TV Watch (sick-day edition): Binge-watching Season 3 of TNT's "Dallas"

The 2012-14 (and beyond) Ewings: Sue Ellen (Linda Gray), Bobby (Patrick Duffy), John Ross (Josh Henderson), and Christopher (Jesse Metcalfe)

"You selfish bastard! Lying and cheating were the only two things you were good at, and now you've failed at them too!"

-- Pamela Barnes Ewing, after slapping terminally
estranged husband John Ross, in "Victims of Love,"
Episode 12 of Season 3 of Dallas (2012)

by Ken

I love that line, even if I'm not sure Julie Gonzalo has read it quite right. Surely Pamela means to stress the "them too," but she kind of half-stresses "failed" and "too." But it's still a great line, following that nicely executed slap.

Today was a sick day for me, and while there's probably more productive stuff I could have been attempting to do, I needed to wallow. Fortunately, my timing was perfect -- I happened to be midway through a binge-watch of Season 3-to-date of the TNT resurrection of Dallas, developed and executive-produced by Cynthia Cidre. I had watched a few episodes of the earlier seasons and never dveloped any interest, but I also never got around to canceling the series recording I programmed way back when.

I often do this with a new show, since if I'm going to program the DVR to record the first episode, it's just as easy to program the series, and this way if I like the thing, the recording is already scheduled. It also means I'm under no pressure to watch that premiere episode right away, knowing that -- barring machine failure -- I'll have the ensuing episodes stacked up if I wind up having any interest. And if not, I can just undo it all. Except that in the case of Dallas I apparently never got around to undoing the series programming.

I've noticed that my DVR is getting cluttered now with series that I once had some interest in but have already given up on. I recall that there's a season or more of Psych and most of this past season of Blue Bloods, which I couldn't bring myself to watch -- or to delete. The count on Dallas episodes, I noticed, reached 13 after Monday night's airing. It was time to do something. Somehow, though, I couldn't bring myself to just delete the crop willy-nilly, so I decided to watch at least one episode and see whether that gave me the go-ahead to dump the rest.

Well, Episode 1 of Season 3 didn't thrill me. (It it seems like there have been many more seasons than three, it's because like so many cable series, Dallas has been shown in split-season format. season has been shown in split-season format, so what I was watching was the episode first broadcast on January 28, followed by seven more episodes comprising the first half of Season 3. The rest of what I had stored was the first five episodes of the seven-episode second half of the 15-episode season.)

Of course a lot of my attention had to be devoted to remembering or figuring out who the heck the characters were. Sure Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing (the upright one among Jock Ewing's three sons) and Linda Gray as Sue Ellen Ewing (the long-suffering wife of J.R.) didn't require any introduction to original-series Dallas watchers. Ditto for cutaways to Nuevo Laredo Prison for scenes with encootified Ken Kerchival in his now-recurring role as Cliff Barnes (age-old nemesis of the Ewing brothers), except I had to watch out for tidings of why Cliff was in prison in Mexico.

Among the new cast of characters for what Wikipedia refers to as Dallas (2012), it was easy enough to keep track of the Ewing cousins, Christopher (Bobby's adopted son) and John Ross (J.R. and Sue Ellen's son), but the others in the crowd were kind of murky, and even as I began to sort them out and sort of remember which is which, it was often made harder by the need to remember who both parents of each character were. I remember getting caught short when Christopher referred to Cliff Barnes as his uncle, until I reminded myself that back then Bobby Ewing was indeed married to Cliff's sister Pamela -- and what a to-do that had occasioned, a Ewing marrying a Barnes!

Still and all, I must have seen enough in Episode 1 of Season 3 to press on to Episode 2, and then Episode 3, by which time I began to suspect that I was in it for the duration of the stored-up episodes.

Which was strange, because I really didn't find the characters much more interesting than I had in the earlier episodes of Dallas (2012) I'd watched. There are clutches of extremely pretty boys and girls -- obviously designed to give the new show appeal to viewers other than original-Dallas ancients -- but as pretty as they all are, what's eerie is how not-really-attractive they are, and kind of short on personality.

But as the series began to exert some pull on me, albeit pull of the guilty-pleasure kind, I began to speculate that what was drawing me in was the machinations. It's not so much the oil-industry wheeling-and-dealing of the old Dallas as it is scheming-and-reaming among Dallas's current crop of energy machinators, with the currently-in-play Ewings varously teaming up and splitting apart again. I'm not saying that the plots would hold up to intensive scrutiny, but they're functional, and the machinations have been striking as genuinely expert, even as regards the diabolical Mexican drug cartel that's fixin' to take over the Mexican government.

And that's the thing: Everyone is involved in the machinations, like as not involving blackmail of one sort or another if not as machinators then as machinatees. And the creative team seems pretty good at both involving their characters in rich enough machinations and respecting the established outlines of those characters. What has kept at least Season 3 going is that nearly all of the machinations seem credible enough to pass casual viewer muster, and yet nearly all of the machinations wind up de-machinating, though not until after they've caused much additional mayhem.

It's not that the characters lack intricateness, if not quite complexity. Poor John Ross (Josh Henderson), as J.R.'s son, has been cast not just by the producers but by his family and community as the machinator-in-chief, but comes to wonder himself whether his father's persona is something he has to live up to or something he ought to be living down.

