Brooke Smith on Grey's Anatomy
With her role on Grey's Anatomy having come to an abrupt end, Brooke Smith can only wonder where her lesbian doctor ran off to after dressing down gal pal Callie in the hospital parking lot in the ABC series' Nov. 6 episode.
"I like to imagine that Dr. Hahn is ...
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Jill Scott by Paul Morigi/WireImage.com
HBO has greenlit a stack of new series, including several that center on women, as well as pilots for new series from David Milch and Darren Star.The roster of female-dominated shows starts with The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency, a Botswana-based story adapted from Alexander McCall Smith's book series. According to Variety, filmmakers Anthony Minghella and Richard Curtis are on for the project, which stars chanteuse/actress Jill Scott as Precious Ramostwe. Will & Grace alumna Jhoni Marchinko, meanwhile, heads up the net's new comedy, Driving Around with Joni, the Reporter says. The series follows a 40-year-old widow who drives around Los Angeles all day with her French bulldog, seeking meaning in the wake of her husband's death.Along with the dramedy duo, HBO's also greenlit a pilot order for Last of the Ninth, a "gritty cop drama" from David Milch. Fellow TV behemoth Darren Star is also prepping a new pilot. He and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas are developing Diary of a Manhattan Ca...
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David Milch by Mark Sullivan/WireImage.com
David Milch — he of Deadwood and John from Cincinnati fame/"fame" — has sold a third drama pilot to HBO. As previously reported here, Last of the Ninth (as the series is now christened) is a gritty drama set in 1972, in the New York city Police Department. "It's about an older detective's mentoring of a young detective returned from Vietnam," Milch tells the Reporter. Meanwhile, the NYPD is "fiscally crippled" and "under attack" by "allegations of systemic corruption."The Last of the Ninth pilot, written before the WGA strike, will be shot after the work stoppage stops.
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Question: You have dealt with the issue of swearing on cable rather extensively in the past several columns; it seems to be an issue that is touching a nerve. I wonder if it's possible to admit that, no matter how opposed to censorship one might be, there is something about certain words that causes a mental or physical reaction. The F-word in particular is hard to stomach for many otherwise liberal-minded people, even in small doses. It always angers me when I'm watching a perfectly acceptable PG-13 movie, and just because the filmmakers can insert one F-word into the mix, they do. It's understandable that many viewers in the post-Sopranos era would be disturbed by the trend. Even David Chase grossly overdid it at times. But it certainly is possible to write entertaining, realistic television without these words. Look at Arrested Development, where the "scripted" bleeps were among the funniest things on the show. I think it's a blessing that this lamented masterpiece did not go to HBO ...
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David Milch by Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com
• Sources tell Variety that for his next trick, David Milch (Deadwood, the deader wood John from Cincinnati) is working with former NYPD Blue exec producer Bill Clark to develop a drama about a Vietnam vet who joins the New York City police force circa 1970s. • Hot off the success of The Starter Wife, Lifetime is teaming with author Gigi Levangie Grazer on a four-hour miniseries adaptation of Maneater, Grazer's novel about a woman who bleeps her way to the top in Beverly Hills.• Fox has ordered seven episodes of Nothing But the Truth, a "game show" (my quotation marks) in which contestants are strapped to a lie detector in front of friends and family and asked 21 intensely personal questions. You may know the show as "Thanksgiving."
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Ausitn Nichols courtesy HBO
Made sense that in the last moments of HBO's misbegotten John from Cincinnati, Ed O’Neill was finally reunited with his AWOL avian friend Zippy. If ever there was a show that was for the birds, it was this birdbrained mishmash of half-baked, foulmouthed, anti-dramatic allegorical nonsense.Over the last week, I attempted to catch up with last month’s episodes, hoping against hope that I’d at last see what I was supposed to be seeing in this smugly opaque world of cryptic utterances from annoyingly mannered characters. (And I thought, maybe like other HBO series, in particular the superior Wire, this could be one of those shows that plays better if you watch several hours back-to-back.) The result: torture. I made it maybe halfway through each hour before zoning out in a state of utter boredom and contempt. Forget confusion — that part of the equation left the station long ago. I was merely hoping to be entertained a little. In vain, as it turned out.At least the ...
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OK, so Shaun, John and Zippy disappeared, although Shaun's doppelgänger still found time to scare the living hell out of Barry at the hotel bar. Are his visions of Shaun simply dreams, as he tells Dr. Smith later in the episode, or is that just wishful thinking on his part? Seems to me they could be more accurately categorized as "visions." Well, I'd actually be more likely to go with psychotic episodes brought on by trauma, but in this show, with this subject matter, I think "visions" works just fine.I liked the scene when Butchie and Kai shared their thoughts on John, who they both agreed is on some kind of autopilot and simply parrots what he hears from other people because he is programmed to mimic emotions. As they discussed, it would certainly explain why he repeats such idiotic phrasings as "A+ for fume control." What do they think, though, that the guy is some kind of robot? I guess that could be interesting. I certainly wouldn't have been expecting that.The stick figur...
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Question: I like to think I'm an educated TV viewer. I live for smart shows like The Wire, Lost, Battlestar Galactica and The Shield. Shows that don't spoon-feed you plot but rather force you to pay attention and think. But after the latest episode of John from Cincinnati, I am at a complete loss. This show is either an epic-level disaster or pure genius, and I have no idea which it is. For the first five episodes, I felt like one of the characters in the show — I was annoyed and unhappy, I had no idea what was going on and yet I inexplicably kept coming back week after week. Only a massive talent on the level of David Milch could make a show this incomprehensible, right? But I can't deny that I was hugely intrigued by Sunday's episode when, after five weeks of parrot dialogue and seemingly pointless meandering, John finally started to play his cards. First, his shocking confrontation with Cissy (revealing that she may have molested her son) started to make some sense of Rebecca ...
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Wow! I'm not exactly sure what to say. That was some weird television! So apparently John can be in more than one place at a time, and apparently he can orchestrate events so that others can travel with him (Bill and Vietnam Joe arriving at the hotel, despite being in the van). Oh, and he can also remove dead people from hotel rooms. The Shining would have played out totally differently had John been around! OK, consider my brain officially twisted. I know Milch is supposed to be going somewhere with all of this, but I would like for the road map to be a little clearer. Just a little bit. Is that too much to ask? It certainly seems like the religious angle is the one to focus on, though, what with John continuously mentioning his "father" towards the end of the episode, and his ability to heal/help those around him. I have to ask though, did Cissy really molest Butchie? That's certainly how it sounded to me! Man, these people are even more screwed up than I thought!I have to say, as...
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Ian McShane in Deadwood courtesy HBO
The outlook for that pair of Deadwood wrap-up TV-movies is looking as bleak as Deadwood itself, now that so much time has passed, cast members have moved on, and, perhaps most significantly, series creator David Milch is busy getting John from Cincinnati off the ground (so to speak). "It's certainly on our books as something we're still interested in," HBO president Michael Lombardo said at the TCA summer press tour. But with Milch "exhausted" by his new baby, the exec allowed, "It will be daunting" to get the pics — which were originally slated to start lensing this summer — put together as planned. Especially if John gets a second-season pickup (so to speak).Lombardo has yet to broach the topic with the otherwise-engaged Milch, but when he does, "if David's game for this, then we will figure it out."
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