Reader Ellen noted that in an e-mail Ty slid over. She was hoping we'd do a score card of some sort on the season which went along with reader Mark's hopes that we'd rate our "predictions." We don't make a lot of predictions. Deadline, middle of last week, predicted Whitney would be cancelled (and lied about the viewer numbers). Maybe that's what Mark's thinking of?
But in light of this week being when new fall schedules are announced, we're willing to look back at the big four. We'll start with NBC because it's announced its new schedule. Smash is gone until 2013. In this community, Elaine covers Smash each week. We weighed in on the show back in February. Things have changed since then. Elaine's rightly called out many problems including the fact that every episode doesn't need to end with a big number. She's been very kind and avoided calling out Megan Hilty, just referring to the character she plays, Ivy. We won't be so nice. She's just not sexy. In an episode, Derek (Jack Davenport) even pointed out that Ivy wasn't sexy. He was correct. She has no sex appeal. If you're casting Marilyn, that's the most important detail. You don't have to be a look alike, you do have to be sexy, able to project that, or no one's going to buy you as Marilyn. Hilty is among the reasons the show is in trouble. Had Karen (Katharine McPhee) quickly been put into the lead of the Broadway musical being staged and Ivy tossed back into the chorus, that might have made for an interesting show; however, that's not what happened. You don't believe it, that McPhee can't immediately convince everyone that she's a more bankable Marilyn than Hilty.
Hilty's so bad that it's easy to ignore that Christian Borle is not just a drip but a drain. A smart show runner would have had Ellis dropping some scenery or overhead lights on Tom's head long, long ago. Will & Grace was an advance for the portrayal of gay men but Tom is several steps backwards. He's a dumbed-down stereotypical bitchy queen and, sadly, not even capable of a good one liner. It's the sad sack, the forgotten member of Boys in the Band. Then there's the eternal bags under his eyes and that cod liver oil face -- how did he ever get cast? As annoying as he is to look at it, it's when he opens his mouth to launch into yet another eternal whimpering and belly aching that make you just want to scream. The show is called "Smash," not "Whine."
Smash was supposed to delight. The first episodes did. And then we got more Hilty and more Borle and the audience dropped significantly.
Score card: In terms of the series itself, we were wrong. Give us an F on that.
Among other shows, NBC cancelled Free Agents, The Playboy Club, Prime Suspect, and The Firm and Awake. We stand by our comments on all of them. We'll note that if episode 7 have been the pilot of The Firm, it might have kept viewers. No show improved more as it went along. It's actually a shame that NBC didn't keep the show for a second season. Of Awake, we'll note that someone needs to ask the creator what it is about his own life that's so awful and limiting that makes him forever need to create a male character with a double life?
Let's move over to Fox. New Girl was renewed for a second season. But Bill Carter (New York Times) was shocked earlier this month by the fact that the 'hit' show was getting lower and lower ratings. It follows Fox's biggest live action hit (Glee) and yet it's viewership has gone down and down and down. Carter was fretting that the show "plunged almost 20 percent from just a week ago, hitting what is by far the low point for the new series." Well, Bill, as far bask as November, the ratings drop was obvious. When we weighed in on New Girl (October 2nd), we actually did make a prediction: "The audience will catch on and the 'bright spot' for Fox (which they've already given a full season pick up) will droop a bit here, droop a bit there and, eventually, be so low rated that the Water Cooler Set which has been raving over it, will back away and pretend to have never watched." Bill Carter belongs to the Water Cooler Set. It's for that reason that he's surprised by the outcome we predicted back when only two episodes had aired.
Score card: A+. We were right. And the character of Jess became more and more problematic as the season wore on.
Among the shows Fox took the axe too were: Allen Gregory, Alcatraz, Breaking In (season one, season two) and I Hate My Teenage Daughter. Want a prediction? Allen Gregory will be a cult favorite. We loved the show and our review resulted in a huge ton of e-mails -- both when it was published and in all the times since. This show has an audience that will not go away. As for the rest, strong work was done on I Hate My Teenage Daughter. The title was glommed on by the Water Cooler Set to trash the show. Too bad because that show had strong writing and strong acting. Breaking In vastly improved in the second season and Alcatraz was an embarrassment from the first episode.