The one thing I've noticed that was a little disconcerting at first but after a while comes to seem quite welcome is that the scene layout often jumps freely over in-between establishing-and-developing scenes that most shows would find obligatory to get us from Fix A to Fix B. I found that once I got used to knowing that no, I hadn't necessarily missed scenes that I could easily enough figure out what had taken place, and appreciated not having had to waste time on the dispensable scenes.

Harris R -- the un-Skinner

I should add that there are some genuinely engaging characters. There's shambly-looking old Bum (Kevin Page), J.R.'s old fanatically loyal retainer, a man who can get seemingly anything done. And good old Brenda Strong was brought in as a new wife for Bobby, packing lots of baggage but with a shining-through goody-ness. And among the corps of villians, that fine actor Mitch Pileggi as super-shady business Harris Ryland adds oily shades to the character type (if we hadn't seen him all those years as The X Files' eternally upright, straight-arrow FBI Assistant Director Skinner, we might chalk up all that nonstop slithery motion under his shiny shaved head to mannerism, but it's as creepily un-Skinnerish as one might imagine), under the thumb of his recurringly appearing mother Judith, played with drawlingly sneering evil by TV super-veteran Judith Light. Evil Judith has one of the stronger machinating records among the heavy-duty machinators, and yet even she can be toppled. It was great to see her collapse, physically as well as spiritually, in Episode 12, when the nasty cartel guy Luis (Antonio Jaramillo) showed her evidence that his people new how to make her crumble.

When the show needs a big acting gun, they know where to find one. Until Episode 12, the identity of the supreme head of the cartel was so secret that even the CIA didn't know. (Oh, didn't I mention that the CIA is involved too?) I had noticed among the top-of-the-show guest-star credits the name of that great character actor Miguel Sandovál, but I didn't make the connection until a late scene where right-hand man Luis delivers a good-news report -- so far the cartel people are by far our most successful machinators -- in his boss's enormous, lush garden. The Big Guy delivers some remarkable lines while fastidiously pruning tomato plants (at least some of them were tomato plants, I know; I wasn't really watching th plants). Like this, which he speaks in a philosophically-professorially disapproving but even tone:

"Drugs destroy families and social infrastructures. The more broken a society becomes, the easier it is for us to seize power."

When Luis assures him that this is "precisely why I have a plan in place which will double the volume of product going through the pipeline," "El Pozolero" (as I see he's called) says, again delivered in that calm, dispassionate professorial tone:

"Good. Not since the Europeans raped our ancestors have we truly been in power. Now, it is our time once again. [Extended pause for pruing.] Now will be the real Mexican Revolution."

This isn't the sort of plotting and writing -- and acting -- we see on the tube every night of the week.

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TV Watch: "Rizzoli and Isles" (finally) says "Goodbye" to Det. Barry Foster -- and actor Lee Thompson Young

Lee Thompson Young: Tuesday's episode was called "Goodbye."

by Ken

I'm glad I didn't read joyceeng61's June 17 tv.com "Looking Forward" piece, "Rizzoli and Isles Boss on Writing Out Lee Thompson Young: 'It Was Very Daunting,' " before seeing the show's first two episodes of the new season these past two Tuesdays. And if you haven't seen them yet, you may not want to continue reading this until you have. Now that I have seen those episodes, and felt I needed to say something (something approving) about the way the show finally dealt with the suicide last August of cast member Lee Thompson Young, who played Barry Foster, the partner of Det. Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon), I'm really glad to have found the piece.

In it, joyceeng61 talks to the show's new showrunner, Without a Trace veteran Jan Nash, who inherited the problem of What to Do About Lee when she took over from former showrunner (and show creator) Janet Tamaro in November.

The final episodes of Season 4 were devoid of Young, but his character, Det. Barry Frost, hadn't been written out yet. Instead, he was said to be on vacation visiting his mom.

"It was very daunting knowing what was before me and what I had to do," Nash says. "From the moment that I was approached about this show and started watching the episodes ... and [after] I met with Angie [Harmon] and Sasha [Alexander], I knew that doing it in a compelling and respectful way was the most important thing to them for the season."

The loss of Lee Thompson Young must have been as traumatic for his show family as the loss of Barry Foster was for his fictional family.

Killing off Frost was the only option to honor Young, Nash feels, as any other alternative would ring false. But she was well aware that she had to approach it with great care.

"We had to deal with it in a real and concrete way. We couldn't just say Barry Frost went on vacation and occasionally talk about how much fun he was having or give him a new job in a new city," she says. "That would feel icky. We realized that we had to have the character die so we could deal with that loss the same way the people on the show had dealt with Lee's loss. What comes with that is we had to make sure we were not being exploitive and we were honoring his memory appropriately ... and I think we all feel as a collective that we, to the best of our abilities, accomplished that."

Ms. Nash, I thought you and your team did a pretty darned good job of dealing with this awful situation. And the plot motif of everyone around Jane trying to persuade her that what she needed was to cry, which is obviously highly un-Jane-like behavior . . . well, the way that was worked out was, I thought, at once unexpected and lovely and memorable.

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"Leverage" spoiler alert: The show goes out on a high note, imagining a lovely conspiracy of the world's overprivileged elites

The Leverage team: Nate (Timothy Hutton), Sophie (Gina Bellman), Eliot (Christian Kane), Hardison (Aldis Hodge), and Parker (Beth Riesgraf)

"The world's economy would never stabilize with endless parades of bankers being led around in chains. The system has to work. The guys who used to run it have to keep running it."

