It's November 1, and Twenty Good Years is still on the air! Frankly, every week now I'm wondering if this is the last time I'll see the show. I know one of these times, that will come true. But for now, the more viewers it loses, the funnier it gets. This was the most consistently funny episode of the series so far. It's funny how it worked for me; there wasn't much that was really memorable, but I was smiling throughout. It's nice to see Judith Light in something other than a Lifetime movie right now. She plays the stuck-up character quite well, in everything she does. The scene at the bed-and-breakfast where she comes to get Jeffrey was scary — Halloween-night scary! "John, you son of a bitch... I will wash this car with your blood," was a high point of the entire series so far. Good for Jeffrey, to actually grow some marbles. The lady almost took him to the dark side, but John taught us all a lesson: Patience sucks, and attack relentlessly until your subject obeys. A true vi...
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This was the second of the three episodes to start off with some slight show of athleticism. The pilot had the guys playing racquetball and in this one basketball. For the amount of sports they seem to play, you'd think Jeffrey would be a little better skilled or maybe a little less injury-prone. What was he doing when he busted up his elbow? Simply holding his arms in the air? I hope old age isn't quite as sad sack as Jeffrey makes it out to be. I guess I also hope that I don't think I'm cool when I'm really just stuck up like John. Of course, combine those and that's my life now, so maybe I can at least hope for a sitcom down the road. Hey, speaking of sitcoms, this one was quite funny, yet again. OK, so it's predictable and lame in some parts and has virtually no chance of making it (I guess if Fox was able to air multiple episodes of War at Home while the World Series was in a rain delay, then any show has a shot), but there's still enough laughs to keep me interested. In this e...
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So, I have to admit right off the bat that I'm not sure why I chose to write about Twenty Good Years. I'm really not familiar with Jeffrey Tambor's work and I never really liked John Lithgow. However, Golden Girls was a really funny show. So I like old people in sitcoms. Maybe I'm just hoping for a male version of Bea Arthur. Whatever the reason, I've been looking forward to this premiere for quite a while. Now that it's happened, I will reserve judgment until the second episode. You have to hope that a show comes out firing right out of the box, which isn't always that easy to do when you need the entire show to set up the premise for the rest of the series. The Class did it well and so did Studio 60 this year — aw heck — I think I've just disproved my own theory. But what I'm trying to say is that this didn't come out guns-a-blazin'. The debut seemed to be almost straight setup with hopes that mayhem will ensue down the road. Either way, the show is about two retirement-...
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Question: I'm curious about your thoughts on Twenty Good Years. Both John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor are downright funny, and the commercials look good from what I've seen, but it seems to have been relegated to the back burner when it comes to critics. Is the show not as funny as it looks? Or is it just not going to need as much of a push as other comedies?
Answer: This is not a show that's likely to depend on critical support to survive. It's very broad and very conventional in its look and tone (laugh track included), but NBC feels that it might be populist enough to draw in a mainstream audience that could potentially stay tuned for 30 Rock (which, like many single-camera comedies, may grow slowly). NBC may be onto something: Put popular stars into a silly nothing of a show and you might attract a bigger crowd to stay tuned for the more offbeat, snob-appeal comedy that follows. Personally, I think it's just weird to pair Twenty Good Years and 30 Rock, going from the ridiculously
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Question: Everyone keeps saying Scrubs is a mistreated show. Doesn't NBC deserve a little credit for keeping it on the air for a sixth year? Scrubs couldn't hold much of the audience when it got a shot after Friends, but NBC has stuck with it anyway and has given the writers a good amount of freedom. I love the show and am thrilled to see it live on, but I'm a little sick of TV critics saying how mistreated it is when it's gotten well over 100 episodes, and when other networks would have given up on it by now. Poor little Scrubs. If that is being mistreated, what do you call the treatment given to shows canceled after one season, or worse, a handful of episodes? How about giving some credit where it is due?
Answer: All valid points, but still, for NBC to bench Scrubs for half a season two years in a row seems like killing it with kindness. Especially at a time when the show has finally crossed the Emmy threshold with nominations for best comedy series, and this fall it would pair up so
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Brad Garrett, 'Til Death
After attending the networks' upfront presentations all week, the Biz has this analysis of the coming season. (Click here for next fall's grid and new-show descriptions.)
CWYou've got to wonder what went wrong in CW's new-series development process if the network had to bring back 7th Heaven — even though the show lost a reported $16 million for WB this past season.
But the decision to have CW's inaugural schedule made up of established shows from WB and UPN may end up being a blessing. Many of the shows have small but rabid followings, and promoting new shows on a new network will be tough. The fans of shows like One Tree Hill and Veronica Mars will track them down on their own. Viewers in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic that CW targets don't watch networks, they watch shows. (According to recent survey, only one in four 1
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Tina Fey
It's crunch time in the network scheduling rooms, as many questions are being asked about next season. Will Grey's Anatomy go to Monday nights? Will Lost start in November, to cut down on repeats during the season? Is Wayne Brady getting another show? The answers will come next week. We hear there wasn't a lot of laughing during the executive screenings of most of the season's comedy pilots, but here's what industry insiders say are the hottest of that tepid lot. (Click here to read about the drama-pilot buzz.)
NBC: The Peacock network is only expected to add two sitcoms. One is the still-untitled show from Saturday Night Live head writer Tina Fey — a workplace comedy set behind the scenes of a
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John Krasinski, The Office
What do Steve Carell, Jenna Fischer, Rainn Wilson and B.J. Novak all have in common, besides being primary players on NBC's The Office (Thursdays at 9:30 pm/ET)? Each of them has either been Q&A'd by or penned blogs for TVGuide.com during this, the series' second season. Who is conspicuously MIA from that list? That's right — on the occasion of the season finale, we finally got on the phone with...
TVGuide.com: ... the elusive John Krasinski.John Krasinski: Hello! How are you doing?
TVGuide.com: I'm good! I've had Jenna and B.J. talking about you ad nauseam in their TVGuide.com blogs, but I have yet to actually talk to you.Krasinski: Oh, man. Well, I'm very excited to talk to you then!
TVGuide.com: You should know that Jenna's been talking all kinds of smack about how Brian [Baumgartner, Kevin] has been beating up
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Even though Arrested Development is still not officially, totally, completely dead in the water, its pulse continues to weaken. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Bluth-family patriarch Jeffrey Tambor has been cast opposite John Lithgow in NBC's Twenty Good Years pilot, about two fiftysomethings who decide to live it up while they still can. Is it too much to hope for at least a cameo by Jessica Walter? God help me, I miss her already.
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Even though Arrested Development is still not officially, totally, completely dead in the water, its pulse continues to weaken. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Bluth-family patriarch Jeffrey Tambor has been cast opposite John Lithgow in NBC's Twenty Good Years pilot, about two fiftysomethings who decide to live it up while they still can. Is it too much to hope for at least a cameo by Jessica Walter? God help me, I miss her already.
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