The Yoda Chorincles
The Force will be strong in Times Square this week. To celebrate the premiere of the new Cartoon Network special LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles, LEGO and Lucasfilm have teamed up to bring a massive recreation of a X-wing Starfighter to New York City.
Made of 5,335,200 LEGO bricks, the model — based on the iconic ship Luke Skywalker & Co. fly in the Star Wars movies — was transported to the United States from the LEGO Model Shop in Kladno, Czech Republic, where it was constructed by a team of 32 builders. It is an exact replica — at 42 times the size — of the LEGO Star Wars set No. 9493. It will be parked in Times Square Thursday through Saturday, May 23-25.
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Anne Heche
It's going to be a long off-season, especially where network TV is concerned, if the offerings don't soon improve from the dregs on display on this inauspicious opening night. Think of it as an excuse to catch up on repeats — or to dive into your DVR and/or On Demand archive to see what's new to you.
The only advice I have after enduring the pilot episode of NBC's woeful comedy Save Me is: Save yourself. This shrill parable of redemption, being burned off in back-to-back episodes (Thursday, 8/7c), is like a spiritual Enlightened for the tone deaf. Anne Heche, at her most manic (and that's saying something), stars as Beth Harper, a heroine possessed with an unbearable lightness of being — or you could just stop at unbearable — when she is suddenly transformed from an "angry drunken bitch" (her words) into a cockeyed optimist seemingly filled with a holy spirit after nearly choking to death on a sandwich.
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Does Someone Have to Go
Have you ever wanted to take control of your office and expose fellow coworkers that may be too lazy, too overpaid or just plain annoying? Fox is granting that power to three companies in the new reality series Does Someone Have To Go? (premiering Thursday at 9/8c)
"It's basically Survivor meets The Office," says Fox president of alternative entertainment Mike Darnell. "There's always someone in a company who the employees feel should be gone and they feel the boss is too stupid to see it. If the employees decided somebody's fired, then they're gone, but they take it really seriously and there's a lot of emotion."
In the show's first episode, bosses from the Illinois-based company Velocity Merchant Services (VMS) put their employees to task by having them survey a number of factors — including gross productivity and yearly salary — to decide who should be demoted, have their income slashed, or fired on the spot. In the end, the employees nominate three colleagues to face the chopping block, all in the name of company improvement.
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Charlie McDermott, Patricia Heaton
On this final night of the official broadcast season, let's focus on the good times, shall we? Two of TV's finest comedies, ABC's underappreciated The Middle and the much-honored Modern Family, go out with a flourish, and perhaps a sniffle or two, as the Heck and Dunphy/Pritchett clans experience life-changing and/or affirming ceremonies likely to strike home for many viewers.
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So You Think You Can Dance
In what may be a first, a freestyle routine on Monday's final performance round of ABC's Dancing With the Stars — the passionate, intimate contemporary routine performed by Kellie Pickler and Derek Hough — was so terrific it would fit right in on TV's best dancing showcase, Fox's So You Think You Can Dance. As Stars ends its run, with a two-hour finale (Tuesday, 9/8c) welcoming back the season's entire cast — including Wynonna Judd, who'll perform "I Want to Know What Love Is" — the mirrorball ceremony overlaps with a two-hour audition episode of So You Think You Can Dance (8/7c), which is what you should watch if you want to know what dance is in all of its variety.
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Vanessa Lengies
Fox's Glee will be a little less sweet next season now that Vanessa Lengies, who plays Sugar, has landed a regular role on the midseason ABC sitcom Mixology. "Getting to play Sugar Motta was one of the biggest opportunities of my life, and I met some of the most fantastic people, but I was being hired per episode," Lengies says about why she made the switch. "I loved getting to be there and dancing around, but I didn't really have much of an opportunity to act."
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Star Wars
Just months after Lucasfilm announced the end of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Disney has put the new animated series Star Wars Rebels into production. The new franchise will premiere with a one-hour Disney Channel special in fall 2014, followed by a series on Disney XD.
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