-- Interpol agent James Sterling (Mark A. Sheppard), in last
night's final episode of Leverage, "The Long Good-bye Job"

"Leverage was one of the few shows that pointed out how outmatched individuals are by profit-obsessed corporations. In its last season the show tackled pro sport's concussion problem, weak occupational-safety laws, how the rapacious policies of big box stores threaten small towns, and the inadequacy of consumer-protection regulations in the toy market—among many other little-guy-versus-the-world story lines. The show also reminded viewers of the similarities between scam artists and marketers. Did you think they'd be allowed to get away with that forever?"

-- Slate "Browbeat" culture columnist June Thomas

by Ken

I'm sure you remember the Obama administration's storied preference for "looking forward" over sifting through the wreckage of the economic meltdown with a view to bringing any malefactors to justice. In last night's Christmas finale of TNT's Leverage, we were treated to a wonderfully wacky but delicious image of that refusal to prosecute.

During the week I'd heard the Christmas episode of Leverage promoted as both the season finale and the series finale. It turns out, as of last Friday, that "series finale" is correct.

After watching the episode (about which more in a moment), I've learned from Slate's "Browbeat" culture blogger June Thomas that showrunner Dean Devlin explained in an open letter to fans earlier this month that, amid uncertainty about renewal for a sixth season, and facing the departures of star Timothy Hutton (as scam-team mastermind Nate Ford) and Gina Bellman (as the ever-mysterious grifter Sophie Devereaux), decided with series co-creator (with Chris Downey) John Rogers decided to end Season 5 --

with the episode we had planned to make to end the series, way back when we shot the pilot.  So, the episode that will air on Christmas is, in fact, the series finale we had always envisioned.

You could see from the end of the episode that it left open the possibility of a Closer-to-Major Cases-type afterlife-conversion, but on Friday, as I noted, the hammer was dropped.

I like June Thomas's take, grieving first for all those people put out of work. I suspect I'll miss the show, which she points out "was all about sticking up for the rights of the little guy against powerful corporate and governmental interests," less than she will, but I take her point about it, which I've put at the top of this post.

And I have to give the show folk credit for going out in a blaze of glory, with Nate secretly bamboozling the team into a mission that turns out to be the capture of a government computer file he calls the Black Book. When the heist appears to have gone catastrophically wrong, he's interrogated by an Interpol agent and her superior, a long-time nemesis of Nate's.

INTERPOL AGENT CASEY (Catherine Dent): What is the Black Box?
NATE: Five years ago, when the financial system crashed, the FBI, SEC, IRS, Interpol -- they all did their jobs. They investigated, and they found massive fraud. Market manipulation, secret deals, pension funds loaded with bogus paper, people's life savings burnt. And because they knew they'd broken the system, well, they were too powerful -- they got all the money out. Now you think I'm a thief, Agent Casey? One-third of the world's entire wealth disappeared then. Biggest heist in history. And we know who did it.
INTERPOL (HIGHER-UP) AGENT STERLING (Mark A. Sheppard): We decided not to prosecute. Order had to be restored.
NATE: That's why you joined Interpol? Screw justice, you're the order guy?
AGENT STERLING: It's not a choice.
NATE: It is. Justice, or order? One day you are going to have to make that choice.
AGENT STERLING: The world's economy would never stabilize with endless parades of bankers being led around in chains. The system has to work. The guys who used to run it have to keep running it.
NATE: Government agencies -- they closed all the cases. They took all the files of all the cases they could have prosecuted, all the savings accounts with all the stolen money, and they filed it away. That file . . . is the Black Book.
AGENT STERLING: The Holy Grail of the ones who got away with it.

"The ones who got away with it." I like that. (By the way, in the end Agent Sterling did indeed make his choice, and it probably wasn't the one most of us would have expected.)

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2011-12 TV wrap-up and 2012-13 preview: It mostly all sucks, and CBS still tries its best to keep viewers from viewing "The Good Wife"

Are The Good Wife's Alicia (Julianna Margulies) and Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) trying to figure out how to get their overseers at CBS to stop working so hard to prevent fans of the network's best show -- not to mention people who would be grabbed by it if they got the hang of it -- from watching?

by Ken

The things I do for you, dear readers. Today I actually watched the last 25 minutes or so of the dreadful Jets-Steelers game, just for the purpose of seeing when exactly the telecast would end and CBS's pushed-back Sunday-night schedule would begin.

As you surely know already, the NFL has pushed its "late"-game start time back from 4:15pm ET to 4:25pm, and CBS has responded by pushing its Sunday-night schedule back from 7 to 7:30 ET. (Fox, the other network affected by NFL late-game starts, has been starting its Sunday-night schedule at 7:30 for some time.)

So tonight I endured that unendurable stretch of Jets-Steelers to confirm just what I suspected: that the 10-minute pushback is totally useless for my purposes. Even in combination with the elimination of any kind of postgame coverage -- except for postgame commercials -- CBS couldn't get 60 Minutes on the air till 7:37.

Now I don't give a damn about the football games. Can people still be watching these dreadful spectacles? Are fans really not noticing that the drawn-out games have become increasingly unendurable? And I'm not blaming the commercial-time inflation. Sure, this is a known (and knowing) drain on viewers' patience, but the generally unspoken reality is that what happens between the commercials has become even more unwatchable. And for me this is just as true of the supposed nail-biters as of a dog like today's Jets-Steelers mess. The only real question in any game seems to me the collective amount by which the lives of the players on the field, not to mention the quality of those lives, has been shortened by the day's orgy of physical punishment. And that won't be known till years and decades afterward, at which point hardly any viewers will be paying attention.

