We really should've known better. We waited two weeks for Brothers & Sisters' "shocking death," when all along we should have realized that what the network had been teasing for weeks (months even, among insiders) in the end wasn't all that shocking — especially when it didn't even really happen.
Oh well, maybe we're all patsies. But to make ourselves feel better, after the jump are the TV deaths that actually delivered a gutshot and had us talking about a character's demise the next day — for all the right reasons.
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Advertisers do not like controversy. Advertisers have thin skin. Just a few of the valuable observations to be taken from Sunday’s rich episode of Mad Men, written by Matthew Weiner and Rick Cleveland, which provided a fascinating window into how the TV and ad business worked circa 1962 (and in some ways it hasn’t changed that much since then).One major subplot, with surprising personal and professional repercussions, hinged on a controversial episode of CBS’s groundbreaking legal drama The Defenders, with a shockingly blunt abortion storyline that was causing sponsors to flee. Schlubby Harry Crane, disgruntled after inadvertently learning how much less he was being paid than colleague Ken Cosgrove ($200 a week to Ken’s $300), brought the episode to his bosses’ attention at Sterling Cooper—prompting a screening for lipstick client Belle Jolie, the idea being that women would likely seek this episode out, despite the controversy. (Peggy was on hand to he...
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Question: I love Brothers & Sisters but cannot stand Holly. I mean, how realistic is it for Nora to invite her late husband's mistress to her daughter's engagement and birthday parties? What annoys me the most about her is that she has no remorse for her actions and basically demands that the Walkers be nice to her. Also, it feels like the writers are making Sarah look like the bad guy sometimes, to make Holly look more sympathetic. In my opinion, the show should write out Holly. What is her purpose, anyway? She has no real storyline.
Answer: She is the odd person out in this series, isn't she? And that's no fault of Patricia Wettig, a fave of mine since her triumph on thirtysomething. What the show needs to do is give Holly more of a purpose — a romantic interest outside the Walker family, maybe? — because the character isn't going anywhere (and not just because Wettig is married to Ken Olin, one of the executive producers). Consider the show's premise, which is all about the Walke ...
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Although the February sweeps officially have been over for several days, Sunday night sure felt like a sweeps extravaganza, with game-changing episodes of two major series. Both pivotal hours, of Sci Fi’s Battlestar Galactica and ABC’s Brothers & Sisters, dealt with the fate of daughters whose respective departure and arrival is setting off shock waves for their unconventional families (the Galactica crew and the Walker clan).The episode that undoubtedly will cause the largest stir in TV fandom was Galactica’s riveting and ultimately devastating journey into the metaphysical, as Starbuck (a brooding, tormented Katee Sackhoff) finally faced and embraced her destiny. Which meant, in a series of visions and hallucinations guided by the specter of the not-quite-Leobon as if he were the Ghost of Psychodramas Past, that Kara had to confront the soul-crushing memories of her abusive mother, who instilled in the self-destructive Starbuck a belief that suffering was good f...
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