Looking For A Hit? NBC Just Might Have One In “Smash”!

It’s no secret, if you’ve been paying any attention to this space at all over the past few months, that there are two new mid-season TV series that I’m very excited about, both surprisingly  from the embattled NBC.

The first is Awake, starring bonafide movie star Jason Issacs (Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films) as a cop with a little bit more than your average sleeping disorder, a show that the Peacock can’t seem to find room for on its schedule (yet!). Sadly, this is the pilot that my alleged editor, and your popGeezer, actually slept through at the 2011 Sanddiego comic Con. Philistine!

The other, and reason we’re here today, is Smash. This series, from executive producer Stephen Spielberg, deals with the ins and outs of Broadway, and the real reasons why “if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere”. This one doesn’t debut until February 6 (the day after the Super Bowl), but the pilot episode has been made available for free on several sites (iTunes and Amazon Prime, among others), and I sat down not long ago to give it a look-see and decide whether or not my excitement is justified.

The short answer is, “yes”. Smash is an entertaining show with one of the best and deepest casts on network television, and it deserves to be seen and enjoyed for several years to come. It is also going to be a star-making vehicle for Katharine McPhee andMegan Hilty in a way that their previous stints on American Idol and the Broadway version of Wicked (respectively) were not. It’s got great music, entertaining (if not particularly original) dance numbers and lots of soap and sizzle. On the downside, it’s also got just about every stereotypical Broadway cliché to ever come down the pike and some of them clank so loudly, they threaten to drown out the many wonderful performances they are supposed to enhance.

The Spielberg name in the credits is what’s getting all the attention (just as it did in the paragraph above), but Smash is the creation of journeyman producer Theresa Rebeck. She’s the author of currently running Broadway play, Seminar, starring Alan Rickman. A quick check of her IMDB profile credits her as being a producer or co-producer of several quality TV shows, from NYPD Blue to Law & Order: Criminal Intent. It also lists her as one of the producers of one of the worst films of all time, the Hallie Berry stink bomb, Catwoman. So which Rebeck is on display here? Too soon to tell over-all, but while the broad strokes of Smash are quite enjoyable, the answer (so far) seems to be, a little bit of both.

The basic story concerns bright and talented ingénue’ Karen Cartwright (McPhee), new to the Big City (she’s from Iowa!) and waiting tables, while trying to break into the big time on the Great White Way. Her boyfriend Dev (Raza Jaffrey-Mistresses, MI5) is supportive, but mom and dad (TV journeyman Dylan Baker plays the dad with weary “my heart is dead” practicality) wish she’d just come back home and work at the Feed Store. Or the Wal-Mart. Or anywhere but the theatre in God-awful New York City (cue threatening music).

Meanwhile, across town, diamond-in-the-rough Ivy Lynn (Hilty), a Big Star Just Waiting to Happen is toiling away in the chorus of Heaven on Earth, a hit (but poorly-titled) Broadway musical written by Julia Houston and Tom Levitt (more on them in a minute). Ivy is wasted in the chorus and knows if someone Just Gives Her A Chance, she’ll truly be able to shine. While the show does make an effort to place Karen and Ivy on even footing in terms of the series’ eventual pay-off, NBC’s promos make it very clear that McPhee is the star of this show and the talent they have placed their bets on.

Speaking of Houston and Levitt, played by Emmy-winner Debra Messing (Will & Grace) and Christian Borle (Legally Blonde: The Musical), a successful, but not mega-successful pair of composers, have decided to take a professional break while Julia and her husband Frank (Brian d’Arcy James-Ghost Town and longtime Broadway star) take a year off to try to adopt a child.  However, after a meeting with Tom and his new assistant Ellis (Jaime Cepero), all baby plans hit the skids in favor of a new musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Seriously, it happens almost just that fast. One minute Julia and Frank are talking with social workers and filling out adoption applications and then, one catchy retro-Broadway ditty about baseball later (written I’m sure, during the commercial break), we’re off to the races (this is a show that skips all the boring parts of the creative process, like, you know…the actual work). Ellis accidentally leaks a video of Ivy (a friend of Tom’s from Heaven and Earth) singing the baseball song (written by Hairspray’s Mark Shaiman and Scott Whitman, BTW) onto some social networking site and suddenly “Marilyn the Musical” is the hot show in town, and the baby goes into turnaround (I know, that’s a film term, but I don’t know what you call it when a Broadway show goes to a back burner). This, in turn, brings veteran Broadway producer Eileen Rand (a frightening-looking Anjelica Houston-Lonesome Dove) and bad-boy director Derek Wills (Jack Davenport- Flash Forward, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Coupling) which leads to the eventual sing-off between Karen and Ivy for the lead role, setting up the first major story arc of this season’s fifteen episodes.

The thing that kills this show is that it’s laden with clichéd images of the Great American Broadway Success Story, and everyone involved should know better. Rebeck, with solid credits in both worlds knows there’s no excuse in today’s truly amazing TV drama-verse for such lazy work. First of all, the character of Karen is a walking (or should that be singing and dancing) cliché. Hailing from the Midwest (did I mention she’s from Iowa?) and just one step off the bus, she is filled with all the sugary goodness a plucky young heroine needs. What’s the matter, has there never been a nascent Broadway star born in New York? Or Bayonne? Or Atlanta? With her earnest smile and inner cuddleability, you just know Karen has nary an ugly bone in her body and would never do nobody wrong (intentional bad grammar to make a point). So you know when she finds herself, late at night in Derek’s apartment for an “acting lesson”, that she’s never going to cave and give into his advances in another cliché-ridden “casting couch” moment. In fact, judging from the smile on Derek’s face as she leaves, he respects her for her integrity and is more on her side than ever. (Another way you can tell the producers are stacking the deck in Karen’s favor over Ivy is that – according to the previews of future episodes - when Ivy has her casting couch moment with Derek, she readily rises/drops (?) to the task, proving that she’s just not pure enough to succeed). Wouldn’t it have been more interesting dramatically if Karen had made the wrong choice? How would she face boyfriend Dev, who is so obviously in love with her? How would it affect her callback as she tries to sing, while knowing that Derek is thinking about what she looks like naked? Lots of good people make mistakes in pursuit of their dreams, and I strongly urge the producers not to make Karen too perfect or she won’t seem real.

