The ratings are so low that some comparison may be needed. Repeats of Judge Judy just beat out Oprah (and everything else on daytime). But Judy also beat out Kings, three times over. In fact, it's difficult to find a show on daytime TV (on networks or in syndication) that doesn't beat out Kings' ratings each Saturday night.
It can be argued that the networks have abandoned Saturdays for so long now that people aren't even aware that Kings is airing new episodes on that night (or that Eli Stone airs new episodes currently on ABC). But Kings was never a hit.
What is the show about? We should probably make an effort to define that since most people never watched it and never will. It's set in a modern day kingdom. During a war. Are you yawning yet?
The king, no looker -- think Ron Silver with a British accent, is named Silas. Not exactly making the hearts beat faster, is it? His kingdom may go to his son, Prince Jack, or to Jack's best friend David. Jack's friend David and also Jack wishes his bed mate.
Jack's gay. And not since Braveheart has a gay character been written so insultingly.
So it's about who will rule? Yes, kiddies, it is another who will rule Ewing Oil, who will steer Denver Carrington?
It strives towards soap but it's merely non-episodic drama.
There's not a Joan Collins, Donna Mills or Ana-Alicia in the mix but there is, however, a villain.
The Water Cooler Set. Not attractive enough to be onscreen, they do their cunning off camera. They praised Kings like there was no tomorrow.
Even Alessandra Stanley (New York Times) who doesn't generally run with the pack had to act impressed and blown away that the show 'borrowed' the Biblical plot of David. She's ga-ga, wow-wow and it takes dedicated readers until paragraph nine, PARAGRAPH NINE, to learn that she finds the show "plodding." When a show's plodding -- and Kings' pace is plodding, that's the sort of detail that should be in the first paragraph. Not buried in the ninth. But that's what happens when you mistake a conceit or convention for actual drama. The Water Cooler Set largely avoided calling it out and, the few who did, like Alessandra, buried the most important details deep in their reviews.
Tom Shales (Washington Post) buried that the show was slow-moving and spent multiple early paragraphs on David Lynch and assorted other non-Kings details. He did find the time to offer this:
One aspect of "Kings" seems a fait accompli: Young Chris Egan, who plays handsome war hero David Shepherd, appears certain to become a star -- not an overnight sensation, since he's been a fixture in such past productions as "Everwood" and "Vanished" but bound to make a big fat splash.
Poor Tom Shales, never had an eye for talent, never will. Let's help poor Tommy out. Reality has of course demonstrated that Shales was wrong. But any man coming from the WB who didn't become a 'star' via the WB isn't going to. And any critic who waits until a double-digit paragraph of a review to share that a show sucks isn't much of a critic.
But the conceit of being a King David re-telling was catnip not to just the uneducated suits staffing NBC but also to the Water Cooler Set and, in fact, the suits were able to -- are still able to -- justify their bad decision by pointing to the (initial) critical reception.
That's what the Water Cooler Set does today: Exists to provide cover for teams of people to stupid to plan an even adequate weekly prime time schedule.
A number of e-mails have been coming in on one topic: CBS.
Fall 2009 should be CBS biggest year. It's got more goodwill than any network right now.
"I Gotta Feeling," their summer promo, works not just because it's using a marvelous song by the Black Eyed Peas, it works because it's tightly edited and it reminds viewers why they watch and why they will watch. The promo features The New Adventures of Old Christine, Gary Unmarried, The Ghost Whisperer, The Mentalist, Two and A Half Men, Medium and what the networks hopes will be some new favorites. And mingling in clips of new shows from the likes of Julianna Margulies and Jenna Elfman has peaked real interest in those shows.
"It makes it seem like the whole line up is going to be amazing," e-mailed reader Sonia. Forty-two other e-mails echo that sentiment and . . . . Oh, Medium.
Yeah, NBC canceled it and CBS picked it up.
Medium's a strong drama, one that gets stronger each season and, in fact, it was the only program on NBC Monday nights that the network could point to as a hit. It's ratings were higher than Chuck's and higher than Heroes. For bringing in the viewers, it was cancelled. And the idiots at NBC tried to blame the decision on viewers saying there was no write-in campaign to save the show before their announcement. Why would there be? When the show is a ratings winner, who expects it to be canceled?
Medium was never in any trouble because CBS was always prepared to pick it up (and will now team it with The Ghost Whisperer on Fridays this fall). Putting it in the promo was smart. Even smarter would be an individual promo noting that Medium moves from NBC to CBS.
How come?
Of the forty-three e-mails that have come in over the last two weeks about the CBS promo, twenty-nine of them note Medium. Some are people who liked the show. Some are people who, if they liked the show, don't mention that in their e-mails. But they do note that CBS picked it up and use that as their launching pad into an attack on NBC for canceling another show, such as Life (noted by thirteen e-mails).
NBC this fall will attempt to interest viewers in five nights of Jay Leno in prime time. Basically, you'll have The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in prime time, then your local news, then The Tonight Show with Conan followed by Latenight with Jimmy Fallon. Does America need that much celebrity exposure? Truth be told, no one's clamored for The Tonight Show to return to a 90-minute format so the idea that Jay's needed for five additional hours seems dubious. Even more so when those five hours take up prime time.
To put Jay on the air, five hour long shows had to be canceled. That's a lot of people already ticked off before Leno does his first prime time monologue.
NBC claims they've got a winner even if ratings are low because the show will be so cheap to produce (setting aside Jay's salary). That's not really true and we were surprised when talking to an NBC suit with a detached brain last week because he was shocked by a point we were making. "We haven't even thought of that."
The point was that, good or bad, the show could drain up enthusiasm for staying with NBC after the local news and watching The Tonight Show. Many of Jay's older fans have already switched over to David Letterman. Can NBC afford a further exodus?