At CBS, they took the axe to Unforgettable -- easily the best new series they had. (In this community, Marcia blogged on the show.) NBC, Fox and ABC would kill for Unforgettable. We're not saying they'll pick it up (they won't). We're pointing out that the viewership of the show 'dropped off' to just over ten million an episode. At NBC where they renew shows that only three million people watch a week (30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, etc.), they'd kill for a show that pulled in ten million viewers. CBS has enough ratings hits that they can actually afford to take the axe to some. There's something else that really needs to be said (besides the fact that Poppy Montgomery and Jane Curtain did excellent work on the show) and that's how shameful it is that the Water Cooler Set has made it acceptable to discriminate. Ratings are ratings. The notion that you can't advertise to over 50 or over 60 is nonsense. Equally true, the notion that 18 to 49 is a demographic is ridiculous as well. That's not an audience, that's a series of generations. The Water Cooler Set shouldn't obsess over demographics. They shouldn't even be referring to them.
CBS also took the axe to Rob, NYC 22, A Gifted Man, How to Be A Gentleman and CSI Miami. Except for CSI Miami (which we reviewed in 2005), we hadn't weighed in on any of them. In fact, the only new show on CBS we bothered to weigh in on was 2 Broke Girls. CBS just didn't interest us. Not in terms of promising shows, not in terms of disasters. We knew the Patrick Wilson show was awful. We made it through 15 minutes of the first episode and thought, "What's the point?"
Score Card: F. Failure to cover the network, for whatever reason, was still failure.
ABC had much more high profile misfires. Most of which got the axe like Charlie's Angels. Scandal was renewed. A show we never weighed in on. As it gets closer to decision time, people ask us not to review their shows. An actor on another network -- was on, his show got axed, we've already noted it above -- is among the people who worked on a sitcom several years ago. All with that show except for one actress blame us for their show getting cut. While the network was considering what to renew, we weighed in with how awful the show was and how bad the lead was and . . . Now the show got lousy ratings but it was our fault that the show got the axe to hear the show runner, lead actor, etc. talk about it.
One new show we did weigh in on was Missing. ABC kicked it to the curb.
Score card: A+ because Missing is a great show and because it's part of the thread of the 2011-2012 season, in fact, it is the story of that season.
Missing starred Ashley Judd and was symbolic of the entire season. Patrick Wilson's awful TV show was beyond smarmy, it was maudlin and treacly. Wilson was haunted by his ex-wife. His dead ex-wife. But the show had a big name: Jonathan Demme. So the critics went out of their way to fawn. Reality: narrative isn't a stront point in the work of Jonathan Demme. Reality: Narrative is all TV is. There's no poetic, there's no reflection, there is only narrative. But no critic wanted to point out that Demme has repeatedly lost the point of the film. With a strong script (Ted Tally's Silence of the Lambs), his diversions don't harm the film. With a mediocre script (Ron Nyswaner's Philadelphia), Demme wanders (which is why Philadelphia doesn't make for repeat viewings). Critics could have addressed this, they could have addressed the studio's biggest beef with Demme (one that ended his big-budget film career the minute he flopped): They hired him for a Goldie Hawn film or a Michelle Pfieffer film or a -- you get the idea -- and he delivers something completely different because he's become fascinated with some supporting character. The studio that paid X millions to land the star isn't thrilled to find that the director has filmed something other than what they greenlighted.
The Water Cooler Set didn't touch on that, wasn't interested. What were they interested in? Ashley Judd's face. They wanted to write about it and rumors about it. They weren't really interested in the show. They just wanted to dissect Ashley Judd's looks in a way that could allow them to sound in-the-know but only came off bitchy.
