On Scandal, a presidential election has been rigged, a woman has gnawed a tracking device out of her arm, and the Republican president's gay chief of staff is engaged to a prostitute. All inherently more believable than the moppet hair glued onto Lena Dunham's scalp for her upcoming guest role.
HBO and Netflix have strong showings in this year's Emmy nominations, which offer largely predictable (though, predictable because many are very good!) options.
Happy to derive its laughs from aspiring actors devouring the genitalia of dead animals on Fear Factor and from hopeless nerds trying to lay third-place beauty pageant contestants on Average Joe, NBC's fall schedule will go light on the sitcoms. The only new comedies will be the animated, Siegfried and Roy-inspired (and, disappointingly, mauling-free) Father of the Pride, and Friends spinoff Joey. NBC head Jeff Zucker is banking on Joey to deliver big ratings numbers in the Friends timeslot; if it falters, expect Matt LeBlanc to ingest a yak labia just before each commercial break.
Yesterday, we reported on Drudge's report on Jimmy Kimmel's Wednesday on-air collapse. In the great spirit of reporting on reporting, today we update by linking to E!'s story about Kimmel's near-fatal, totally controversial overdose on...Advil? What the fuck? You take too many Advil and your head puffs up like an hydroencephalitic Charlie Brown? We've never really heeded those warnings on the label, especially the ones about not taking Advil after a bender. Wow. Our liver probably looks like the inside of Courtney Love's nose by now.
New Yorkish thinks that NBC's spinoff mania won't end with Friends spawn Joey. Looks like the highly derivative Fall schedule at the Peacock is going to be a little confusing. How are we supposed to remember which show is about the character so dumb that he eats his own feces and which one has the dog?
Fox recently issued a press release announcing it's new "wildly twisted" reality show, Seriously, Dude, I'm Gay (hosted by The Swan's Amanda Byram), in which two straight guys have to convince their friends they're finally coming out of the closet. Then, just hours later, Fox sent out another press release after gay activist group GLAAD protested some of the original's release's content. TV Barn has both the original release and the reissued one with an apology for their "failed," "ill-chosen" and "inappropriate" attempt at humor. The rereleased memo excised the phrase "It’s a heterosexual male’s worst nightmare: turning gay overnight" and a reference to a "jury of their queers."
Drudge reports that Jimmy Kimmel was rushed to the hospital after suffering an on-air allergic reaction in which his face swelled, his voice went raspy, and his eyes closed shut. Thankfully, the crew was there to provide some assistance; if he had to rely on his viewers to call 911, Kimmel could have expired while USC's Beta Theta Pi chapter finished its marathon waterfall chug.
Who are the latest victims of Hollywood's insensitivity? Rural Americans. First Fox exported our celebutante trash to defile a small Arkansas town (not to mention this summer's slut-a-riffic road trip sequel). Now CBS wants to inflict a real-life version of The Beverly Hillbillies on the world and UPN wants to document Amish teens going buck-wild in the big city.
The retirement community halls haven't seen this much electricity since Double Tapioca Night. The Op-Ed pages of Quietly Waiting to Die Daily are abuzz with anticipation. CBS airs The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited tonight, catering as usual to the entertainment-underserved Greatest Generation. The return of Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore should easily carry the coveted 59- to-ashes-in-an-urn demographic, crushing such token, counterprogrammed sops to the body-piercing set such as ABC's According to Jim and PBS' Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers. Thanks, CBS! Our grandparents will have an hour where they're not nattering on about World War II.
Downsized Apprentice contest/document reproduction deal-closing wunderkind Nick Warnock has landed a gig selling luxury suites for the Oakland Raiders. Raiders CEO Amy Trask said about hiring the fourth-place finisher, "I called someone else in our office equally addicted to the show and told him, 'I want to hire this guy to sell suites...[W]hen we saw on his Web site that he had a football background (he played high school and college football), it seemed like a great idea."
A spy tells us about Maria Shriver's recent interview with magician/white tiger snack Roy Horn, which took place at Siegfried and Roy's Las Vegas compound. (Spy: "How do you interview a quasi-vegetable? Luckily, Maria has lots of experience dealing with someone who doesn't speak in complete sentences.") Scott Sassa, former head of NBC West Coast programming, was caught dishing about the ridiculous security in place to protect leaks from getting out ahead of the interview's Fall airing to promote NBC's animated tiger show, Father of the Pride.
Drudge reports that 51.1 million viewers tuned in to the Friends finale, 33 percent less than Seinfeld's last episode. Earlier, Drudge reported that NBC executives were in a demented scramble to get the overnight Nielsen ratings, which delivered data from only 15 major media markets due to a massive computer crash.
It's finally over. "The One Where They All Go On To Failed Spin-Offs And Disappointing Movie Careers While Waiting Quietly For The Ten Year Reunion Special" has aired, and America has its happy ending.
To make a futile attempt at quenching the world's thirst for Friends spoilers, here is yet another installment. A tipster just sent this one, supposedly straight from a PA on the set...so maybe he or she might have missed something while fetching an In N Out burger for David Arquette. It seems to corroborate some of the Popbitch tips.
With tonight's hour-long finale of sitcom and Bonafide Cultural Phenomenon Friends, we fully expected the critics to work themselves into a lather explaining What Friends Meant. We were not disappointed.
All of the filthy details of a former Friends writers' assistant sexual harassment lawsuit against the show's writers came out a week or two ago (we like page 7). But FindLaw columnist Joanna Grossman discusses whether the writers' comments on their "personal sexual preferences and experiences...emphasizing anal sex, oral sex, big breasts, young girls and cheerleaders," their doodles of "cheerleaders with exposed breasts and vaginas," or their pantomimed "male masturbation" might be legally permissible as a job requirement, justified by "creative necessity."
In the triumphant spirit of Rain Man, I Am Sam, and A League of Their Own, Rosie O'Donnell will play a retarded woman who spends her days riding city buses in a CBS made-for-TV movie, Riding the Bus With My Sister. [Ed. note—We checked, and Rosie's character in League wasn't actually retarded, but close enough. This is a blog. Rock on.]