For that matter, I don't give a damn about 60 Minutes either. I can't believe people are still watching that either. A broadcast that once prided itself on punching holes in the status quo has become one of its most ardent defenders. Can anyone care about what's left?

What I do care about is the pushback of the rest of the CBS Sunday-night schedule. And the one thing I care about, as we count down to the start of the fall TV season, is being able to catch the start of The Good Wife, which is close to the only thing on CBS I care about. (Okay, I'm a big fan of The Big Bang Theory, and have managed to continue watching How I Met Your Mother even as it has increasingly run out of steam. And I got through a season of Two Broke Girls, despite the high annoyance level of most of the episodes.)

So let's recap. The NFL think it has solved its late-game start-time problem: that viewers of the early games frequently get their game lopped off because contractually local stations have to switch to the late games of double-headers when they start. Now if they can't get those early games over by 4:25 . . . well, I won't finish that thought. I'm not entirely persuaded that they can. But again, that's not the game-end time which concerns me.

I have a feeling that the CBS programming people are frustrated by the ratings of The Good Wife, feeling that more viewers should care about it. I'm not talkikng about tricking people into watching the show; I'm talking about making sure that all the viewers who would enjoy the show if they got a feel for what it's doing ever find out what' it's doing. But does no one a the network grasp the punishment inflicted on the show by placing it on the Sunday-night schedule? You have to really, really care about the show to put up with what you have to put up with just to be able to watch the show, whether in real time or via DVR.

In the wake of the football-pushback story, I found a blogger who like me was mostly concerned about the impact on DVR-ability of The Good Wife. She (I think it was a she; I couldn't refind the post) pointed out that pushing The Good Wife into a 9:30-to-10:30 slot would complicate the lives of many viewers suffering a DVR jam-up on Sunday nights, since it will make it impossible for most DVR owners to record more than one other show in the 9pm slot.

This struck me as in interesting point. What with NPR's Masterpiece and assorted cable offerings that tend to be squeezed into Sunday nights, there really is a DVR jam-up. But there are ways around that, making use of cable repeats and On Demand. However, when the CBS schedule is pushed back 7 minutes, the only solution I've found to avoid missing the last 7 minutes of The Good Wife is to manually schedule a 90-minute recording from 9:30 to 11.

In other words, I'm exactly where I've been since The Good Wife was moved to Sunday night. The powers-that-be are doing everything in their power to keep me from watching, but I'll be damned if I let them stop me!


MY 2011-12 WRAP-UP AND 2012 FALL PREVIEW

I've written hardly anything about the season past because there didn't seem to me much to write about. And sorry, but I haven't been able to force myself to study the fall schedules as I know I should have. My strategy of recent seasons has been to trust blindly that the new shows can't all be as dreadful as they sound. So once again I'll trust that word of mouth will reach me in time to clue me in if I've been missing anything. If you've got any tips, I'm listening.

I can say that I'm looking forward to the new season of HBO's Boardwalk Empire, which begins tonight. Otherwise, even my cable-show interest has been waning. Oh, on AMC I thought the new Mad Men season was fine and the new Breaking Bad half-season ditto. Better still, Lifetime's Army Wives has an outstanding season, but they seemed to be saying the promos that the final episode of the season was the final episode -- though I can't find any actual announcement to that effect, and the season certainly ended with a heckuva cliffhanger.

What alarmed me was the extend to which I found myself thinking that I didn't really need to watch new episodes of onetime USA Network standards like Burn Notice and Royal Pains and Covert Affairs and Suits and even, perhaps most surprisingly, White Collar. At TNT there's still some life in Rizzoli and Isles, based entirely on the strength of the cast and the interest of the characters, and unfortunately less and less on the quality of the writing. I'm relieved that The Closer has been put out of my misery. (The recycling into Major Crimes is a mixed blessing. It's a relief not to have to endure all that awful stuff Kyra Sedgwick has been doing, but without her, does anyone want to keep watching that bunch?)

I don't know, maybe I'm just old and grumpy. The one bright side I can see is that maybe my Sunday nights won't be so jammed up and I'll have an easier time catching The Good Wife.

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When history collides: Have historians ever reached agreement on WHY Nixon shot J.R.?

As best I can remember, Nixon shot J. R. Ewing because of stuff he had in Larry O'Brien's safe about Nixon's (wink, wink) "friendship" with weird rich guy Bebe Rebozo.

by Ken

My goodness, here we are counting down to the ruby anniversary (at least that's what I came up with for the 40th in a quick online search) of the Watergate break-in ordered by President Richard M. Nixon -- coming up this Sunday, the 17th, in case you were planning a party -- in the very week (Wednesday night, to be exact) that TNT is dragging out yet another reincarnation of that hoary ancient prime-time soap Dallas, commingling the surviving geriatric Ewings & Friends (& Foes -- I see that old Ewing-family nemesis Cliff Barnes is on hand) with their imagined progeny and assorted other youngerfolk. Be still, my heart.

Actually, I'm not sure I'm up to another romp through Southfork and environs (sometimes the past is best left buried where it lies), but it occurred to me that the new generation of Dallas producers-writers has a real problem on its hands, in that what passed for colossal corporate skullduggery when the show was new would today qualify as little more than slight corporate overexuberance. What would you have to do today to qualify for the mantel of villainy once worn so cockily by Larry Hagman's J. R. Ewing, remembered by the New York Daily News's David Hinckley as "the ultimate capitalist who steered the Ewing family to wealth and influence with little regard for the moral consequences."

