey: How PBS Got Cool," in which Fernandez and I talk to Rebecca Eaton, RuPaul, PBS SoCal, WNET, and PBS executives, and The Soup producer Matthew Carney, among others.

Patton Oswalt obsessively live tweets it from his weekly viewing parties. Katy Perry is using it to distract herself from her marital woes. Roger Ebert has stepped outside the movie realm to praise it in his blog. Saturday Night Live spoofed it. Mob Wives star Big Ang Raiola recited favorite quips for Us Weekly. The Onion equated watching one episode with reading a book. And Wednesday night The Soup will celebrate it with a special parody starring RuPaul and drag queens Raven and Shangela.

Could all of this fuss really be about a PBS show? Quite right. Masterpiece's Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning hit, Downton Abbey, created by Julian Fellowes, a TV ratings success and cultural phenomenon, has catapulted the public-television broadcaster with the stodgy reputation to the cool kids' table.

“We don’t know how to handle that over here,” said Mel Rogers, CEO and president of PBS SoCal, the PBS member station that serves greater Los Angeles. "We got accidentally popular.”

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The Daily Beast: "Switched at Birth: ABC Family’s Groundbreaking Deaf/Hearing Drama

And now for something different. I'm definitely not within ABC Family's target demographic, but I've fallen head over heels in love with the cable network's drama Switched at Birth, which is a profound and reflective exploration of communication, identity, and self-expression.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Switched at Birth: ABC Family’s Groundbreaking Deaf/Hearing Drama," in which I take a look at the teen soap, which explores self-expression and the communication gulf between the hearing and deaf communities, and talk to creator Lizzy Weiss and stars Katie Leclerc, Sean Berdy, and Marlee Matlin.

When Marlee Matlin walked away with an Academy Award for her heart-wrenching turn as a deaf custodian in 1986’s romantic drama Children of a Lesser God, it seemed as though film had finally encountered a definitive depiction of a deaf individual and the often tenuous relationship between the hearing and the deaf worlds. Television has lagged behind; nearly 30 years later, most TV shows still typically shove deaf characters into the background or use them as props as part of a hearing person’s story.


Switched at Birth reverses that course. On the surface, the teen soap, which launched on ABC Family last summer, appears to revolve around two teenage girls (Vanessa Marano, Katie Leclerc) who discover that they were switched at birth as their families—a wealthy white couple (D.W. Moffett, Lea Thompson) and a Latina recovering-alcoholic hairdresser (Constance Marie)—attempt to untangle the emotional Gordian knot in which they’ve found themselves.

Unexpectedly, the show delves deep. Created by Lizzy Weiss (Blue Crush), Switched at Birth—which airs Tuesday evenings at 8 p.m.—offers a deft and intelligent take on the way in which we form our identities through self-expression, whether that be street art, spoken/signed communication, texting, or open dialogue among family members and individuals, as well as the communication gulf between the hearing and deaf/hard-of-hearing communities. It’s also a show that doesn’t pander to its presumed audience. Semantics—“deaf” and “hard-of-hearing” are OK; “hearing-impaired” is not—and ethical implications, as well as morality and choice, are discussed frankly and without preaching.

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The Daily Beast: "Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens! Lost, NCIS, Big Love, Veep Writers on His Legacy"

Happy birthday, Mr. Dickens.

Over at The Daily Beast, we're celebrating Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday. You can read my latest feature, entitled "Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens! Lost, NCIS, Big Love, Veep Writers on His Legacy," in which I talk to TV auteurs including Lost's Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, The Thick of It and Veep creator Armando Iannucci, NCIS's Gary Glasberg, and others as they reflect on how Dickens’s work has influenced storytelling on television.

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens (1812–1870), but the popularity of the writer of such novels as Great Expectations, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and David Copperfield—to name but a few of his immortal works—hasn’t diminished in the time since his death.

In the pantheon of great English-language novelists, Dickens reigns supreme for a number of reasons. He was a master storyteller who created unforgettable characters—a menagerie that included the grotesque, the disenfranchised, the saintly, and the avaricious robber barons of his day—who leapt off the page and continue to live on in the imaginations of those who read his words. And his whiplash-inducing plots, with their constant twists, fused populist entertainment and deft societal commentary.

Despite his fame and fortune, Dickens was a champion for social reform, turning his attention to education, the Victorian workhouse, social inequity, and financial speculation, and offering blistering commentary on the failures of legal and governmental institutions to protect those they were designed to defend, themes that continue to resonate sharply today. Looking for his take on Bernie Madoff? Read Little Dorrit. Feel that the educational system is collapsing? Take a look at Nicholas Nickleby. The war on crime? Oliver Twist. Serpentine legal battles? Bleak House.

Additionally, and unbeknownst to him, Dickens also paved the way for the serialized narrative that television viewers have come to enjoy. The majority of his novels were first serialized in monthly or weekly publications, written just a few weeks ahead of time and typically ending with a shocking revelation or cliffhanger that kept readers eagerly awaiting more. This structure is the one clearly embraced by the creators and writers of serialized dramas, parceling out plot and character development in an episodic fashion while having the ability to react to those engaging with the material.

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