Posted Nov 23rd 2009 10:27AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Podcasts, TCA Press Tour, Chuck, Reality-Free, TV Squad Podcast
On Tuesday, we're going to be recording our weekly podcast. In honor of the return of NBC's
Chuck on January 10, we're going to have Vik Sahay, who plays Buy More cog Lester Patel, on board to talk about the show's return and what fans can expect.
Last season ended with a bang, as most fans already know. Not to spoil anything, but the finale ended with Chuck saying the famous line from
The Matrix, "I know kung fu." And, boy, does he ever. Sahay will be able to give us some insight into what's in store for the Buy More crew now that Chuck is going in a new and even more adventurous direction.
Have questions about for Vik about
Chuck or anything else? Leave them in the comments and we'll relay them to Sahay during the podcast. We'll even give you credit for any question we use. So, ask away below. Any question we get in before we record the podcast tomorrow (time TBD right now) will be eligible.
Posted Nov 4th 2009 11:02AM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, News, Obituaries, Children, TCA Press Tour
When watching any nature special from PBS or the BBC featuring dangerous wild animals photographed at reasonably close range, how often do you stop and consider the very real danger men and women are in while getting that footage?
That danger proved deadly this past weekend when a rampaging
African elephant trampled and killed a British tour guide (Anton Turner, 38) who was trying to protect a group of children visiting Tanzania.
The kids were in Africa serving as TV hosts for the CBBC (BBC's children's channel) show,
Serious Explorers. Seven children were planning to follow the steps of Victorian explorer Dr. David Livingston.
Reports say, when the elephant charged a group of the CBBC kids, Turner challenged the elephant and attempted to shoot his rifle at the animal. But, he was unable to open fire in time and was trampled. Turner leaves behind a pregnant wife.
Continue reading Heroic Brit dies protecting CBBC kids from elephant
Posted Oct 23rd 2009 3:02AM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: TCA Press Tour, Episode Reviews, Parks and Recreation
(S02E06) No more pit! I figured that the giant hole would eventually be filled in, but I had a feeling that it would take much longer than this. But after only 12 episodes of the entire series, Ann now sees a dirt lot when she looks out of the window of her home. Oh, progress.
Speaking of progress, I haven't been the biggest fan of Andy, but I enjoyed him in this episode. Before, when he turned up, it was mostly just to show how pathetic he is, but this week, in addition to that, he actually helped move the plot along in a big way. He gave up $100,000 for Ann, which honestly, seems like a terrible idea to me. I understand that he's in love with her and all, but there's no guarantee that she's going to get back with him, and a hundred grand is a hundred grand, you know?
Continue reading Review: Parks and Recreation - Kaboom
Posted Oct 8th 2009 1:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Top Chef
Given the
popularity of the second-season opener of The Next Iron Chef, I figured it was a good time to pull out this interview I did with the show's host,
Alton Brown, at the network's TCA party in July. It was definitely the tastiest party of the tour, as each
Iron Chef contestant plied the critics with delectable morsels of their creativity at various stations.
In a bit of a surprise, one of the contestants,
Amanda Freitag, was being assisted by her friend
Ariane Duarte, one of the more popular contestants from rival program
Top Chef's New York season (I was so flabbergasted by the turn of events,
I snapped a pic of the two with my cell phone). When I pointed this tidbit out to Brown, his response was very interesting...
Continue reading Alton Brown calls Top Chef a "sous chef kind of show"... then takes it back
Posted Sep 24th 2009 2:09PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Daytime, Interviews, Game Show, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free
When I came upon Drew Carey at CBS's TCA party over the summer, he was tapping away on his iPhone. He was sending a tweet to one of the responders on one of his
two Twitter feeds, and was generally having a ball. So I figured he was in a good mood to talk about the show he's most known for these days,
The Price Is Right.
It was a season of change for Drew and the show; the prizes got more creative,
Drew changed his look, and the show in general did a lot to break out of the mold of the Bob Barker years.
Of course, those changes didn't go unnoticed, as some of the show's more "devoted" fans took to sites like
Golden-Road.net to
disparage Drew and say the show was going downhill. There was even a minor controversy this past season, as a contestant made a
suspiciously on-the-mark Showcase bid, and Drew's reaction to it was less than enthusiastic (for good reason, as he mentions in the interview).
Continue reading Perfect Showcase bid was a "dark day" on The Price is Right, says Drew Carey
Posted Sep 24th 2009 11:27AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Interviews, Celebrities, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free, Community
On tonight's hilarious second episode of
Community, we see the first appearance of Ken Jeong, who's joining the cast as Spanish professor Señor Chang. Chang has a bit of a chip on his shoulder because he always has to fight against Asian stereotypes.