Then there’s the old cliché of Professionals Who are Brilliant at Work, But Idiots at Home, which to be fair isn’t so much a Broadway cliché, as it is a generic television one. But do we have to have so many examples of it? There’s the dissolution of Eileen’s marriage (Huston’s only really meaty scene is the one in the lawyer’s office), the “baby flap” between Julia and Frank, Derek’s heart-breaking sensitivity and loneliness hidden behind a mask of general bad-assery and, to a much lesser extent, the relationship of Karen and Dev. To be fair, only Eileen’s troubles are on full display in the pilot, but the rest are telegraphed in letters ten feet high. The baby, so easily dismissed this episode, is bound to come back into play at some point, and (again in previews) Frank seems to be manning up to take some of his independence back. (Is there an affair in his future? Wouldn’t be surprised).

Plus, the previews tell us that an old “friend” of Julia’s is also due for a visit. As for old Derek, this is the kind of character that Hollywood and women are supposed to love. Scruffy and antagonistic with his mop-like hair, unshaven face and poor fashion sense, our virile choreographer/director is just begging to be understood and taken care of. (Perhaps by Karen? Hmmm). Plus, he and Tom hate each other, so we can expect several bonding moments to come as the show progresses. As for Karen and Dev (and yes, I can already hear you crying foul as I write this), if you can’t see the set-up for the Great Guy Who Gets Left Behind By the Success of His Girlfriend, then you’ve never seen a TV show in your life! As soon as I found out he was Karen’s boyfriend and not her husband, I knew he was doomed! Face it, Dev (and to a lesser extent, Frank) is a character whose sole destiny is to be marginalized.

And while we’re talking about her (and we did, up at the beginning of the last paragraph), what the hell have the producers done to Anjelica Huston? Somewhere in the last twenty years, this Academy Award-winning actress, who I had such a crush on in Lonesome Dove, transformed from Amazonian to androgynous, looking here in her boxy suits and faux Nancy Drew haircut like she’s some ancient drag queen, waiting for surgery (I know how cruel that sounds, but its true!). It may be intentional; there are so many older women in New York and LA who adopt this look in order to be competitive amongst the men that this could be another cliché at work. But it’s not doing Ms. Huston any favors and I don’t like it.

Why then, do I like this show? For one, because Katharine McPhee is luminous as Karen Cartwright and, almost against my will, I am already rooting for her to triumph over big, bad Broadway. I have never seen more than five minutes of Idolin my life and have no idea who beat her for the title the year she competed (I am told by those in the know that she was the runner-up), but I can only assume she was robbed. Her voice here is clear and true and heartbreakingly pure (though why in the name of Oscar and Hammerstein did they have her sing Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” as her audition piece? Unless the American Idol mentality has had more of an effect on Broadway than I thought, the rule is you never audition with a pop song).

No less lovely, Megan Hilty is the yin to McPhee’s yang. Voluptuous where McPhee is willowy, blonde where McPhee is brunette, Hilty wears her Broadway pedigree like a shield and proves why she was one of the most popular Galinda’s in Wicked since Kristin Chenoweth in every note she sings. Whereas Karen possesses the spiritual innocence and fragility of Marilyn Monroe, Hilty represents her earthiness and bawdy side, the part of her that went toe to toe with Kennedy (both of them), Joe Di Maggio, Arthur Miller and all the rest, seducing everyone in her path. Each in their own way, both ladies are deserving of the role.  I totally bought into Karen’s sheer gobsmacked terror while standing in Derek’s bathroom, having been both complimented and insulted by him in the same sentence, totally in over her head and still determined to swim her way to the top. Equally as effective is a heartbreaking scene of Ivy’s, when she calls home to share the news of  the callback, and her mother dismisses her out of hand to talk about someone else’s decision to go to community college. College is ”real”stuff for “real” folks,  and thereby more easily understood than her daughter’s grandiose and complicated dreams.

Yes, there are some sour notes. Huston is wasted thus far, Davenport’s Derek is a one-note brat, a cardboard cut-out Peter Pan who never grew up, Jaime Capero’s Ellis is shaping up (in previews at least) to be an “All About Eve”-ish/Eddie Haskell wanna-be, talking out of both sides of his mouth and Christian Borle’s Tom (so far) is the stereotypical bitter gay man (another cliché). The nice thing is, this is television and they have both the time and the opportunity to get it right. A nip here and tuck there and all will be as smooth and seamless as a chorus girl’s profile (which is more than we can say for Huston’s face – sorry! I just can’t seem to help it!). Step away from the clichés and the stereotypes, and allow the characters you’ve created to become real people who make real decisions, good and bad. Don’t draw the lines between the good guys and the bad guys quite so darkly (in fact why draw them at all?), and feel free to surprise us by going against our expectations…often.

Smash is NOT Glee. For all the fantasy dream sequences (which all begin with logical, realistic musical moments, by the way), this is a show based in the real world with real decisions that (hopefully) will have real consequences. The music, at least half of  it each week, is original and written for the show, and will need to be consistently powerful, hook-laden and easy for viewers to remember, since it won’t have the Glee recognition factor. But that extra work should be worth it. Like a Broadway show, with a lot of work and a lot of luck, we can hope it will be a SMASH.

A FINAL NOTE:

I asked last time if that was Karen Sisko in an upcoming episode of Justified (Karen Sisko being another Elmore Leonard character once played on ABC by Carla Gugino). Technically, it was not. It was Gugino, taking advantage of the spiritual connection between her past and Timothy Olyphant’s present, playing Assistant Director (of the U.S. Marshalls) and former partner, and possible former love interest of Olyphant’s Raylan Givens, xxxxx Goodall. Recent interviews make it clear her first name is NOT going to be easily disclosed.

The chemistry between the two actors was amazing and the looks Goodall gave Givens when he displayed his affection for ex-wife and future baby-mama Winona were telling of many things. I hope she comes back soon. The idea of a possible love triangle sounds like lots of fun.

This Just In! Bits and Pieces of TV Fluff and Nonsense, and Some News in General!

Ah, January! Blow winds, and crack our cheeks! Stay inside and put up a fire and while away the cold (what am I saying? Here in Florida the high these days hits 70-72 degrees! It’s gorgeous!) with a book or your favorite TV show and wait for spring…

In other words, time to do some following up, tracking down and filling in the gaps on the premier dates from our last missive and lower the curtain on the mid-season’s first (thank god!) cancellation. Oh, and did anybody mention its awards season?