Now is it mere coincidence, this confluence of Dallas and Nixon? I don't think so. It was, after all, Nixon who shot J.R. (Wasn't it? Maybe I should have double-checked this. I remember it had something to do with J.R. knowing what was in Larry O'Brien's safe about Nixon's intimate relations with Bebe Rebozo, or something like that.) As a matter of fact, as I've written here, I've often felt the same way about the Dastardliness Quotient of Nixon & Co. as compared with that of his lineal political descendants. I always try to stick up for Nixon, though, by pointing out that he was pushing the frontiers of malfeasance and democracy-destroying as far as the mind of man was capable of imagining in his time. As you follow the plunge into the muck through the eras of Ronald Reagan and the Tiniest George Bush, those miscreants were all standing on the shoulders of the master. And still, it's worth remembering how mainstream, by present-day standards, most of Nixon's more radical political positions were.

Still, I was cheered to see the Watergate boys, Woodward and Bernstein, once again sharing a byline, as part of the Washington Post's Watergate Ruby Anniversary festivities, specifically in an op-ed piece called "Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought." Here's some of what they have to say:

At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.

Today, much more than when we first covered this story as young Washington Post reporters, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has expanded continuously over the decades with the transcription of hundreds of hours of Nixon’s secret tapes, adding detail and context to the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives; the trials and guilty pleas of some 40 Nixon aides and associates who went to jail; and the memoirs of Nixon and his deputies. Such documentation makes it possible to trace the president’s personal dominance over a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities against his real or perceived opponents.

In the course of his five-and-a-half-year presidency, beginning in 1969, Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars — against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. All reflected a mind-set and a pattern of behavior that were uniquely and pervasively Nixon’s: a willingness to disregard the law for political advantage, and a quest for dirt and secrets about his opponents as an organizing principle of his presidency.

Long before the Watergate break-in, gumshoeing, burglary, wiretapping and political sabotage had become a way of life in the Nixon White House. . . .

To be sure, the boys go on quite a bit, and I confess I haven't read every last word. It's just nice to see someone honoring the authentic scale of Nixon's skullduggery rather than treating him as some prehistoric evildoer-wannabe.

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"We need more dramas like 'Men of a Certain Age'" (Tim Surette, TV.com)

Let's be honest: Men of a Certain Age, which wrapped up its second season on Wednesday, never really stood a chance at a long run on television. I've recommended it to countless people in person, over the phone, on TV.com, but despite how fantastic I say the acting and writing is, I always faced the same dreaded question from potential viewers: What's it about?

-- Tim Surette, in "Did We Just See the End
of Men of a Certain Age?" on TV.com

by Ken

I haven't watched the season finale of Men of a Certain Age yet, so I have to be careful about spoilers -- to protect myself.

Looking back, I'm relieved to see that I weighed in strongly about Men of a Certain Age, after greeting it with certain reservations, when it came to the first-season finale:

I see online that the show's fans have reason to believe that its renewal is in serious doubt. On TNT's part I find this (a) shocking and (b) really stupid. Do the programming geniuses there really imagine they can fill that hour with anything that might bring them: (a) more prestige, (b) better word of mouth, or (c) a shot at better ratings?

Now I see that once again renewal is in doubt. And this time I have to say that the blame doesn't fall entirely on TNT. Oh, I'm sure they could have marshaled a stronger effort, but in this case, I think they've really tried. Often I complain, when it comes to unconventional shows that their networks don't seem really to get behind, that the powers-that-be either don't get what they have or are afraid to market it honestly for what it is, in an effort at least to connect it to the people who would enjoy such a show. I'm more inclined in the case of Men of a Certain Age than in most cases that its network, TNT, really has tried to promote the show without trying to pretend it's something it isn't. The show has, after all, three fairly familiar stars, who I have to think are on the whole generally liked by the viewing public, and it deals with situations and problems that I would think would resonate with most viewers, and I think the promotions have tried to communicate that.

But TV.com's Tim Surette makes an excellent point when he explains how he has tried to explain what the show is "about":

Ray Romano (Joe), Scott Bakula (Terry), Andre Braugher (Owen)

Ugh. That's where the conversation derails. "It's about three middle-aged men dealing with middle-aged stuff like divorce, health issues, and being friends. One of them is trying to make the Senior Golf Tour and runs a party supply store. Another one owns a car dealership. And the last guy is sort of a loser. Oh and in the mid-season finale, they all got colonoscopies together!"

After that uninspiring spiel, whoever I'm talking to politely explains that they need to go wash their hair and walks away from the conversation, even though I can still smell the shampoo from their morning shower. And I guess that's the problem: Men of a Certain Age doesn't solve crimes, doesn't feature parallel universes, doesn't ever get more exciting than a local news spot. It's too much like real life -- and the majority of viewers, by the time they get home from their soul-crushing jobs each day, have had enough real life without turning on the boob tube to watch someone else's.

And Tim, bless him, has a good read on the case that's to be made for the show.

Men of a Certain Age is not only about real life but everything that makes it special -- the ups and the downs; the regrets and the sweet, sweet triumphs; the pain you learn from and the love that makes you stronger. Those "real life" life lessons are what inspire me, as a viewer, to go out and be a better human being.

Which brings me to this: We need more dramas like Men of a Certain Age. Dramas that aren't an escape from our humdrum reality, but rather enhance our perception of our humdrum reality.