He's a welcome addition to the cast, and he's been having a hell of a summer. Besides his memorable turn in the massive summer hit
The Hangover, he was also in
All About Steve and
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. To promote the latter movie, Jeong and co-star Jeremy Piven bounced around the ring on
WWE Raw in August. Imagine a tiny guy like the 40-year-old Jeong trading blows with huge wrestlers and you can see the comic potential.
When I talked to Jeong at NBC's party at the TCA press tour, we were interrupted by WWE's The Miz, and the exchange between them was just too funny for me to keep on my hard drive. Audio is after the jump.
Continue reading Ken Jeong relives his WWE stint with The Miz
Posted Sep 23rd 2009 11:04AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, Scrubs, Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
Here's the full transcript from the phone interview I did with Bill Lawrence a couple of weeks ago... minus the part where we talked about
Scrubs. That's an interesting bit in and of itself, and I'll publish that in full sometime during the early part of October.
This goes on for about 5700 words, but if you hang in there, you'll find a lot of good conversation about
Cougar Town, the state of the sitcom, why Bill thinks NBC is shortsighted in its dependence on Jay Leno, and why Courteney Cox let him talk our ears off at the
Cougar Town TCA session.
You can either leave comments here or at the bottom of
the edited version.
Continue reading Bill Lawrence talks Cougar Town (full transcript)
Posted Sep 23rd 2009 11:04AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
A couple of weeks after I got
some Scrubs scoop from Bill Lawrence in Pasadena, I asked if we could talk by phone about his new show,
Cougar Town. The Courteney Cox-led show, which follows the travails of a forty-something Florida real estate agent and single mom as she tries to re-enter the dating world, starts tonight at 9 PM ET on ABC.
We talked a little more about
Scrubs (I'll print that in a few weeks), then about
Cougar Town. I opened with the fact that at the session he had for the show at the TCA press tour, he seemed to spend a lot of time defending the "noisy title" of the show.
The conversation ranged far and wide from that point, from what he thinks about the future of the multi-camera sitcom, why NBC's dependence on Jay Leno is shortsighted, why he's so outgoing to us press types, and why Courteney Cox let him talk everyone's ears off during the press tour session. You can read
the long but interesting full transcript if you're eager to find that stuff out. An edited version of the interview is after the jump.
Continue reading Bill Lawrence talks Cougar Town
Posted Sep 17th 2009 2:04PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free, Community
At the same NBC TCA party where
I spoke to Joel McHale, I also ran into
Community creator Dan Harmon. Suffice to say, he's a chatty fellow. I started off by asking him how a first-time show runner like him prepares to be in front of a ballroom full of reporters, as he had been earlier in the day. His answer was pretty interesting: they get briefed and told we're a bitter lot.
Harmon's claim to fame before
Community was that he helped create
The Sarah Silverman Program for Comedy Central, and he was one of the few people who thinks that the network creative process has been as smooth, if not smoother, than the process for basic cable.
He also got extremely effusive about having Chevy Chase on his show; I was going to edit his epic response to my question about Chevy, but it's so loopy that I figured I'd just let it stand as is. Interview after the jump.
Continue reading Community's Dan Harmon was told by NBC that critics are "bitter"
Posted Sep 17th 2009 11:03AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Interviews, Celebrities, TCA Press Tour, Community
With the much-anticipated premiere of
Community finally bowing tonight, I figured it was a good time to pull out the interview I did with Joel McHale when I encountered him at the NBC party during the TCA press tour. I didn't talk to McHale about his current NBC show, however; I talked to him about his
previous NBC show.
Fans of the British sitcom
The IT Crowd may remember that an American pilot was shot and the show was announced for NBC's midseason schedule a couple of years back, with McHale playing Roy and Richard Ayoade bringing his breakout role of Moss over from the original. Only, the pilot never saw the light of day, and a series was never picked up.
I asked McHale about what caused the show to be dropped and if he has any regrets over the show's flame-out. Then, as a person standing in front of the host of
The Soup would tend to do, I asked him about what in the reality TV landscape gets him charged up. Interview is after the jump.
Continue reading Joel McHale talks about The IT Crowd and the reality TV fat trend
Posted Sep 11th 2009 11:03AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Interviews, Celebrities, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free, Jay Leno
With
The Jay Leno Show starting on Monday, I figured this would be as good a time as any to print my brief chat with Leno at the party NBC held at the TCA press tour. He had just shown up, and he was surprisingly not yet surrounded by reporters; I figured it would be a good time to throw him a couple of questions I was curious about. Little did I know that I'd be doing it while he was eating one of the short ribs they were serving at the party .