THE GOLDEN GLOBES:

I really don’t watch awards shows anymore. Three hour masturbatory tributes to self-flagellation with only about half an hour of anything I really care about; diamonds scattered amongst the coal like wheat amongst the chaff (sorry, my Christmas present this year was The Guide to Metaphors).  I am looking forward to Billy Crystal’s return to the Oscars, but that’s a special case. I’m not going to say anything about the People’s Choice Awards except that the ratings were lower than the average IQ of your favorite Jersey Shore cast member  (the only time they were lower was the year they didn’t have them!), but that’s OK, ‘cause the PCA’s really don’t count for anything industry-wise anyway. The Golden Globes, on the other hand, long-suffered as the handmaiden to the Oscars, second-cousin-twice-removed (you know, the one with the wandering eye and that mole?) of the respectable film community also had their little party not long ago and aside from a kinder, gentler Ricky Gervais, which is still kind of like saying a kinder, gentler nuclear device, they handed out the following trophies to the following shows:

TV Series, Drama: Homeland (Showtime). SHO gets one step closer to HBO’s catbird seat.

TV Series, Comedy: Modern Family (ABC). No surprise, but it’s nice to see Ed O’Neill with a job (otherwise he just hangs out on that bus stop on the corner and creeps people out).

TV Movie or Miniseries: Downton Abbey (BBC by way of PBS). Otherwise known as the Best Show Whose Name Looks Like Its Misspelled, But Isn’t.

Actor in a TV Series, Drama: Kelsey Grammer in Boss (Starz). OK, I like Kelsey Grammer. Just don’t ask me about the show, alright? Watched a couple eps and it seems like a sorta’ big hot mess to me.

Actress in a TV Series, Drama: Claire Danes in Homeland (SHO). This is the hot premium cable show right now and it’s getting all the hot premium cable love. Haven’t seen it yet ‘cause I don’t get Showtime (popGeezer needs to give somebody a raise!), but Ms Danes has always been an exceptional performer, so I’m certain it’s deserved.

Actor, TV Series, Comedy: Matt LeBlanc in Episodes (SHO). I’d heard about this show when it was in the early production stages, but had no idea it had actually premiered! Again, don’t get SHO, but you’d think as much as my finger is on the pulse, yada yada yada, I’d have a least heard something…Anyway, nice to see the former Mr. Tribiani get the awards love he never got on Friends.

Actress in a TV Series, Comedy: Laura Dern in Enlightened (HBO). I’ve seen this one and Dern is a great actress, but I found the over-all tone of the show kind of shrill. Mayhap I should look again.

Actor in a Mini-Series or TV Movie: Idris Elba in Luther (BBC/BBC America). I have no excuse for why I haven’t seen this one, but I haven’t. Feel free to send me to my room with DVDs of this, Downton Abbey and Homeland and I won’t come out until I’ve learned my lesson.

Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Movie: Kate Winslett in Mildred Pierce (HBO). Winslett was pretty much the odds-on fave to win this one and I hear she was spectacular, but you’d have to hold me at gunpoint to get me to watch it or any of the other stuffy period dramas just like it. Trust me, testosterone poisoning is a very real thing…

Supporting Actress in a Series, Mini-Series or TV Movie: Jessica Lange in American Horror Story (FX). Any doubts that Lange would rack up the awards for her big TV debut? Didn’t think so.

Supporting Actor in a Series, Mini-Series or TV Movie: Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones (HBO). Proving that there are no small parts, only…nope. Sorry. Just can’t do it. Peter Dinklage’s brilliant turn as Tyrion Lannister in HBO’s equally brilliant Game of Thrones is just too good to cheapen it with a short joke.

Cecille B. DeMille Award: Morgan Freeman. A truly deserved award to a truly deserving actor. And the clip of Freeman in The Electric Company from the early days of his career? Priceless.

Congratulations to everyone. And be careful what you say about Mr. Gervais’ performance as host. If they get enough negative press out of it, the Foreign Press Association may punish him…by making him host the show again.

I THINK I WILL SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS, AFTER ALL:

Two interesting things happened at this year’s PCA’s and they each in their own way go to underline the rabid fan bases of some shows and the lengths they will go to support their favorite shows and actors. One, the CW show Supernatural was honored not once, but twice(!) as both Favorite SF/Fantasy Show and as Favorite Network TV Drama.  Seriously? Don’t get me wrong, I like Supernatural and watch it every week, but how can it be the Favorite SF/Fantasy Show (and thanks, PCA for not calling it Sci-Fi-I’m old enough to still find that nickname offensive) in a world where there is a Fringe or Game of Thrones?  And Favorite Network TV Drama? Granted, that word network disqualifies a lot of serious contenders, but still, when NCIS has been the number one scripted show on television for like, ever? I suppose the telling piece of evidence is that they are both “Favorite” awards, not “Best”.  The second oddity worth mentioning is the unbelievable write-in campaign that not only got The Vampire Diaries’ Nina Dobrev nominated for Favorite TV Drama Actress, but actually won it for her! Those wacky fans! Whatever the CW is paying them, it ain’t enough. William Shatner may have infamously told the Trekkies to Get a Life, back in that old SNL skit, but obviously no one was listening.

PROOF POSITIVE THAT THERE IS A GOD: Work It! is the first cancellation of the Second Season! Work It! you may recall, starring the usually much more selective Amaury Nolasco (Prison Break, the first two Transformers movies) and some guy who, with any luck at all will be selling quality men’s footwear within the year (OK, his name was Benjamin Koldyke, are you happy?), was a modern up-date of the much better written, much better cast (Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari) and much more timely then than now, Bosom Buddies. We’ve moved on, guys. You should too.

PROOF POSITIVE THAT THERE IS A GOD…AND HE HATES ME: Rob! (why do all these new shows have exclamation points in the title?), the Rob Schneider non-com that is the biggest and most offensive pile of bantha poodoo to come down the pike since the halcyon days of Hello Larry, held onto almost all of its Big Bang Theory lead-in (13.5 mill out of BBT’s 15.9)! Are they on drugs? Are they so strung out doing quadratic equations in their heads and discussing the square root of Pi, that they’re not aware they left their TV’s on and released a crapfest into the world? I’m not sure I want to live in a world where a show like this can succeed. I’m really not.

THE REST OF THE NUMBERS (AND MORE PROOF OF GOD’S CONTINUING DISLIKE):

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (9.5 million). I need to sacrifice a goat. Obviously, there is something in the whole Napoleon Dynamite thing that escapes me, but I think I’m glad it’s the one that got away.

30 ROCK (1.8 demo rating). WTF! Rob! and Napoleon Dynamite are winners and Tina Fey and company get flushed down the porcelain blowhole in their 6^th season opener? Father! Why hast thou forsaken me?

ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA? (6.4 million). Well, the good news is that’s its doing better than Hank Azaria’s Free Agents did. And it matched up well with its new roommate, Whitney (6.1 million). The bad news? They’re both stacked up against ABC’s Wednesday comedy line-up of much better, much funnier shows.

THE FINDER (5.5 million). Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! After totally blowing the Bones lead-in (8.6 million) and registering a lousy 1.7 rating in the demo, this quirky show has nowhere to go but up.

THE FIRM (4.2 million). Hey guys! Prime Suspect called…they want their time slot back (I fully admit I stole that one from E Online, but it’s funny!).

BIG WINNERS:

ONCE UPON A TIME (ABC) Up a million viewers from December.

MODERN FAMILY (ABC) Huge gain to a 5.6 in the 18-49 demo.

2 BROKE GIRLS (CBS) Almost tied Two and a Half Men in their mid-season return.

REVENGE (ABC) Up to 8 million viewers.

GREY’S ANATOMY (ABC) Huge gains in the new year.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (NBC) Posted the season’s best numbers with their mid-season return, featuring Charles Barkley.

BIG LOSERS: The following shows are spiraling the drain as we speak:

The BACHELOR (ABC), BIGGEST LOSER (how ironic! NBC), PARENTHOOD (NBC), BODY OF PROOF (ABC) and PAN AM (ABC).

MORE WINTER PREMIER DATES!

There were some holes in our new year TV schedule. Let’s see if we can’t fill them in:

COUGAR TOWN (ABC) Still don’t know about Community, but Courtney and company will return in the old Work It! slot, right behind Last Man Standing on February 14. Happy Valentine’s Day.

PSYCH (USA) Another MIA from our previous list, the boys return with more mischief on February 29.

MAD MEN (AMC) returns March 25^th with a two-hour premier.

THE KILLING (AMC) If you’re not still pissed that we still don’t know who killed Rosie Larsen, the show returns with a two hour premier (and hopefully, more answers) on April 1.

GAME OF THRONES (HBO) Season Two which chronicles the events from Book Two, A Clash of Kings also premiers on April 1.

SCANDAL (ABC) premiers on April 5.

NURSE JACKIE (SHO) premiers April 8.

THE BORGIAS (SHO) April 8.

THE BIG C (SHO) April 8.

The only real question for me now is the fate of the NBC show AWAKE, starring Jason Isaacs. We were originally told it would be out sometime in March, but the current scuttlebutt says the net is looking for just the right night and just the right line-up to put it with (admittedly, the show is a bit high concept and hard to explain), so it could be pushed back to April. Let’s hope not.

THE CW DOES A HAT TRICK AND PICKS UP THREE PILOTS WITH FAMILIAR HISTORIES:

The CW announced this week that it was giving the green light to three drama pilots in addition to picking up 12 existing series for next fall. The pilots are an interesting bunch, if only for their familiarity to viewers.  They are:

THE CARRIE DIARIES: In an effort to rekindle some of that Sex in the City mojo and good will that got eviscerated on the big screen courtesy of Sex in the City 2 (Electric Boogaloo), the CW is picking up this look at Carrie Bradshaw’s younger days. Who knows, we might even find out why she’s so shoe-crazy. Produced by Gossip Girl and Chuck EP Josh Schwartz.

ARROW: from Green Lantern scribe Greg Berlanti (Everwood, Brothers & Sisters, No Ordinary Family), his frequent partner Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kriesberg comes the story of the Emerald Archer of the DC Universe, Green Arrow. Be Warned (or be glad, whichever): This is NOT a spin-off of the character that lived and fought crime on Smallville for half of its ten year run on the same network. It might make more sense it if were, since I practically guarantee most of the casual fans (you know, the ones the nets depend on to make these shows hits?) are going to assume it is, but that could wind up being a good thing. No word on whether this Green Arrow lives in some version of the DCU or in his own self-contained reality, but I look forward to hearing more.

BEAST: Another familiar tale, this time from EP Paul Witt and a whole laundry list of other folks, loosely based on the old CBS drama, Beauty and the Beast which starred Linda Hamilton (Terminator 1 and 2, Chuck) and Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy). Bring the hankies, ‘cause whatever else they change you can bet they’ll be keeping all of the Shakespeare sonnet-spewing and dewy-eyed romance of the original. And if they name the heroine Belle instead of Catherine, I may hurl.

QUICK HITS:

As I prophesied a while back, Paige Turco returns to Person of Interest (CBS) on February 2 as the enigmatic Zoe, a mysterious fixer who is as fascinated by Jim Caviezel’s Reese as he is with her. Oh, and by the way, the ep is called “Root Cause”.

Just announced this week that the eighth season of Dexter (SHO) will be its last. No word on how our favorite homicidal blood-spatter expert will go out, but now that sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter)knows his secret, I’m willing to bet it’s going to be big…and bloody.

Also in the pipeline, Paul Rudd (Our Idiot Brother) makes his return to TV (he was Phoebe’s boyfriend turned husband on the final season of Friends) as Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler)’s political rival in her run for the Pawnee City Council. No word on how many episodes Rudd will appear in, but mark my words, comedy will ensue.

This is One Tree Hill’s final season. Seriously? Wasn’t that show cancelled like, years ago???

Dr. Who EP (and British national treasure) Steven Moffat says that there will be at least fourteen episodes in the new Season Seven, which doesn’t begin until the fall so that it will roll into the Doctor’s Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration in 2013. This includes the annual Christmas episode, which this year will be in the middle of the season instead of creating a bridge between whatever cliffhanger left us at the end of last season and whatever other surprises come with the new season. Moffat also hints at the possible return of Sophia Myles from The Girl in the Fireplace, a popular ep from David Tennant’s tenure as Doctor #10, but no word yet on whether it will be as a new character or in a sequel to the previous story. As for the 50^th, there’s no word on what it will be or how it will play out, but just about every Doctor still alive (except for Christopher Eccleston) and every companion (including the ever-vocal John Barrowman) is lining up to be a part of it. Hopefully, it will all live up to the hype.

The February 6 ep of Castle will feature a film noir fantasy that puts Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Beckett (Stana Katic) and company in the middle of a stylish, old fashioned murder mystery from 1947. Of course, this is all just an excuse to have Castle and Beckett make out without impacting on the glacial progress of their actual relationship, but still it should be fun and the costumes should be very pretty.

Did you see Hawaii 5-0 a while back when Daniela Ruah, who plays Agent Kensi Blye on NCIS: LA guest-starred as her NCIS character? Well, it was just the tip of the iceberg. Get ready for a big two night crossover event between the two shows coming up this May, with Chris O’Donnell’s G. Callan and LL Cool J’s Sam Hanna of NCIS:LA guesting on 5-0 on the Monday and Alex O’Loughlin’s Steve McGarrett and Scott Caan’s Danny Williams returning the favor on NCIS:LA on Tuesday. Cannot wait to see Deaks and Dano butt heads.

