Angie Harmon in Women's Murder Club by Danny Feld/ABC
My loyalties are so divided on Friday nights. I want ABC’s so-so new crime drama Women’s Murder Club to do well enough to bring some much-needed eyeballs to the charming romantic comedy Men in Trees, which finally returns from a cruel nearly eight-month hiatus. With James Patterson’s name as a selling point for Murder Club (though he’s not writing this series any more than he appears to be penning half of the books that go out with co-writers’ names on his ubiquitous book jackets), the show certainly has a shot at commercial success, even on a night that’s widely considered a graveyard. Remember: This same night, and this same time period (9 pm/ET), is where the original CSI launched to even less fanfare, and the rest is TV history.But I also don’t want anything to take audience away from Murder Club’s competition, most notably NBC’s ever-fragile Friday Night Lights, which offers another superb episode this week. Even if like many observe...
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The Taylors adjust to their new situation. Connie Britton, Aimee Teegarden, Kyle Chandler by Bill Records/NBC
Episode Recap: "Last Days of Summer""Welcome back to another glorious year of Panther football." I'm not ready to classify the football as glorious just yet, what with this new Coach McGregor (the anti-Eric Taylor) and all, but the show itself is certainly back and in sublime form.Let us first welcome into the world Miss Grace Taylor, second daughter of Eric and Tami, sister to suddenly moody teen, Julie. Now Eric has another daughter to defend against football players and Swedes; too bad he's a plane ride away in Austin. His new coaching job at TMU is having a deleterious effect on his family and (I'm not even being dramatic when I say this) the entire football-loving community in Dillon, but more about that in a bit. Julie won't talk to him because she considers him to have been an absentee father for the last 8 months, and Tami — Connie Britton, proving yet again how wrong the Emmy voters got it with her incredible performance tonight — is absolutely destroyed that he c...
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Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton in Friday Night Lights by Bill Records/NBC Photo
What more can its devoted critics say about NBC’s Friday Night Lights except to celebrate the fact that it’s back for a second season, which means it has already beaten the odds, at least for now. Not that the odds aren’t still incredibly steep for this eternal underdog in its new Friday time period: 9 pm/ET, when many of those who might savor this wonderful drama’s small-town football backdrop are out enjoying their own high school football matches this time of year. No matter how you watch it — in real time, in your own time via recording or online viewing — you really don’t want to miss it.Friday Night Lights is powerfully entertaining drama, and returning to Dillon, Texas, is like going home again. The characters are instantly familiar as they recapture your heart, especially the Taylors. That would be Coach Eric and wife Tami, unhappily maintaining a long-distance relationship as he adjusts to a new college job while Tami copes with a new baby...
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Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights
Question: (Spoiler alert) I just watched the season premiere of Friday Night Lights online and really liked it up until one point late in the episode. (I'm sure you know where I'm heading here!) I don't want to give anything away, but there's a storyline that's going to be really divisive to the show's fanbase. What was your reaction to the big "twist" near the end? I was watching it with three people and we all literally groaned. To me, it yanks a show that's built on a very effective, realistic feel into the realm of contrived, melodramatic plot devices. Why did they have to go there? There's so much to explore in the very real relationships of the two characters involved that mucking up the waters with this inescapably huge event feels not only unnecessary but actually disruptive. I really want Friday Night Lights to survive — I'm fine with the obvious attempts to "sex it up" (like starting us out with a swimsuit scene) — but I don't really want to watch these characters struggling ...
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Question: I'm probably one of many writing in about this, but you'll have to suffer through one more. I've seen only a few episodes of Boston Legal, enough to know that I didn't really enjoy the show but can see how people would like the characters. I even respect James Spader's work. He was excellent on The Practice way back when, and I'm assuming he's carried at least some of that over to the spin-off. But really, Emmy-worthy? This is even his second win, isn't it? I just don't understand it. Never mind the fantastic competition (Kyle Chandler and Matthew Fox off the top of my head) that weren't even nominated, but what could the voters have possibly seen to give him the award instead of their last chance to honor James Gandolfini for what will certainly go down as one of the more legendary roles in television history? Is it because the show is on HBO? Is it because it's a fundamentally flawed voting process and most of the voters never even watched Tony Soprano's work the final ...
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Steve Carell, Kyle Chandler, the cast of Entourage, Back to You's Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton, Katherine Heigl, Hayden Panettiere, Jimmy Smits (Cane), Jon Stewart, Kiefer Sutherland and Kate Walsh have been confirmed as presenters for the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards, airing Sept. 16 on Fox. Yes, Ryan Seacrest is still scheduled to host.
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Alec Baldwin courtesy NBC Photo
No awards system is perfect, and the TCA Awards is no exception. But arriving two days after the often-inexplicable results of the Emmy nominations, Saturday night's low-key, good-time TCA Awards ceremony at the Beverly Hilton was a welcome course correction to several especially egregious Emmy oversights. (And, lo and behold, nary a mention of Boston Legal anywhere.)First up: Michael C. Hall, ignored by the Emmys but cited by the TCA for “Individual Achievement in Drama,” for his mesmerizing performance in Showtime's Dexter as a serial killer targeting Miami's lowest forms of criminal life. (Other contenders in this category included Friday Night Lights' Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, also shamefully snubbed at the Emmys.)Friday Night Lights, a near shutout at the Emmys despite its status as a first-year critics’ darling (and recipient of Peabody and AFI awards), was later named Outstanding New Program. (The field also included 30 Rock, Dexter, Heroes and Ugly Bet...
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Kyle Chandler in Friday Night Lights by Van Redin/NBC Photo
Remember how Charlie Brown used to end up on his back every time he went to kick the football after Lucy pulled it away? Well, that was me, in the pre-dawn of Thursday morning at the TV Academy building in North Hollywood, as the first Emmy category (for best drama series) was read aloud. Amid a gaggle of impatient media crews and anxious publicists, I once again felt sucker-punched by the cluelessly inexplicable whims of the Emmy nomination process. (Go here for a list of nominees.)The football analogy applies because, once again, the Emmy system dropped the ball, failing to acknowledge NBC’s critically worshiped freshman underdog Friday Night Lights, instead finding room for ABC’s cartoonishly lurid freak show Boston Legal (on the basis, so I hear, of a rare detour into quality with a post-Katrina episode). A chagrined Academy source tells me that Friday Night Lights came close, but speculated that it may have flown too far under the radar in a way overcrowded field. Hea...
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Question: I hope you enjoyed your vacation. You probably accumulated a lot of questions about the Emmys since you've been gone. I read TV Guide's Dream Ballot as well as other critics' wish lists and keep seeing Friday Night Lights, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton. You've mentioned in an earlier column that it will show the Emmys getting it wrong once again if FNL doesn't get some major nominations this year, but I have to ask, do you seriously think that will happen? I like the show enough but hardly expect it to be nominated much at all. I won't be too upset, though. I fully expect FNL to join Buffy, Gilmore Girls, The Wire, Veronica Mars and Battlestar Galactica on the should-have-been-nominated list. However, I would be mad if a subpar 24, the uneven Heroes or the soft-porn-esque The Tudors got nominations over FNL. But why would this year's Emmys be any different from other past infractions against great but not greatly watched shows?
Answer: Friday Night Lights does have the
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Question: What Emmy nomination do you most hope to see this year?
Answer: Kyle Chandler for best actor. Next up is Connie Britton for best actress. Finishing a close third is Friday Night Lights for best drama. See a trend here?
OK, that's a wrap. No housekeeping notes this week; they're taking a much-deserved vacation. Happy Independence Day! See you back here next week. — Additional reporting by Megan Cherkezian
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