Ashley Judd was and remains an attractive woman. She also starred in a popular series. And the Water Cooler Set wouldn't leave it alone, they picked at her week after week. That's what they do. They used to use that zeal to try to destroy film actresses. For example, the eighties found them condemning Goldie Hawn for "the Goldie syndrome" and Jane Fonda for "the Fonda syndrome." They were two of the most popular film actresses. That made them targets. We've written of Jane's films before in 2006 -- her comedies, so let's focus on Goldie for a moment. Private Benjamin and Protocol are not the same film. Nor is Wildcats like the two nor is Overboard or Best Friends or Seems Like Old Times. All were popular films in the eighties. Goldie played a variety of characters. Judy Benjamin was spoiled and entitled, Sunny Davis played cute and stupid because she thought it was what was expected, Molly McGrath was a shy and retiring person who stepped up when she saw one chance (the only chance) . . . We could go on and on. Jane's Dr. Martha Livingston was nothing like Judy Bernly or Viveca von Loren/Alex Sternbergen.
Now while those two actresses developed memorable and differing characters, Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood were giving the same damn performance over and over but Vanity Fair and assorted other magazines weren't interested in in talking about "the Burt syndrome" or "the Clint syndrome." Just as the late 90s saw a marked effort to trash Meg Ryan for the alleged sins of the romantic comedy genre. Having trashed her, they quickly moved on to others (Katherine Heigl being the most recent topic in their slam books). Where's the guy?
If the romantic comedy genre demands trashing, if it's not just about that genre being one of the few places actresses could hold their own, then where's the man? Matthew McConaughey wouldn't have a career in the last 12 years if it weren't for that genre. So where are the jokes about him? (Seth MacFarlane, an all purpose insulter, has regularly taken on McConaughey in the TV shows he's created. Seth isn't a member of the Water Cooler Set.)
With Goldie, they worked overtime to trash her, the same with Jane, the same with Meg, the same with Katherine. The point is to rip apart these women, serve them up for organized, mass ridicule and, in the process, ensure that they no longer breathe career wise.
That's what the Water Cooler Set did to Ashley Judd. They tried real hard to do it to Whitney Cummings. We addressed that in "TV: The perverts still drool over Shirley Temple." And because so many people called out the sexist attacks on the TV show, because a large group of people said "no," the Water Cooler Set had to back off. It still surfaces, the nonsense, the claims that the show was a flop.
The show was hilarious. The one problem, the thing that resulted in it getting off on the wrong foot was recasting the role of Whitney's mother with Jane Kaczmarek. Kaczmarek is a strong actress. She was very funny in Malcom In The Middle. She was completely wrong for the part as written. Beverly D'Angelo had played the part and done a fine job of it. The decision was made to recast and reshoot the scenes. D'Angelo's energy level is very different from Kaczmarek's and that part really needed lively.
The criticism of the show were harsh but, at their root, those criticisms apply to Kaczmarek's performance in the one scene. But they applied it to Whitney Cummings and they did something else, they trashed her like no stand up comic has ever been trashed for a TV pilot. No one expected Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr, Brett Butler, Ellen DeGeneres, etc to be Meryl Streep in their first TV lead. A completely different standard was used for Whitney.
She developed into a very solid actress -- one we think is deserving of an Emmy nomination -- and that was obvious by the third episode. And the show was laugh out loud funny. Not amusing. Not quirky. This wasn't someone speaking into their hand, this was an outright comedy.
Free Agents was the worst sitcom of the fall but it was allowed to die a quiet death. With Whitney, the Water Cooler Set -- alleged critics -- were out to kill the show. Instead of admitting that they were wrong, they now try to tell you that it's "shocking" that Whitney, with over four million viewers when it had to open NBC's Dead Wednesday (Whitney was the highest rated NBC show each Wednesday while it was airing), was renewed while treating it as 'non-shocking' that the three million viewer programs of 30 Rock, Community and Parks and Recreation were renewed.
But having realized that the continued attacks on Whitney and on Whitney Cummings were making their sexism and their hatred of women very obvious, the men and the Queen Bees found a new target: Ashely Judd. And they worked overtime to attack her and the show.
This time every year, many people are disappointed as their favorite shows get the axe. It's a damn shame that only death tends to thin out the Water Cooler Set because, if anything needs to get the axe, it's them.