Was that Karen Sisko I saw on a trailer for Justified? Wouldn’t that be cool? Before Jennifer Lopez forever tainted the character in the film Out of Sight (with George Clooney), Karen Sisko (another creation of Raylan Givens’ spiritual father Elmore Leonard) was an ABC TV show starring Carla Gugino (Watchmen, Threshold) that lasted only a few short weeks before being canned. But at the end of last week’s season premier (which was awesome, by the way), in one of those quick edited “This season on Justified” montages, I could have sworn I saw Gugino squaring off with Timothy Olyphant’s Givens in the U.S. Marshall’s office. Now, I could be mistaken, because it was really quick and I’ve seen no mention or corroboration on this anywhere, but was that really Gugino? And if so, could she possibly be playing Sisko? Probably not. I have no idea what the status of the rights to the Karen Sisko character are and who has them, but it’s probably just stunt-casting through the connection of the two actors through Leonard’s work. We’ll see.

In yet again another sign of the TV Apocalypse, Will (Matthew Morrison) proposed to Emma (Jayma Mays) and Finn (Corey Monteith) proposed to Rachel (Lea Michele) on Glee a week or so ago. Now, while the Will and Emma (I refuse to call them Wemma) thing has been long-coming and appropriate, I certainly hope Rachel is smart enough to turn Finn down (her reply was the episode’s cliffhanger).  Aside from the fact that the characters are too damn young, Rachel is about to head off to New York (we assume) and a whole bunch of major life altering decisions that Finn will clearly only be part of in the most peripheral way. She’s gonna leave him behind people! Plus, the whole reason for the proposal is suspect. Finn finds out his father wasn’t the war hero he thought he was (just the opposite, in fact) de-railing his whole plan to enlist after graduation and leaving him adrift in his future plans. Hero-less and goal-less, he latches onto the one good thing in his life (Rachel) and holds onto it way too tightly. It was a knee-jerk emotional reaction and while sweet, it was hardly appropriate. I know a lot of you see Finchel (cringe) as the endgame, but Quinn (Diana Agron) was right last season when she and Rachel had that little heart-to-heart on an empty stage.  Quinn, in a moment of characteristically brutal honesty (let’s face it, she hasn’t been that likable since Finn dumped her for Rachel the second time and she never really liked Rachel anyway), told Rachel that Finn was better suited to her (Quinn) in the long run because Quinn wasn’t going to leave him for the bright lights of stardom.  In her version of the future (a version much more realistic than we usually ever get on Glee), Finn and Quinn would get married and Finn would go to work with Kirk’s dad (his step-dad) and Quinn would become the number one realtor in town. They would have children, they’d have a life, they’d be happy. Rachel’s future (again, according to Quinn) would have Finn either chasing around after Rachel from one show to another while she pursues her dream or Finn being left behind completely, broken-hearted and alone. And she’s absolutely right. In the real world, the chances of Finn and Rachel making it work are astronomical at best and while “Love Conquers All” is a nice ending to fairy tales and romance novels, it has very few practical applications to real life. I know you’ll all disagree, but Rachel needs to let Finn down gently and go to NYC alone. And speaking of Ms Berry, the Glee folks have also announced the casting of Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Law & Order: CI) and Tony Award-winning Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell as Rachel’s two dads.

In more serious news, Gary Dourdan, who played Warrick in the first couple of seasons of the O.G. CSI recently pled no contest to Disturbing the Peace and paid a $100 fine for bumping into several cars (I assume while driving his) in downtown L.A. back in 2010. Police allegedly found Oxycontin in Dourdan’s car, but dismissed the possession charge because the actor has attended twenty Narcotics Anonymous meetings since the arrest. I guess this means Warrick ain’t coming back to the lab any time soon…unless of course, it’s as a corpse!

OK, somebody explain this to me. Luxury Cruises and Tours is charging between $1,500 and $5,500 to take a cruise with former John and Kate Plus Eight reality star, Kate Gosselin. Really? Does this mean the other cruise lines get to charge ten grand for their cruises ‘cause Mama Kate ain’t on their boat? And if Kate is getting all that fun and sun on a cruise, who’s watching those eight delightful little rug rats? John? Now, that’s a reality show I might like to see!

A Final Plea. Kevin Reilly of Fox has said recently that he loves Fringe and would love an excuse to keep it on the air, but Fox is a business and a business has to make money. Which is a gentle way of getting us used to the idea that, despite how much the net loves it, Fringe may not get a fifth season. PLEASE WATCH THIS SHOW! And when you do watch it, please watch it live and not time-shifted. I don’t claim to understand the way the ratings work these days, but apparently watching a show live when you can’t fast forward through the ads brings in higher ratings than if you watch it on your DVR or computer.  But if time-shifted is the best you can do, please do it! It all counts. If you’ve never watched it, give it a try. If you used to watch it, but gave it up, try it again. Tell your friends, tell your family, go by the hospital and put it on in the rooms of all the coma patients, I don’t care! Let’s just try to get those numbers up. This is the one of the two or three most intelligent shows on television and I have a feeling that the return of Jared Harris (Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows, Mad Men) as David Jones (no, not the former Monkee…or Mr. Bowie, either) is going to herald some sort of insane dovetail that leads Peter back home. I hope so. And I hope the show gets a season five, as well.

Well, that’s all the hodge my podge has got today. Time to curl up with a hot toddy and an evening of digital big screen fun. Keep an eye on the remote control and when next we meet, I’ll bring my recipe for pigs in a blanket (hint: I use real pig! And real blankets). Ciao!

Here Are The Oscar Noms, But Do We Care?

Here is the complete list of the 84th Annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday (1/24/2012), as complied by Variety:

1. Best Picture: “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” “The Help,” “Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris,” “Moneyball,” “The Tree of Life,” “War Horse.”

2. Actor: Demian Bichir, “A Better Life”; George Clooney, “The Descendants”; Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”; Gary Oldman, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”; Brad Pitt, “Moneyball.”

3. Actress: Glenn Close, “Albert Nobbs”; Viola Davis, “The Help”; Rooney Mara, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”; Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”; Michelle Williams, “My Week with Marilyn.”