No matter; you get the hot star of the moment in front of you, you throw him questions even while he's chewing. Jay being Jay, he handled it like the pro he is. Nothing really that newsworthy came out of this little chat, which is why I've held on to it until now, but I figured it would be a fun thing to read on a Friday.
Oh, one fun note: he claims that when he started
The Tonight Show, someone said "I hope Jay dies of AIDS in one of his cars." Wow. Wonder how easy that article would be to find on the Web?
Continue reading Someone wanted Leno to die of AIDS, according to Leno
Posted Sep 10th 2009 3:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: TV Royalty, The Apprentice, Interviews, Celebrities, TCA Press Tour
Joan Rivers was in Pasadena in July to promote her show on TV Land,
How'd You Get So Rich?, but when I spoke to her after her presentation, I was more interested in a couple of issues. First, her longevity in a business that takes even older comedians and tosses them to the side (Cosby, for instance, is more community activist than comedian these days). Second, I wanted to ask her about her experience on
The Apprentice, which included her
feuds with wedding planners, Clint Black, and Annie Duke.
But, Joan being Joan, she also randomly let loose on Brooke Shields, Sarah Palin, and whoever else was in her mind during the ten minutes we spoke.
We start off by talking about longevity. She feels one of the reasons she stays relevant is that she doesn't live in the past. "I don't give a shit about Johnny Carson," she said.
Continue reading Joan Rivers on longevity, Brooke Shields, and not caring about Johnny Carson
Posted Sep 10th 2009 9:11AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: The Apprentice, Interviews, Celebrities, TCA Press Tour
I'm starting to slog through my backlog of TCA-related material, and I wanted to make sure this got out there before it gets lost. When I interviewed Joan Rivers while I was in Pasadena, I asked her about
the incident on The Celebrity Apprentice finale where David Tutera, whose firm was helping to plan both teams' parties, pulled out of the show completely after Joan requested changes to his plans.
After Tutera presented a panel introducing the second season of his WE show
My Fair Wedding, I caught up with him outside the ballroom to get his response to Joan. He knew the questions were coming, because I had mentioned them to his publicist, but I wanted to ease into things by asking him about the show and its upcoming season. Oh, and I asked him for suggestions on how to throw a relatively inexpensive wedding in New Jersey, but that was just for personal reasons.
But Tutera seemed ready. He answered Joan's charges calmly and without the same rancor she used.
Continue reading David Tutera gave up on The Apprentice, not just Joan Rivers
Posted Aug 20th 2009 11:18AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, Scrubs, Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free
On the last day of the TCA press tour, as the stars of ABC were yukking it up at a crowded party at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Bill Lawrence and I were out in the courtyard talking about what the new season of
Scrubs -- or as I'm calling it,
Scrubs 2.0 -- is going to look like.
Essentially, it's going to be like a medical version of
The Paper Chase, with Turk and Cox being the professors. We'll be following the lives of young medical students who will shuttle back and forth between classes and their rotations at the "new" Sacred Heart, which is being rebuilt on the med school's campus. While in the hospital, they'll run into a lot of the characters from
Scrubs 1.0, including J.D., as Zach Braff is scheduled to be in the first six episodes.
It all sounds a bit confusing, so I'll let Bill lay it out for you folks. An edited transcript is after the jump.
The full transcript can be found here. And I'll be getting on the phone with Bill to talk
Cougar Town sometime next week, so stay tuned. Oh, and at the end of the interview, we talk about the role Bill's wife, Christa Miller, had on
Scrubs that didn't involve any acting.
Continue reading Bill Lawrence: The TV Squad Interview (Scrubs 2.0 edition)
Posted Aug 20th 2009 11:18AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Scrubs, Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free
Here's the full transcript of the interview I did with Bill Lawrence on the last day of the TCAs. It's goes into some of the financial nitty-gritty of the
Scrubs deal and drops a few other details. I also asked him to repeat what was going to go on in the new
Scrubs a few times, just so I could understand completely what was going on. Enjoy!
The main post, where you can leave your comments, is here.
Well let's start with the obvious. You've been thinking about doing another season of Scrubs for like a year now.(laughing)
Because you told me...when'd you talk to me about that? About a year ago?We're the only people who shot the shit about it. I thought there was a chance it would happene. I just saw the landscape, you know.
Continue reading Bill Lawrence: The TV Squad Interview (Scrubs 2.0 edition) - full transcript
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Andy Richter: The TV Squad Interview
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Mike Henry and Daryl Hall on a Cleveland Show Thanksgiving