Yes! Exactly, Tim! And it's totally woven into the plot lines for all three central characters. As Tim writes:

When I see Noah Wyle punch a space spider in the face and drag him back to HQ, I don't go out the next day and help an old lady across the street. But when Terry decides to get his life on the right track, Joe overcomes nervousness on an awkward date, or Owen stands up to his father, it hits *chokes up, points to his heart* right here, man, and I feel an overwhelming urge to call my mom and tell her I love her or hug my cat. On a personal level, there's a lot more to take away from watching an episode of Men of a Certain Age. Some call it "that fuzzy feeling," some compare it to fatherly advice, I call it virtual experience. Men of a Certain Age never set out to wow its audience, it only attempted -- and successfully accomplished -- creating something its audience can relate to.

Sadly, word on the street is that Men of a Certain Age is a long shot for a Season 3 renewal. Looks like it's back to humdrum reality for all of us.

Sigh.


UPDATE: MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE CO-CREATOR AND EXEC
PRODUCER MIKE ROYCE SAYS, "HOPE IS IN NO WAY LOST"

Howie passed along this tweet, and while there's nothing clickable in my copied version (remember, I'm il-twit-erate), I thought the message was worth passing along:

MikeRoyce Mike Royce
@
@downwithtyranny appreciate all the nice words. You are right to fret but hope is in no way lost.

This is definitely encouraging. I'm sure Mike and his team have no shortage of material for a third season, and to the TNT brain trust I would say the same thing I did last year: "Do the programming geniuses there really imagine they can fill that hour with anything that might bring them: (a) more prestige, (b) better word of mouth, or (c) a shot at better ratings?"

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In honor of tonight's "Men of a Certain Age" season finale, we present the morning Oscar odds from London. Bet early and often!

TNT's official recap of last week's episode, in which Joe's chronic gambling problem took a scary upturn. The season (and possibly series?) finale airs tonight at 10pm ET/PT, 9pm CT.

by Ken

Stop the presses! The down-to-the-wire Oscar race between formerly married directors James Cameron (Avatar) and Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) has taken a mind-blowing turn. As I learned from my e-mail this morning:

AVATAR CAUGHT BEHIND LOCKER ON OSCAR NIGHT

Following the success of The Hurt Locker at the BAFTA Awards [the British Academy Awards] in London last night top bookie Paddy Power have slashed the odds on the critically acclaimed Iraq war drama from 5/4 to 5/6 to win the Oscar for Best Picture at next months Academy Awards. 

The Hurt Locker has now replaced James Cameron’s sci-fi spectacular Avatar as favourite to win Best Picture and director Kathryn Bigelow is now the solid 1/3 favourite to also pick up the Oscar for Best Director.

 Paddy Power said “From a betting point of view it seems increasingly likely that James Cameron could lose out in the two main Oscar categories to none other than his ex-wife. Obviously they are two very different films but punters seem to think that The Hurt Locker ticks more boxes for the Academy than Avatar”

Could you just die, or what? Could this be any more exciting?

Of course I haven't seen either picture, or to the best recollection any of the others mentioned in the Paddy Power Oscar odds lists. But somehow the thought that you can bet the house, bet the farm, bet the kids makes it seem somehow all worthwhile. And provides a neat tie-in to tonight's season finale of Men of a Certain Age, the TNT comedy-drama about three longtime friends going through the stresses of 40-something-dom. You see, Joe (played by series co-creator Ray Romano) is a compulsive gambler.


So far, as degenerate gamblers go, Joe seems to have been extraordinariliy lucky, in that his party-store business has apparently been profitable enough overall to cover his week-in, week-out losses, though surely not without periodic stresses. It's hard to imagine that Joe's gambling wasn't a factor in the breakup of his marriage, and again last week it has, at least so far, cost him a promising relationship.

Last week we saw Joe up the stakes scarifyingly. The bet grew out of the sort real-world-based justification that's easy to believe would be sufficient stimulus for someone with his susceptibility: He had decided that his children's well-being depends on him buying a house, and it had to be in their present neighborhood, and for this he didn't have an adequate down payment. Once the bet was placed, we came about as close as those of us without a gambling instinct are apt to come to experiencing the playing out of such a bet.

There was relief when Joe got lucky, but not from the ticking time bomb of the gambling problem -- relief for Joe in the short-term, but none for the longer-term well-being of a man who really doesn't seem to understand that he has a problem, let alone how serious it is. And storm clouds are gathering. In addition to the budding relationship it seems to have deep-sixed (the woman, upon learning about the bet, even after it was safely won, had the excellent sense to run as fast as she could), I'm not expecting Joe's luck in financial matters to carry him through the season finale.

I've made my peace, or maybe just learned to live, with my earlier-expressed reservations about the show. I've had a fairly easy time sticking with it, because all three main characters' lives have been interestingly and believably explored, and each has been allowed at least some moments of temporary triumph. (Joe has shown signs of actually grasping that his marriage is kaput, and that he has to get on with his life. Owen (Andre Braugher) actually followed through fighting a bureaucratic boondoggle to begin restoring his endangered home to habitability, and even took a positive step last week in dead-end career situation. Peter Pan-ish "actor" Terry (Scott Bakula), who hasn't been doing much acting lately, while stuck in a far pleasanter groove (who doesn't envy his all-pleasure all-the-time lifestyle?), has begun to see that the clock of life is ticking on him too.

