American Idol
It had been a pretty even-keel season of the reborn American Idol — perhaps too much so — until the Pia bubble burst Thursday night. Maybe a shocking elimination like Pia Toscano's way-too-early ouster is just the sort of wake-up call Idol needs to shock some showmanship into the part of the show that needs it the most: the judging. I've enjoyed the raucous goofiness of Steven Tyler and the glowy glamorous warmth that is Jennifer Lopez, but cheerleading has its limits, and when the closest thing to actual criticism from the panel is Randy (of all people) damning with faint praise by merely saying "Good job," it's clear the judges aren't doing a good job. Or much of a job at all.
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I'm not sure we need a clone of Simon Cowell, whose blunt and condescending cruelty in recent seasons teetered on boredom with the process...
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Lights Out
Lights Out just wasn't able to get up off the canvas: FX announced Thursday that it was counting out the boxing drama.
The show debuted in January to a modest 1.5 million viewers and quickly fell below 1 million. Although the numbers eventually improved, its season average was 863,000 total viewers per episode, numbers akin to those of FX's recently canceled private detective drama, Terriers.
Will Lights Out be another Terriers for FX?
At the time of Lights Out's weak premiere, FX President John Landgraf noted the disconnect between critical acclaim and commercial appeal...
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David Morse
Cheers to Lights Out for putting David Morse back into the spotlight.
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The 57-year-old actor is no stranger to quality TV drama, from his 1982-88 stint as...
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Holt McCallany
"V" is for "vamping" — that's been the case for most of the life of ABC's re-imagined, if hardly re-energized, version of V. You know, the show where alien ships hover over Earth week after week, with nothing much happening as Evil Queen Anna coldly plots the destruction of humanity with all those pesky emotional souls while ...
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Pablo Schreiber
On Lights Out, Pablo Schreiber plays Johnny, a once promising boxer who now (mis)manages the career of his brother, former heavyweight champ "Lights" Leary (Holt McCallany). In real life, he can relate to living in the shadow of a more celebrated sibling as the half-brother of movie star Liev Schreiber (Salt). "I've always...
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Laurence Fishburne, Bill Irwin
Cheers to CSI and Lights Out for putting Bill Irwin in touch with his dark side.
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A graduate of Barnum & Bailey's Clown College, Irwin was best known for...
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Holt McCallany
Lights Out star Holt McCallany takes playing a former heavyweight boxing champion seriously.
"I've been around the sport a lot and I've been around those guys, and it's a lot of responsibility to play the heavyweight champion of the world," McCallany tells TVGuide.com. "You have to walk out in front of the cameras, in front of basically millions of people, and they have to believe you."
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Lights Out
Cheers to Lights Out for hooking up with a pair of veterans from The Wire.
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FX's hard-hitting boxing drama costars Pablo Schreiber — best known as disaffected dock worker Nick Sobotka from Season 2 of HBO's inner-city masterpiece — as Johnny Leary, the ethically shady manager of Holt McCallany's "Lights" Leary....
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Stacy Keach
Cheers to Lights Out for putting Stacy Keach back into the ring.
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The veteran character actor has been knocked down a few times — most notably, he was incarcerated for cocaine possession in the mid-'80s, interrupting his run as hard-nosed PI Mike Hammer, and suffered a mild stroke in 2009. But he's returned to ...
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Holt McCallany and Catherine McCormack
Why are we so thankful for FX's new boxing drama Lights Out — a rock 'em, sock 'em respite from the midwinter doldrums? Let us count the ways.
1. Everybody loves a comeback.
We meet 40-year-old Patrick "Lights" Leary (Holt McCallany) five years after a catastrophic title bout. The consequences of that event have left him financially, physically and existentially at sea. And while a return to the ring could mean disaster on every front, McCallany notes ...
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