4. Supporting Actor: Kenneth Branagh, “My Week with Marilyn”; Jonah Hill, “Moneyball”; Nick Nolte, “Warrior”; Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”; Max von Sydow, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

5. Supporting Actress: Berenice Bejo, “The Artist”; Jessica Chastain, “The Help”; Melissa McCarthy, “Bridesmaids”; Janet McTeer, “Albert Nobbs”; Octavia Spencer, “ The Help.”

6. Directing: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”; Alexander Payne, “The Descendants”; Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”; Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”; Terrence Malick, “The Tree of Life.”

7. Foreign Language Film: “Bullhead,” Belgium; “Footnote,” Israel; “In Darkness,” Poland; “Monsieur Lazhar,” Canada; “A Separation,” Iran.

8. Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, “The Descendants”; John Logan, “Hugo”; George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon, “The Ides of March”; Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin, “Moneyball”; Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”

9. Original Screenplay: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”; Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, “Bridesmaids”; J.C. Chandor, “Margin Call”; Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”; Asghar Farhadi, “A Separation.”

10. Animated Feature Film: “A Cat in Paris”; “Chico & Rita”; “Kung Fu Panda 2”; “Puss in Boots”; “Rango.”

11. Art Direction: “The Artist,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,” “Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris,” “War Horse.”

12. Cinematography: “The Artist,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Hugo,” “The Tree of Life,” “War Horse.”

13. Sound Mixing: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Hugo,” “Moneyball,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” “War Horse.”

14. Sound Editing: “Drive,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Hugo,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” “War Horse.”

15. Original Score: “The Adventures of Tintin,” John Williams; “The Artist,” Ludovic Bource; “Hugo,” Howard Shore; “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” Alberto Iglesias; “War Horse,” John Williams.

16. Original Song: “Man or Muppet” from “The Muppets,” Bret McKenzie; “Real in Rio” from “Rio,” Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown and Siedah Garrett.

17. Costume: “Anonymous,” “The Artist,” “Hugo,” “Jane Eyre,” “W.E.”

18. Documentary Feature: “Hell and Back Again,” “If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front,” “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” “Pina,” “Undefeated.”

19. Documentary (short subject): “The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement,” “God Is the Bigger Elvis,” “Incident in New Baghdad,” “Saving Face,” “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom.”

20. Film Editing: “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Hugo,” “Moneyball.”

21. Makeup: “Albert Nobbs,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,” “The Iron Lady.”

22. Animated Short Film: “Dimanche/Sunday,” “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” “La Luna,” “A Morning Stroll,” “Wild Life.”

23. Live Action Short Film: “Pentecost,” “Raju,” “The Shore,” “Time Freak,” “Tuba Atlantic.”

24. Visual Effects: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,” “Hugo,” “Real Steel,” “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.’”

Of all the films on this list, I have seen Drive, The Muppets, and one-half each of Paradise Lost 3 and Bridesmaids.  Mrs. popGeezer has seen The Help. That’s it. Never before have I taken the traditional complaint of “No one has seen these movies” so seriously. While I or Mrs. p have consumed the source materials for Harry Potter and Hugo, that doesn’t count on the tote board. Hell, we’ve not seen a Harry Potter film since the first one (those adorable babies…).

So if an unrepentant media consumer like moi doesn’t have a horse in this race – save for Paradise Lostbeing honored for the impact it had on a real-life miscarriage of justice, and that Bret McKenzie be recognized as being very clever and the real brains behind Flight of the Conchords – what does that say for the great unwashed? Somebody needs to realize you can’t get big ratings for a TV reality competition show if no one cares about the outcome. ABC’s stick with another potential turkey this year, but at least George, Brad and Angelina will be on the red carpet. That is a plus.

But, I must tell you - if a silent, black and white movie, in a 4:3 aspect ratio (for heaven’s sake), is an Oscar front-runner, then it has to be damn good. That’s the one I can assure you I’m going to try to see before February 26th.

If it actually plays in Nashville by then. [sigh]

“John Carter”: Warlord Of The Disney Boardroom

Online Hollywood trade site The Wrap has a solid take on the challenges Disney faces with this March’s release of John Carter, aka John Carter: Warlord Of Mars, especially since Disney just jettisoned their President of Marketing, MT Carney.

What’s my take on all this? In all candor, I fear that Mars no more needs John Carter than it did moms.

Having said that, the film is astonishingly cast in all the secondary supporting roles – Bryan Cranston (beginning the year of Walt White at the movies), Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds, Dominic West, Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church, James Purefoy, Polly Walker and Samantha Morton. I mean – wow! Even if some of them are only voicing a CGI character, these are heavy hitters which could help with international box office.

But the real attraction here has to be either the concept or the leads. As a fifty plus year-old geek, I’m a real fan of the source material. Tarzan has nothing on the John Carter series where I’m concerned. But… I’m old. And I actually used to read things. 

And as for those lead actors….. hm.

Am I going to leave the house for Taylor Kitsch? John Carter is an iconic sci-fi hero. Taylor Kitsch was, at best, very competent as a sullen, drunk, failed, but essentially decent, high-school football hero. And he kind of mumbles, which is an issue when grandpa here won’t have captions available until we get to the Blu-Ray.  

But what do geeks really care about?? Dejah Thoris. That’s the whole game right there.

As written, and imagined for almost 100 years, this Martian princess is supposed to be so EVERYTHING, that Angelina or Charlize would be hard-pressed to be babe enough for the role. And they’re not exotic enough, in all honesty.

But the actress who was Wolverine’s girlfriend in XMO: Wolverine? No. Not even in the discussion. C’mon, now. (BTW, the picture at left is one of the few artist’s renditions of the princess that contains an actual top of the outfit.)

Now Andrew Stanton did create and direct two of the three best Pixar movies ever (Wall-E, Finding Nemo), and I love when animators do live-action movies… so as long as Disney’s put in Wall-E as Carter’s faithful sidekick, we should be good to go. 

Oh, No? He’s not in there? Then we might have a problem.

But remember, I’m the guy who said “Dragon Tattoo” was going to set the box-office record for an R-rated drama.

popGeezer’s Pop Culture Top 10 of 2011 (Spoliers Ahead)

The turning of the year has come upon us. And, by golly, it brought us an actual blog entry from your all-t0o-absent popGeezer. Rather than a year-end ranking of TV and movies, or some such blather, let’s take a broader view. Here, for the second year in a row, are our choices for the Top Ten most significant people, places or things in the Popular Culture for 2011 –

10. Matt Smith on Doctor Who: Can he really make us forget the ten actors who played the role before him? No.

But Matt Smith has transformed the thirty-eight year old title character in a way that regularly takes our breath away, and never more so than in the just aired 2011 Christmas special, “The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe“. From the lovely mania of The Doctor creating an unbelievable fantasy house for two children, to his benevolent acceptance of the incredible (“I know.”), to the Doctor shedding his first “happy” tear, Smith brings a complete humanity to the character. While the previous 21st century Doctors – Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant – more than set the table there, Smith brings the transformation of The Doctor from distant alien time lord to fully-formed emotional being home.