And if it gets low ratings, that means an even lower lead in for both the local news and The Tonight Show.
"We haven't even thought of that."
Well they should have. Before turning over five hours of prime time to one show each week, you should be running through every possible scenario.
Which includes that Life fans, My Names Is Earl fans, Lipstick Jungle, Knight Rider, etc. may scapegoat Jay Leno, may blame him for hogging so much network time that their own favorites got the axe.
When NBC suits talk to us about Jay's new show, they tend to get defensive and will, at one point or another, cite Ed Sullivan. They will insist that they are striving towards that. But they also insist that it's going to be cheap to make. Ed Sullivan, each Sunday night, promised "a really big show" and it wasn't cheap to produce. By contrast, late night talk shows have always existed because of how cheap they were to make.
One exec insisted, "Look, we know what we're doing." To which we responded, almost five years ago, we were taking NBC to task for damaging and destroying the Thursday night franchise with the hideous Joey but as awful as that show was, worse was to come: My Name Is Earl.
The Water Cooler Set praised this non-funny, sexist and frequently racist show. It was supposed to be a sitcom but try to find the laughs. (Jamie Presley provided the only life in the show whose chief mood appeared to be lethargy.) It was 'new,' insisted the Water Cooler Set, and 'whimsical' and since when has whimsy driven a show to a ratings high?
It was a piece of crap week after week which seemed to exist solely to document how quickly Jason Lee's looks could fade. And, in the process, it destroyed NBC's Thursday night run. It also destroyed sitcoms.
ABC cancelled Samantha Who? We liked Christina Applegate's performance but not much else so we avoided reviewing the show. Reader Amanda wants to know why the show was cancelled?
Blame My Name Is Earl.
Samantha Who? was too expensive. ABC asked for a budget trim, specifically, they wanted it to shift to multi-cam which would save a ton of money. But the show runner insisted that would destroy the series' "integrity." Integrity?
We'll let that slide and focus on the camera. Desi Arnaz came up with the multi-camera process and it turned I Love Lucy into a comedy dynasty which still reigns in syndication. By shooting with three cameras, you're covering everything and can tape in front of the live audience. By contrast, My Name Is Earl was a single camera show and really kicked off the craze for that. (Scrubs predates it and used the single camera set-up but Scrubs never had enough life in it to kick off a bbq, let alone a national craze.)
The Water Cooler Set loves the single camera 'sitcoms.' They praise them for being 'realistic' when they're not at all realistic and, most importantly, they're not funny.
When you watch a sitcom, you'll see various camera angles, regardless of whether the show is multi-cam or single cam. We doubt we've lost anyone on that point, but in case we have: if you see Jennifer Aniston standing next to someone and walking alternating with a close up of Aniston and then one of the other performer, those are different shots. In a multi-camera show, they can be filmed all at once. In a single-camera show, you've got to film those in multiple takes. The pace is slower.
The fact that the pace is slower, pay attention, means that the comedy loses some of its rhythm. Yes, movies use a single camera and Jim Carey and Sandra Bullock and Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton and Eddie Murphy and assorted others have demonstrated an ability to be funny onscreen repeatedly. However, they have more time to shoot those scenes and are not working week after week, year after year, on the same character.
Desi didn't just invent the multi-cam set up because he thought it would save money or just because he thought it would allow them to be home sooner, he also did it because he knew the importance of the studio audience. As a club performer and an actor in films, he knew that an audience gave an extra edge, gave a boost of energy.
The single-cam 'sitcoms' this decade have been awful. The pace has been slow and off and you've had no Ross & Rachel, or Jerry, Elaine and Kramer, or Sam and Diane, or . . . Despite efforts by the Water Cooler Set to turn these nitcoms into hits, they haven't been hits. The Office only saw an uptake in ratings when critical faves were forced to share the time with audience faves John and Pam.
Kath & Kim is the best argument for ending the single-cam so-called sitcom. That show was unwatchable. It was unbearable. And who would have ever thought the usually delightful Molly Shannon could be so awful?
A studio audience, right away, would have forced the show runner to do something about Shannon's look on the show because it wasn't funny. She looked washed out, not overdone. Selma Blair was delivering her lines to her own navel and a studio audience would have forced her to at least play to the audience if not to her co-stars.
Plodding, Alessandra's term for Kings, describes the single-camera sitcoms of this decade. And what's really amazing -- and unremarked upon by the Water Cooler Set -- is how they are everything that Friends' Chandler Bing ever mocked.
Does no one notice that?
Does no one notice that they all offer these little 'life lessons'? Chandler Bing would be laughing his ass off at the 'wisdoms' imparted by My Name Is Earl or The Office. These insufferable shows all play like "a very special episode of Blossom."
We were being asked about our call on Parks & Recreation because apparently, since our review ran, the hot thing among critics is to point out how the tone shifted by the final episode aired this spring. We noticed it because we watched several episodes and read scripts. The problem is that the show's being taken away from Amy Poehler and that happens with each episode. We were interested in knowing who was making that critique? It apparently was the popular critique at the end of May. (We're not implying anyone ripped us off. They had just seen all the episodes by that point.) Regional newspaper critics were picking up on that and we think that's due to the fact that they're not members of the Water Cooler Set. They're expected to inform readers whether a show is worth watching or not -- as opposed to filing an esoteric discussion alluding to the larger themes of Charles Dickens and the minor ones of Jean Rhys.
That doesn't do a lot to inform viewers of whether or not they should watch a show nor does it do much to champion shows that really need championing. It doesn't even allow for noting the little 'morals' embedded in these alleged sitcoms. It certainly doesn't allow for the critics to watch dog the entertainment industry and, these days, that's really necessary. If you doubt it, grasp that cheapness means NBC is importing a late night talk show into prime time this fall.