An ad for Grease, the Broadway revival that was cast via an NBC reality competition, has created discord among media outlets seemingly quoted as endorsing the poorly reviewed musical. "The One That I Want!" the ad says over and over, attributing the sentiment to a variety of publications — many of which gave the show a thumbs down. A Grease rep tells the New York Daily News they extract quotes "from both features and reviews," an explanation that isn't pacifying the cited outlets. The AP, for one, asked for its name to be removed — as all eventually were when the fast-talking ad was dropped from circulation.
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Question: What's your take on why NBC renewed The Apprentice? Do they really have nothing better waiting in the wings? If The Apprentice was renewed just to fill a spot in its lineup, maybe the network needs to start improving its talent-development program. The Apprentice is so past its prime it could guest-star on CSI as the dead body on the autopsy table. I can't imagine that the show can be of any benefit to NBC either in terms of ratings or creating buzz. Maybe The Donald has given the head honchos at NBC the penthouse suite at his Atlantic Casino in exchange for the renewal? If they have to have a reality show (and honestly, do they really need one?), then I'd rather have something along the lines of Who Wants to Be a Superhero or even Grease: You’re the One That I Want. (PS: If it has to return, they should at least ditch all of the "improvements" of the last season, bring back Caroline, make the challenges more about business and less about sex, and maybe capture some of the ...
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Laura Osnes and Max Crumm, Grease: You're the One That I Want
Although we're still nine finalists away from picking the next American Idol, this past Sunday viewers chose the winners of the Broadway reality competition Grease: You're the One That I Want. When the multimillion-dollar revival of Grease opens on the Great White Way this summer, its leading lovebirds Sandy and Danny will be played by two Broadway newbies: 20-year-old Minnesotan Laura Osnes and 21-year-old Arizonan Max Crumm. Both Osnes and Crumm started out as underdogs. Osnes, who was starring as Sandy in a local dinner-theater production of Grease when she made it onto the NBC series, was initially dismissed as too innocent. In fact, judge/theatrical producer
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A few ratings shout-outs from Friday and Sunday:• It is with a heavy heart that I report that the Friday return of ABC's Six Degrees was met by a fifth-place-worthy audience of just 4.6 million total viewers. That's compared to the 7.6 mil Degrees drew with its last fresh outing (on Thursday, Nov. 2) and the 5.63 mil a Wife Swap repeat reaped the previous Friday at 9 pm/ET.• Despite all the Tara Conner hooplah, Friday's Miss USA Pageant (7.37 million) was down a quarter mil from last year's telecast. That said, nice gown, Miss Tennessee.• On Sunday, Extreme Makever (12.04 million) topped the 8 o'clock hour, but CBS dominated the rest of the evening opposite Housewives/B&S repeats and despite being delayed by basketball. • NBC's Grease finale said "Ooh, ooh, ooh" to 6.78 mil, a bump of 190K week-to-week, while a romantic-angst-filled episode of The Apprentice (6.75 mil) was down 480 thou.
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So are we supposed to think Bob Dylan is the final Cylon? Wouldn’t surprise me a bit after Sunday’s mind-blowing season finale of Battlestar Galactica. I watched a rough cut of this episode several weeks ago, in order to be able to include it in a mid-season roundup, but it feels like a year has passed, I’ve been so anxious for it to get out there so more dedicated and obssessed fans than I could ever claim to be can start weighing in. I rarely have the luxury to watch anything twice, but I decided to watch Sunday’s episode in more or less real time, so I could savor it again in a more polished version and see if it would have the same impact the second time around.Did it ever. As they say, holy frak, right?Battlestar earns an A-plus with its jam-packed finale, the last we’ll get of the show until the next calendar year. (That’s the bad news. The good: There will be at least 22 more hours of Battlestar to kick around come 2008.) Not only was Baltar’...
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• In Justice's Jason O'Mara is in final talks to play Philip Marlowe in ABC's drama pilot.• Something About Amelia reunion alert! Ted Danson has been cast as a corporate titan facing off against Glenn Close's litigator in FX's get-a-title-already legal thriller pilot, says the Hollywood Reporter.• Oscar nominee Alan Arkin will play a prison pal of Damian Lewis' wrongfully imprisoned cop-back-on-the-force in the NBC pilot Life.• Legendary composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is a guest judge on NBC's Grease: You're the One that I Want on Feb. 11.• Lucy Liu and Jerry O'Connell appear on the Feb. 15 episode of Ugly Betty, playing a once-frumpy college classmate of Daniel's and a man Alexis meets in a bar, respectively.• Lisa Donovan (aka YouTube's "Lisa Nova") joins the cast of Mad TV on Feb. 17.• Desperate Housewives' Mark Moses guests on Without a Trace on Feb. 25.
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Grease: You're the One That I Want has demonstrated that Grease is the hot ticket that you want. In its first two days of advance sales, the Broadway revival, whose leads are being cast by the aformentioned NBC reality series, sold $1.3 million worth of seats — not bad at all for a production with no "names" and not even a theater to call home yet. Kathleen Marshall, the director of Grease and a judge on the NBC show, tells the New York Daily News, "It is unbelievable, just crazy." Meaning, a blast, boss, Fat City, radioactive and unreal!
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This Sunday's ratings highlights:— The premiere of NBC's Grease: You're the One That I Want averaged 11.59 million total viewers — not enough to beat The Simpsons' football-goosed numbers (13.88 mil) in its first half hour, but good for a third-place finish from 8:30 to 9:30. UPDATE: Per NBC, "In total viewers, this is NBC's top non-sports result in the time period with series programming since February 8, 2004."— Desperate Housewives (18.52 million) clobbered Cold Case (14.1 mil).— At 10, Without a Trace (14.23 million) bested Brothers & Sisters (12.06 mil). — Averaging an audience of 9.1 million over its own hour-and-a-half run, the debut of The Apprentice: Los Angeles fell 660,000 heads shy of the series' previous season opener, though viewership did swell each half hour (reaching a 10:30 pm tally of 9.45 mil).UPDATE: Speaking of The Apprentice, USA Network's Monday Night Raw wrestling will pit Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell against each other (or a...
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Grease: You're the One That I Want
If you think Broadway and reality TV go together like "rama-lama-lama, ke-ding-a-de-ding-a-dong," NBC's Grease: You're the One That I Want, which debuts Sunday, Jan. 7, at 8 pm/ET, will have you singing and dancing in the bleachers. Produced by the folks behind Dancing with the Stars, the series stages an intense search for two unknowns to front an in-the-works Broadway production of Grease, playing bad boy Danny Zuko and virginal Sandy Dumbrowski (played in the film by Olivia Newton-John, who will be a guest on the first two episodes). A trio of judges — theater producer David Ian, Grease coauthor Jim Jacobs and two-time Tony winner Kathleen M
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