I see online that the show's fans have reason to believe that its renewal is in serious doubt. On TNT's part I find this (a) shocking and (b) really stupid. Do the programming geniuses there really imagine they can fill that hour with anything that might bring them: (a) more prestige, (b) better word of mouth, or (c) a shot at better ratings?

Once again, if the ratings aren't what the network hoped -- presumably based on the calculation that anybody who ever watched a show that featured Ray Romano, Scott Bakula, or Andre Braugher would watch this one, doesn't it ever occur to these goons to question whether they have any idea what they're doing? Do TV marketers ever look at a show in terms of the basic questions: (1) Who might want to watch it? And (2) how do we reach those people to let them know that this is a show they might want to watch?

As I've mentioned, Fox has an especially glaring record in this regard, having developed quite a number of genuinely fresh, well-executed shows it had no clue how to market. But I have to say that of all the cable networks that have gone into the business of producing their own series, TNT seems to think most like a junior imitation of a broadcast network, with a strong streak of dreary pseudo-bigtime conventionality in its program conception, casting, and selling.

I don't know whether Paddy Power is quoting odds on Men of a Certain Age's survival, but here are its Oscar odds as of this morning.

2010 ACADEMY AWARDS



Best Picture

5/6    The Hurt Locker (from 5/4)

10/11 Avatar (from 1/2) 

16/1   Inglorious Basterds

25/1   Up in the Air

40/1   Up

50/1   Precious

66/1   An Education

66/1   District 9

100/1 A Serious Man

125/1 The Blind Side



Best Director

1/3   Kathryn Bigelow (from 4/9)

2/1   James Cameron (from 7/5)

20/1 Quentin Tarantino

25/1 Jason Reitman

50/1 Lee Daniels



Best Actor

1/6   Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)

6/1   George Clooney (Up In The Air)

10/1 Colin Firth (A Single Man) (from 14/1)

18/1 Morgan Freeman (Invictus)

18/1 Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)



Best Actress

8/13 Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side) (from 4/6)

7/4  Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia) (from 13/8)

8/1  Carey Mulligan (An Education) (from 10/1)

12/1 Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)

33/1 Helen Mirren (The Last Station)



Best Supporting Actor

1/25  Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds

11/1  Stanley Tucci - The Lovely Bones

14/1  Woody Harrelson - The Messengers

20/1  Matt Damon - Invictus
25/1  Christopher Plummer - The Last Station



Best Supporting Actress

1/16  Mo'Nique – Precious (from 1/12)

12/1  Penelope Cruz - Nine

12/1  Anna Kendrick - Up In The Air (from 8/1)

16/1  Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air

20/1  Maggie Gyllenhaal - Crazy Heart

At its best, Leverage is better than just watchable

This official TNT season-two preview gives some of the flavor of the Leverage gang. Three episodes from season two remain to air Wednesday nights (including tonight) at 10pm ET/PT, repeated at 1am.

by Ken

No, Leverage isn't one of my favorite shows. Episodes tend to pile up on my DVR and then get watched in bulk when I need to clear space. Note, however, that I could just delete them. The show is competently crafted and eminently watchable. The reason I commend it to your attention is that now and then -- as in a couple of the most recently shown episodes -- it shows flashes of something more.

It's a scam-slash-caper show, though nowhere near as stylish or individual as AMC's Hustle. The hook is that this gang led by former insurance investigator Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) isn't in it for the loot; it's out to right wrongs committed against people with no recourse. Think A Team folded into Hustle with the ghost of Mission: Impossible hovering over. As with the TNT show with which it's been regularly paired until now, the dark but not terribly believable undercover-cop drama Dark Blue, it is, as I say, eminently watchable, but generally unmemorable -- the viewer is left too much leisure to recall how good Timothy Hutton was as Archie Goodwin in the Nero Wolfe mysteries and how good Dylan McDermott was as Bobby on The Practice.

You can see that creator-producers Dean Devlin, Chris Downey, and John Rogers have worked hard to build an array of complexities and complications and quirks into each of the characters. We've got Nate's strangely self-destructive drinking and inability to relate humanly to much of anybody, including the gang's scam mistress Sophie (Gina Bellman, probably best known to most of us as Jane the ditzy nymphomaniac from the British series Coupling), who is frustratingly unable to rouse any romantic interest from him. Then there's Eliot (Christian Kane), the bull-headed but boyishly charming martial-arts banger (try not to think of Mr. T); and Hardison (Aldis Hodge), the electronics and computer wizard who constantly winds up doing other things he's not so good at; and Parker (Beth Riesgraf), the safecracker-daredevil who, judging from what I read online, seems to be a lot of viewers' favorite.

For the later episodes of this season Sophie, having withdrawn from the gang presumably out of frustration over Nate's nonresponsiveness, offers them as designated scam babe (doesn't every gang of scammers have to have a scam babe?) her much more businesslike friend Tara (Jeri Ryan), who has difficulty finding her place in the group. The mystery turns out to be easily explained: Gina Bellman was having a baby! Latest word is that she will be ready to go for season three.

This is all fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go all that far. The nonreactive chemistry between Nate and Sophie doesn't make for vivid drama, and in fact with most of the characters we get more biographical facts than real human dimension. TNT's slogan is "We know drama" (based, apparently, on its business acumen in shelling out the bucks to wrest Law & Order away from A&E), but USA's emphasis on "character" seems to me why it's been producing so much high-quality TV drama in recent years. (That said, TNT has to be credited with two unqualified series triumphs: the enchanting comedy My Boys, about a vividly created band of Chicago 20-somethings that more or less centers around a female sportswriter P. J. Franklin (the hopelessly beguiling Jordana Spiro, pictured here), and the policier-cum-family soap-cum-theological-angel-apparition-drama Saving Grace, with Holly Hunter always amazing as Grace, and a strong cast around her.)

