Finn Jones, Sophie Turner
Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: Looking at the Best Drama shortlist from last year as an example, do you think many of the usual suspects like Mad Men and Breaking Bad may have their best days behind them (maybe not so much objectively as much as in short-attentioned minds of many voters), along with Homeland seeming to have edged ever-so-slightly into ludicrousness (get pacemaker serial number and induce heart attack, all without Chloe opening a socket), Downton Abbey now having a "perennial obligatory nominee" vibe, and Boardwalk Empire maybe not even deserving to make the final cut anymore, could this be the year that Game of Thrones finally breaks out of the fantasy ghetto and gets enough votes to have its name called when the big envelope is opened?
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Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell
[Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Wednesday's season finale of The Americans. Read at your own risk!]
Wednesday's season finale of The Americans left viewers on the edge of their seat as Elizabeth (Keri Russell), not Phillip (Matthew Rhys), walked into a trap set up by the FBI that would've resulted in a striking blow to the KGB.
Believing the meeting with a possible intelligence asset is actually an FBI setup, Phillip...
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Keri Russell
It's May Day (as in: mayday!) for the Russian spies — and just about everyone else — in the taut first-season finale of FX's emotionally engrossing The Americans (Wednesday, 10/9c). Chivalry is not dead, even in the estranged not-quite-marriage of embedded KGB operatives Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell), as they prepare for a dangerous mission that could be a set-up, with lots of jockeying and posturing between husband (who wants to protect while serving) and wife (who's adamant about following orders to the letter) about who's going to risk everything, including their "normal" family life, to walk into what might be a trap.
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John Goodman
Imagine a world in which the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball all decided to move their seasons to the same time of year. It would be chaos, for fans and the professional sports business alike. And yet, in television, that's essentially what happens during pilot season.
The broadcast networks traditionally order pilots during the first few months of the year. From there, it's a race to find the best actors, hire a crew, build sets and produce a show before May, when the upcoming fall schedules are announced. The field has always been crowded, but this spring, several cable networks and online retailer-turned-programmer Amazon are also developing new shows that they hope will go to series (cable networks typically produce pilots throughout the year, usually avoiding the spring).
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Margo Martindale and Jake Johnson
What kind of family must it be where slacker bartender Nick Miller (Jake Johnson) is seen as the responsible one? That answer becomes clear in a sporadically amusing road-trip episode of Fox's New Girl (9/8c) that takes the roomies to Chicago to lay Nick's scoundrel of a dad (former guest star Dennis Farina) to rest. The formidable Margo Martindale (Justified, The Americans) presides over the ridiculous antics as Nick's gruff but needy mom, and cable clown Nick Kroll hams it up as his emotionally volatile brother. As usual, Schmidt (Max Greenberg) hijacks the proceedings with his death neuroses, and while he wonders "What's with this open casket thing?" it's his encounter with said coffin and its contents that provides the episode's biggest laughs.
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The Neighbors
ABC has been running a series of ads lately for The Neighbors quoting TV critics who trashed the show when it premiered in September but have since changed their mind or at least lightened up about this harmless time-waster. I was not among those quoted, for good reason. I'm hardly a fan, but even back in the fall, I knew there were far worse sitcoms to get riled up about — including elsewhere on Wednesday (NBC's DOA Animal Practice and the presumably soon-to-vanish mediocrity Guys With Kids) — and my main objection, then as now, is its occupation of prime real estate between two infinitely better comedies, The Middle and Modern Family.
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Zooey Deschanel
The King is alive... at least when a Miller family funeral is concerned.
At the Paley Festival panel for Fox's New Girl, moderated by TV Guide Magazine's Rob Moynihan on Monday, the cast and producers gave some scoop about the upcoming March 26 episode in which Nick (Jake Johnson) travels home to Chicago because of a death in the family. "Nick's father passes away," executive producer Brett Baer explained. "And then Elvis shows up?"
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Michael Cudlitz
Drama, comedy, reality: This is one of those nights where TV is firing on all cylinders.
Let's start with the heavy lifting. One of TV's most encouraging survival stories returns with the fifth-season premiere of TNT's uncommonly gritty police drama Southland (10/9c), a network reject (from NBC's darkest period) that thrives on cable, with a sharper focus and a determined avoidance of procedural cliché.
Each episode is like a graphic tour of duty on the streets of Los Angeles, and in the opener, it's not always immediately clear if the patrol cops and detectives in the line of fire are witnessing a real crime or make believe or some other sort of scam. (One vignette involving a brawl between naked men in a sauna looks like an outtake from Spartacus.) "Treat it like a circus," seasoned training office John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) advises his latest ride-along, an Afghan War vet with too much attitude. The media circus threatens to consume Cooper's former partner Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie), newly decorated and enjoying the attention a bit too much. Grounding these characters in the mundane distractions of unblemished real life, Detective Lydia Adams (Regina King) is adjusting to single motherhood with...
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Nick Kroll
Who's ready to meet Nick Miller's baby bro?!
Nick Kroll, who stars on FX's The League and Comedy Central's Kroll Show, has been cast on New Girl, Entertainment Weekly reports.
Kroll, 34, will play Nick's dim yet passionate younger brother, an...
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Kerry Washington
Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: [SPOILER ALERT for anyone who's fallen behind on Scandal] I'm a loyal reader of your column, and always enjoy hearing your well-thought-out and articulate opinions on TV's hottest topics. I'm writing to you for the first time now because I wanted to know your take on the latest installments of Scandal. I saw in your last column the tag line "Scandal is the new Revenge," and I agree Scandal has been far more gripping lately than Revenge.
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