Blessed with a truly unique face, with its massive ears and startling chin, Smith has an admirable canvas upon which to work. But it’s really all in the eyes. Smith, the youngest actor to undertake the role, has the eyes of a nine-hundred year-old immortal. They convince us that he’s really seen the death of almost everyone he’s ever cared for, and they convey that loss and weariness most believably. And with no words, this young man conducts an emotional master class in the final moments of this year’s Christmas special. The Doctor knows that by crossing the doorway into his estranged companions’ home, he will end the obviously normal life they’ve built for themselves over the past two years. But his loneliness forces him to cross that threshold, to admit his very human need for connection trumps the nine centuries of experience telling him to leave them be for their own good. He can’t stop himself. And a single tear, happy but also wistful, falls. An exquisite moment.

9. Take A Tablet, Then Call Me In Morning (After You Stay Up All Night): The Smartphone – most specifically the iPhone and it’s clones – brought an astounding amount of media actually into your hands. But to truly consume media in an effective way, you needed a bigger screen and a better experience. In 2010, Steve Jobs and Apple upended mobile media consumption with the iPad. Horrible name, paradigm-shifting device. Now, less than two full years later, the industry that device spawned has moved music and – most importantly – TV and home videos into a true “take it with you” experience. Now with the iPad and its leading knock-offs - Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet, the Samsung Galaxy series of tablets – everything you knew about looking at books, TV, music, movies and maybe even computers is just plain wrong.

The Neilsen ratings system is now no more an accurate indicator of how any people are really watching a TV show than the Iowa Caucuses are a gauge of who will be President in 2012. Another example of the new world order? Until everybody realized that all the actors still had to be paid like Screen Actors Guild members, someone thought there was a real business model to move cancelled soap operas All My Children and One Life To Live to webcasting. Trust me, it wasn’t PC viewing that was the impetus behind that forward-thinking idea.

Also fueling this new wave is the big shift of TV and movie media transmission to the internet. With Hulu Plus and Netflix Streaming leading the way, followed this year by apps from HBO and Showtime to “mobilize” its subscribers, most of what you watch every week on that big old TV is also viewable in full seven to ten inch wide HDTV on a tablet. The mechanism is as old as horses and carts, or razors and blades, as the content shifted to the “web”, a more effective way to consume it arrived at the same time. And 2011 is the year we crossed that digital media Rubicon.

8. The Year In Louis C.K.: He looks like an average soccer dad - portly, bald[ing],with a  usually sour expression on his puss. Before the past twelve months, he was actually a well-respected stand-up comedian, a heavily-credentialed comedy writer (Late Night With Conan, The Chris Rock Show,The Dana Carvey Show), and a kinda failed movie director (Pootie Tang).

By the end of 2011, he’s now the TV star who has redefined the term “show runner”, the creator of a genre-shattering situation comedy and the guy who just changed how you make money with a stand-up comedy special.

Let’s start with the sit-com. Louie is, on first look, a combination of Seinfeld and Modern Family. It’s a show about the everyday “nothing” of a struggling New York-based comedian. He’s juggling his average stand-up career with being an active post-divorce dad to his two daughters.  This synopsis of the F/X series can’t begin to describe the true wonders of Louie, which ran its second season in calendar 2011.

Snippets of Louie’s act are blended with his family and career travails. His on-screen (and actual) stage comedy is brilliant observational stuff about the darkest parts of parenting, sex and human nature. And so is Louie’s TV “real life”. Most importantly, Louis C.K. writes, directs and edits every episode of the show himself. All the camera work is handheld, and though the show is not a faux-documentary, it has the immediacy of the documentary form and the intimacy of low-fi digital film-making. Louis also constantly challenges the sit-com format. Some episodes are two unrelated fifteen-minute stories, some have a single-story for the full half-hour, some are split between the present and an extended flashback, and one special episode is the best hour of TV comedy this year. With “Duckling”, which aired last August, Louis combined hitting on professional cheerleaders, USO trips to Afghanistan, the annoyance of your kids’ “class pets”, and finding world peace via baby waterfowl into a breathtaking dramedy masterpiece.

And all that’s great, but it’s not what earned Louis C.K. a million dollars in two weeks. Louis shot a November 2011 stand-up performance at New York’s Beacon Theater, cut it together and put it up for sale – himself – on the net on December 9, 2011. Asking for $5 a download, and a promise for the buyer not to bootleg it, C.K. had moved over 200,000 downloads before Christmas. So what did Louis do with his paradigm-busting windfall? First, he gave over 25% of it to charity, a quarter of it to his key staff, used $250,000 of it to cover the production costs of the special, and then he kept the leftovers.

So, how was your 2011?

7. The Super-Hero Movie Summer, or, From Ghetto to Green Light: Okay, the summer of 1975 gave us Jaws, genuinely considered the birth of the summer blockbuster. May to July of 1977 gave us the platform release of the monolith that would reignite fantasy and science-fiction at the box office, Star Wars (the real deal, with no ”IV” or ”New Hope” bulls**t in the title). And at Christmastime in 1978, those seeds, carefully tended to by Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz, grew into Superman: The Movie. This film single-handedly changed forty years of mass-media adaptation of comic-book super-heroes from idiotic to heartbreakingly earnest. No film has EVER moved me as much as the first 40 minutes of this epic. From the black white opening of an Action Comicbeing read to that instant in the Fortress of Solitude when you believed a man could fly, this was absolute cinematic perfection. Never again would comic books be made into goofy, “pow” and “bam” fodder.

Yeah, that didn’t happen, I know. By Superman III, Warner Brothers and the Salkind family dug the grave of the very film genre the pioneered.

In the summer of 1989, Warners performed an admirable genre resurrection with Tim Burton’s adaptation of Sam Hamm’s wonderfully scripted Batman. One effective sequel and two that were crimes against humanity followed. By 1997, the genre was obliterated again.

But in 2000, director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects), writers Tom DeSanto and David Hayter and producer Lauren Shuler-Donner (Richard’s wife) gave us the a deadly serious and generously budgeted version of Marvel’s mutant phenoms X-Men. Esteemed Shakespearean actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan brought Professor X and Magneto to vivid and believable life. This 20th Century Fox release made great money, $157 million in the U.S. But we could not allow ourselves to think the comic book movie would return as a viable genre again… could we?

