Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: What are your thoughts on the awareness of people in the TV industry regarding the perception that it's always the non-white characters that are killed off shows? It seems impossible to me that those in charge don't see this phenomenon as a problem, and yet, consistently, that seems to be what happens. That reality is so pervasive for me that when I watched the pilot for Sleepy Hollow, my thought as what looked to be the two main characters — a well-known white, male actor (Clancy Brown) and a young, unknown-to-me African-American actress (Nicole Beharie) — approached the spooky, abandoned farm house was, "Seriously, Show? Already you're going to kill off the black actor?" read more
Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: I think the last time I wrote to you was trying to decide whether to watch Lone Star or The Event in a time-slot match-up. You rightly pointed me in the direction of Lone Star in terms of quality, with clearly a star in the making in James Wolk, but sadly, it was a victim of the wrong network (Fox) for a show that probably was meant for cable, so it died an early death. Not that it matters in the long run, considering The Event also wilted. Now we have another Monday night time-slot match-up...read more
Yeah, but whose turn is it to take out the garbage? The kicky new Disney XD toon series Marvel's Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. (premiering Sunday, Aug. 11 at 11am/10c) is a mix of high-octane action and screwball comedy that finds the incredible Hulk — voiced by Marvel vet Fred Tatasciore — fighting the usual assortment of intergalactic baddies while also living with four other gamma-radiated Hulks under the same roof.
The roomies include She-Hulk (Eliza Dushku), A-Bomb (Seth Green), Skaar (Ben Diskin) and Red Hulk (Clancy Brown), plus their T-Rex pet, Devil Dinosaur.
"They're trying to prove to the world that they're heroes, not destructive monsters," says Tatasciore. "But it doesn't always go so well. To help the PR campaign along, Hulk reluctantly lets A-Bomb film their family life for a reality web series." Which means the big green grunter has to work on his charm. Cracks Tatasciore: "He will actually speak in complete sentences!"
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