So what gives me heart? For one thing, I'm noticing in the more recent episodes -- maybe it was there in the earlier ones, but I'm just noticing it now -- how funny Hardison can be, especially when he bitches about the total nonrecognition he gets for the prodigies he performs routinely sitting at his computer keyboard. His colleagues hardly seem him doing anything, and of course haven't the slightest clue how he does it.

My favorite moment: Hardison, listening in to the audio feed from the others in the bar downstairs, hears that in order to prevent their mark from making his way to the airport and leaving the country, they need a weather report that will persuade him the snow is so severe, his plane can't possibly leave, keeping him in the bar. He proceeds to improvise, singlehandedly and in a matter of a few minutes, a slightly goofy but just believable enough weather report, which he's already hacked to feed into the bar's TV.

That episode, "The Bottle Job," as a whole is another of my "signs of hope." Nate found himself trying to save the bar in which he had more or less grown up, the de facto "office" of his father, who turns out to have been a ruthless loan shark. Timothy Hutton isn't really a good enough actor to be a convincing "man of mystery." Spelling out some of those mysteries was a terrific idea; finally the character began taking on some involving dimension.

This was even more true in last week's episode, "The Zanzibar Marketplace Job," where the gang finds itself in Ukraine on what becomes a personal mission for Nate: rescuing his wrongfully arrested ex-wife Maggie. In a brilliant way, the presentation of Maggie filled in a huge gap in Nate's personality. The bumbling, the drinking, the human unreachableness -- it's all explained by the simple reality that the poor guy is still hopelessly in love with her. Someone had the inspiration to cast the fascinating Kari Matchett (it's a shame somebody thought she had to be blondified, though [UPDATE: expert commenters inform us that Kari's a natural blond; see the comments]), who was the leading lady of the Canadian repertory company with whom Hutton did all those Nero Wolfe shows -- they're really quite wonderful together. Here, although badly out of sync, is a sample:

There's so much to admire, even enjoy, in Men of a Certain Age, I just wish the show was somehow less relentless

by Ken

I need to hear from people who've been watching TNT's Men of a Certain Age, with Ray Romano, Andre Braugher, and Scott Bakula as high school buddies in their late 40s treading uneasily toward the 50 mark. For the record, it isn't absolutely clear to all of them just how late in their 40s they are. Joe (Ray R), the owner of a party store, newly separated with two children, insists he's just turned 47 and has to be corrected -- he's actually 48.

I've watched all three episodes now, and it wasn't without some difficulty -- not because it's badly done. In fact, the problem stems in good part from the fact that it's quite well done. Ray, who's a creator, producer, and writer of the show, is clearly serious about his character, who seems to me totally believable and far from unsympathetic.

There's something deeply unsettling about the combination of his obsessiveness to detail over which he really has very little control and which rarely matters much and his obliviousness to so much that really does matter, over which he has quite a lot of control, not least the gambling addiction that seems to have played a major role in ruining his marriage. Of course, people who have such addictions really do feel powerless to overcome them, and Joe's seemingly senseless inability to just stop it is one of the most persuasive portrayals I've seen of what it feels (and looks) like to be powerless against such a compulsion. If you look at it rationally, it seems preposterous; there's no earthly reason for Joe to keep getting sucked in. But of course his powerlessness against it has nothing to do with rationality, and I'm finding it almost unbearably painful to watch. If it weren't so unbelievable, it wouldn't be anywhere near so hard to watch.

Terry (Scott B) is the least unhappy of the trio in his slide toward obscurity, with his much superior abiltiy to take life as it comes, especially since he, unlike the others, has no responsibilities to anyone but himself. His acting career may be in decline (he can't seem to get a decent audition, let alone an acting job), but he manages to make ends meet somehow without much stress, and perhaps more important to his friends is never at a loss for a sex partner. And yet, as little as Terry is given to introspection as Terry is, he clearly has moments -- of seemingly increasing frequency and severity -- in which his life seems intolerable. There's a horribly painful plot line in which he successfully tracks down the driver who ran a stop sign and by sheer luck only brushed his car. He tracks him down, rings his doorbell, and has no idea what to do from there, no idea what will make it right, or better. It's as if there is this growing itch, or ache, inside him, that is intruding more and more on his reality, and about which he has no idea what to do.

At least Owen (Andre B, coming off his riveting performance as House's psychiatrist) has a relatively happy home life -- if he ever gets his home back in order from the renovations he and his wife (the excellent LisaGay Hamilton, who was Rebecca on The Practice) are doing. He's stuck, as he approaches that sensitive age, seriously out of shape, in a job he hates, working in the fiercely competitive environment of his dictatorial father's Chevy dealership. The word "trapped" springs to mind for all of these people.

I notice that in the show's promotional material there's a lot of talk about humor, and I guess it's there, just as it is in real life. But at least for me, it doesn't seem to lighten the load. I'm wondering how other viewers are coping. I don't want the show to be unfaithful to the premises it has set up, suddenly turning all happy. Still, I think of a show like Six Feet Under, which managed to be not a whole lot cheerier while still making the journey somehow less exhausting. Meanwhile, there's so much I like about the show, I guess I'll just have to tough it out.

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