Ryan Shea and Donna Martin, Cheerleader Nation
Can Ayrica juggle practice and tending to her baby sister? Will Ryan choose her boyfriend's basketball game over a team formal? Does a bad grade mean the boot for Amanda? It's Bring It On meets Dawson's Creek when Lifetime premieres Cheerleader Nation (Sunday at 10 pm/ET), an eight-episode series chronicling the Dunbar High School (of Lexington, Ky.) cheerleading squad's pursuit of a third straight national championship. Perhaps no one on the team has it as rough as sophomore Ryan Shea Martin, whose mom, Donna, is the varsity coach! TVGuide.com talked to the duo about bringing their real mother-daughter issues to reality TV.
TVGuide.com: When you signed on for this, were y
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Bonds on Bonds, a reality show chronicling Giants slugger Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron's career home-run record, will debut April 4 on ESPN2.... The N will begin airing Summerland repeats on May 1 and start unspooling the entire Dawson's Creek library sometime this fall.... TiVo is considering handing out free DVRs in exchange for a slightly higher monthly fee, reports Jack Myers' MediaVillage.com.... The 43rd-annual publicists' awards handed out top kudos to the flacks for Walk the Line and TV's Lost in a Wednesday ceremony. (Ironically, I received no press release about this.)
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In other pilot-casting news, MIA Dawson's Creek alum James Van Der Beek has resurfaced in CBS' Sex, Power, Love & Politics.... Desperate Housewives' Steven Culp has joined ABC's Traveler.... Sex and the City's Ron Livingston has grabbed one of the two leads in Fox's Primary.... Threshold's Peter Dinklage will play the Scientist in CBS' superhero drama Ultra.... 24's Jonah Lotan (aka Spenser) has been cast on Fox's Beyond, while former cast mate John Allen Nelson (née Walt) has joined Fox's Vanished.... and CBS has picked up Waterfront, a drama from ER vet Jack Orman and starring The Sopranos' Joe Pantoliano as an ethically challenged Providence, R.I., mayor.
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Question: I was wondering what's happening to the family dramas. I used to watch all of them when they were on, but with 7th Heaven going off the air, The Book of Daniel being canceled, Once and Again long gone and American Dreams ending last year, there just aren't family dramas anymore. I miss them. Do you think it's because of the NCIS, CSI, Law & Order shows or because of reality TV? I just want good family dramas back!
Answer: I hear you, and I'm especially worried that with WB and UPN collapsing into CW, Everwood (my personal current fave in the family-drama category) will disappear, making the genre even more of an endangered species than it already is. It's not just that crime dramas and reality shows have taken over the network slots, which is true, but that the TV audience itself has fragmented over the years, with families watching less TV together as a unit; this may have dampened the ratings for some of these "family" shows. These dramas also tend to be harder to
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Dawson's Creek alum Joshua Jackson is returning to series television, having landed a lead role in CSI exec producer Carol Mendelsohn's CBS pilot about brilliant legal associates at a powerful D.C. law firm. For those keeping score at home: Pacey, TV lawyer; Jen, Oscar nominee; Joey, in gestation with the Scientology messiah; Dawson himself, conspicuously MIA.
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Jensen Ackles, Supernatural
When last we tuned in to WB's freshman frightfest, Supernatural, bogeyman-busting brothers Dean and Sam Winchester had fended off the insanity of an old, shuttered asylum only to come home to a phone call from their perpetually MIA father. The action picks up right from that instant with this week's new episode (airing tonight at 9 pm/ET). Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean, shared with TVGuide.com a preview.
TVGuide.com: Were you happy when Supernatural got picked up for a full season so early on?
Jensen Ackles: Yeah, it's always a crapshoot with the whole television thing in general, so the fact that we had a nice little buzz and had the powers-that-be pushing for us gave us the confidence we needed to move ahead
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Question: My friends and I recently had an argument over which Daniel twin was on That '80s Show. I think it was Cynthia, but my buddy thinks it was Brittany, whom he saw in Joe Dirt. Who is correct? Also, was one of them in that commercial where the guy drives through the car wash with all the shaving stuff inside?Answer: Score one for your bud. That's Sweet Valley High, Swan's Crossing and Dawson's Creek alum Brittany Daniel, who was one of the stars of the Fox series, from
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Question: Something strikes me when I watch shows laden with high-schoolers and other underagers: that the writers forget the ages of their characters and the messages that they are sending. I'm not against depictions of teen substance (ab)use or sexual explorations — nature of the beast, and all that. I'm more concerned with images such as Rory Gilmore being able to drink like a fish in public establishments before she's 21 (the same can be said of the Buffy crew in the past). Most recently, there's the compelling and enjoyable relationship between Bright and Hannah on Everwood. Given the former mayor-ness of his mother and the legendary uptightness of his father, it's surprising that neither parent is at all concerned that their twentysomething son is dating a high-school girl. Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoy the shows I've mentioned, but sometimes the messages about our society, age and the law seem to be forgotten. It's not so much that I want the characters to be paragons of ...
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Stephanie March, who left NBC's Law & Order: SVU in October 2003, when ADA Alexandra Cabot was sent into the Witness Protection Program with a new identity, has joined L&O creator Dick Wolf's latest legal drama, Conviction. Meanwhile, Dawson's Creek alum Kerr Smith has been bumped up to series-regular status on NBC's E-Ring, where he has been guesting as Special Ops team member Bobby Wilkerson.
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Question: After seeing the first two episodes of the season, I just love Everwood more and more! The end of the second episode left me in tears. This show has the unique ability to be touching and real at the same time. What do you think of this season so far? How do you think it will fare against CSI? Do you think there is a possibility of it returning to Monday, when it clearly has a better chance of survival?
Answer: Everwood became a personal favorite show of mine last season — I wrote a column declaring it to be TV's best tearjerker — and it's just as strong and moving this year. It is hands-down the best "family" show on TV, with a broad range of sympathetic characters, and the writing and acting continue to improve and shine. I hate that WB moved the show to the overstuffed Thursday night, where it's in danger of getting lost and buried. But it's doing better than anything WB ever put there before, so it's far from a disaster for the network (which is merely looking to generate
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