Katharine McPhee
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Question: I watched the first episode of Smash this week and I enjoyed it. I like the cast, the music and the dancing, and the overall "Broadway" feel of the show. I just can't find myself going along with what is apparently the central idea of the show, which is that Katharine McPhee would make a better Marilyn than Megan Hilty. Really? Don't get me wrong, I love ...
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David Caruso
As mid-season shows debut over the next three months, it will be crunch time for a number of series that haven't been tearing up the Nielsen charts. Here's what network insiders say are the shows on the bubble as execs look to set their schedules in May.
ABC
A second-year ratings fade may mean it's time to pull a sheet over the Dana Delany-led Body of Proof. While the network ordered an extra episode of Pan Am in order to keep a hold on the cast until May, its chances of returning next fall are as likely as an airport going a full day without a flight delay. Comedy Happy Endings doesn't do a great job retaining the lead-in from the mighty Modern Family, but ABC parent Disney has an ownership stake in the show and it's a favorite within the network's entertainment division — so a pickup for another season is considered a lock. And fan fave Cougar Town will get a final shot for renewal if it performs well in its new Tuesday time period starting February 14.
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Martin Lawrence
CBS is developing a pair of sitcoms for comedian Martin Lawrence, with an eye toward shooting one of them as a pilot.
Bernie Mac creator and The Daily Show contributor Larry Wilmore is behind one of the shows, while the other is from Rules of Engagement creator Tom Hertz and Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company.
In the Wilmore script, Lawrence would play a...
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Patrick Warburton
It wouldn't be a Rules of Engagement season without more bumps in the road.
Just when things were looking up for the sitcom — moving to Thursdays after being scheduled on Saturdays — it was dealt a blow this week: CBS will pull it off the schedule at midseason to make way for Rob Schneider's new comedy and has cut its episode order down to 15.
CBS replaces Rules with ¡ROB!; sets return date for Undercover Boss
The news is just another chapter in the topsy-turvy life of the show, which has been shuffled around the schedule since its midseason premiere in 2007, and it comes as no surprise to star Patrick Warburton.
"If they're going to pull one show for midseason, they're ...
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Rob Schneider
The sitcom with nine lives — CBS' Rules of Engagement — will be moved off the schedule once again to make way for Saturday Night Live alum Rob Schneider's new series, ¡ROB!, CBS announced Monday.
¡ROB!, which follows...
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Sandra Oh
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Question: Why do successful shows tinker with what is already working? Rules of Engagement has become "The Timmy Show," and The Big Bang Theory has become a show about Penny, Bernadette and Amy. What gives? — Kelly
Matt Roush: The easiest way to answer this question is to state a pretty obvious fact of TV life: If you don't tinker, you risk growing stale. In this case, tinkering means ...
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Rules of Engagement
In TV, there are hits and misses — and then there's Rules of Engagement. The CBS comedy, which recently launched its sixth season, joins a long line of series (Becker, Just Shoot Me, According to Jim) that cheated death for years despite operating below ...
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David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel
The Season 7 premiere of Bones marked the show's highest opener in three years.
Up 22 percent from last season's premiere, Bones pulled in 10 million total viewers on Thursday, topping ABC's Grey's Anatomy, which garnered 9.3 million viewers. In the advertised-prized 18-49 demo, though, Grey's beat Bones, 3.5 to 3.3. Overall, CBS won the hour with Person of Interest (11.66 million and NBC's The Office (6.05 million) and Whitney (4.33 million/2.1) came in fourth. The CW's The Secret Circle nabbed 2.27 million viewers.
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Jim Caviezel
CBS' Person of Interest (9/8c) is one of the fall's few new dramas of interest, and it appears to be a keeper. Though not without some formula aspects — this is CBS, after all, so things tend to get wrapped up pretty neatly by the hour's end — the intriguing Interest sends its damaged heroes on their high-tech vigilante missions under a tantalizing cloak of paranoid secrecy. Each week, there's also the promise of heightened and stylized mayhem at the hands of the coolly lethal Reese (Jim Caviezel), who's so unflappably taciturn in his explosive takedowns of rooms full of bad guys he can make Jack Bauer look like a blabbermouth wimp.
Reese's partner in crime-stopping, Michael Emerson as the mousy ...
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David Spade, Wendi McLendon-Covey
Tom Hertz was waiting for the call, like he usually does.
After CBS pushed his Rules of Engagement's dreaded Saturday premiere one week to Oct. 15 (which was already punted from Sept. 24), he knew it would get called up to the plate for a prime weekday slot soon. How to Be a Gentleman had premiered in the coveted post-Big Bang Theory Thursday berth to weak numbers and didn't seem long for this world (measured against CBS' high standards). "They told us we would not be premiering on the 8th, but instead the 15th, and I figured that meant they were going to give How to Be a Gentleman one more shot airing to see if it went up, and if not, then we would jump in at some point," Hertz tells TVGuide.com. "But yeah, I didn't believe we would air on the 15th."
CBS moves How to Be a Gentleman to Saturdays; Rules takes Thursdays slot
The call came Friday, Oct. 7 after Gentleman posted an even worse ratings erosion. The shows will swap time slots, though CBS has since pulled Gentleman from Saturdays as well.
"For all the buzz about 'the first scripted show on Saturdays in 10 years' and 'could they take Saturday nights?' it just didn't happen. And it's better that ...
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