In 2002, Sam Raimi – creator of the Evil Dead film series, which served up head-spinning visuals on a Dollar Store budget – finally finished calling Lazarus forth in the form of the pitch-perfect Spider-Man. This second Marvel Studios production again treated its source material as sacrosanct classic literature, not some valueless bathroom read. With an almost religious respect for Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko’s visuals in the early comics, and a star-making performance from Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, this was the stuff that four-color dreams were made (flesh) of. When the web-spinning finally stopped, Spider-Man had earned almost $822 million worldwide, and finished a the 11th all-time biggest grossing film in the U.S. The serious comic book was back, and it was not going away again.

In the next eight years, the genre would give us two more X-Men films, two more from Spider-Man, the arrival of the Hulk, the Invincible Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man… in total, fifty movies that were comic book adaptations came between 2000 and 2010. Some were very good, some were acceptable, and some were hideous (yes, that’s you League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Christopher Nolan took on one of the biggest tasks of all, rebooting Batman as a viable franchise. How’d he do with that..? 2005’s Batman Begins retold the origin of Bruce Wayne’s journey to becoming the Batman as darkly and as beautifully as it could be told. It earned over $370 million worldwide and put Warner Brothers back in the super-hero movie game. And in 2008, Nolan’s The Dark Knight would become the first comic book movie to approach (nay, surpass?) Superman: The Movie’s artistic perfection, win Heath Ledger a posthumous Academy Award for playing The Joker, and become the first and 0nly comic book movie to gross $1 Billion worldwide.

What does all this have to do with 2011? The 2011 summer box office was driven by six comic book films, the most ever for a single summer. Most importantly, three of the summer’s biggest successes came from this group. X-Men First Class, Thor, and Captain America all played to generally good notices and grossed over $500 million in the U.S. The other three, Cowboys & Aliens, Priest and Green Lantern did not hit the mark creatively or financially, but GL’s appearance also made it the first summer where four front-line super-hero characters/franchises appeared in one cinematic season.

It only took 33 years, but the promise of Superman finally came to fruition. The movie business is the comic book business. Suck on that… books. Hah.

6. Winter Is Coming, and TV [it's not TV, it's HBO?] Won’t Be The Same: Fantasy and network television don’t mix. With only a handful of notable exceptions, sci-fi and network TV don’t usually blend either. Creative success isn’t usually the problem, but it’s the lack of acceptance by an audience large enough to make these expensive genres cost-effective that makes them radioactive to a network.

Over last ten years, SyFy both tried to bring serious sci-fi to basic cable and then dumped it in favor of more Ghost-Hunters and soft-pedaled semi-fi. The most financially successful fantasy-oriented shows in years were Xena and Hercules, which were syndicated, and mixed in  heavy doses of lighthearted antics (and Sam Raimi DNA) to run for years.

But then, HBO decided to do the impossible. After the explosive success of The Sopranos, they began to show a willingness to put their money into series ideas out of the mainstream (Deadwood, Rome) and format-saving mini-series (Band of Brothers, The Pacific, From The Earth To The Moon). They even caught more lightning in a bottle with Alan Ball’s over-the-top supernatural soap opera True Blood. But it would take an investment of all their expertise, and probably $200 million, to create the smash-hit of 2011 – a series TV version of George R.R. Martin’s post-Tolkien reinvention of the sword and sorcery fantasy business, the now five-volume uber epic A Song Of Ice And Fire.

Taking the title of the first novel for that of the series, Game Of  Thrones is the first post-modern, but classically constructed, fantasy epic made for American network TV that is a creative, critical and (most importantly) ratings success. And by remaining very faithful to the source material, GOT creates a universe where no character is ever safe, even the ones played by the lead-billed actors. After watching basic cable, and Showtime, slowly steal away the accolades that were solely theirs at the turn of the 21st century, HBO has reclaimed their title of most important TV network. And flexing that muscle to make a show that no one else has the resources, or cojones, to make – an epic fantasy with dwarfs, dragons and enough sex and soap opera to make J.R. Ewing blush – HBO proves it’s still the coolest kid in the class.

BTW – honorable mention goes to ABC for the bold drafting move to give us Once Upon A Time. Great, no? Watchable, and building an audience? Yep.

5. The Year In Friday Night Lights [continued from 2010?]: Five seasons of the best family show on TV came to an end – in 2010, if DirecTV counts. But Friday Night Lights ran its last thirteen episodes on NBC in the spring of 2011, and that’s what counts, I guess. What also counts is that this entertaining, engrossing and heart-warming drama finally got its due from the Television Academy, winning Emmys for Kyle Chandler as lead actor and showrunner Jason Katims for his script of the finale, “Always”. It was something of an apology from the industry for mostly ignoring them for five seasons, but it was a greatly-deserved and fully earned apology. If you’ve not watched this show, take advantage of ESPN Classic, or DVD’s or streams or whatever you can get ahold of to watch the five seasons of this quiet, deeply emotional look at small town American family life. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

4. Everyone’s A [Social] Media Critic, And People That Matter Are Actually Listening: Now, this blog is three years old. It provides a place of pop-culture commentary and criticism for Cadillac Jack and me. But is this the forum where I had interaction with Dan Harmon (Community), Bill Prady (The Big Bang Theory), Dax Shephard (Parenthood), Carson Daly and the Divine Ms. Kylie Minogue? Nope. That’s Twitter.

By the early Nineties, the TV creative community realized that the internet was the home of the most devoted fan[atic]s. Chris Carter, of X Files fame, was a pioneering showrunner in terms of encouragement and support of, not to mention, interaction with online fans. But we’ve moved from stream-powered connectivity to the hyperdrive energy of a social media universe. Twitter, above all, allows the most immediate access to an astonishingly personal form of communication.

As I saw in a recent article on the phenomenon, the author likened it to fans, thanks to this real-time access, giving “notes” to the producers/writers/actors, just like a network or studio executive. Creators like Community’s Harmon and Cougar Town’s Bill Lawrence take this interaction very seriously, developing a passionate online fan base on Twitter (or other networks, like Tumblr) that clearly shows the networks that people are watching in numbers far more impressive than those of the weekly Nielsen ratings (see #9 above).

And the most obvious way to illustrate the ubiquity of Twitter in today’s TV? Next time you watch your favorite show, look for the hashtag. You know the on-screen graphic like #Fringe, #Grimm or #XFactor?? Those are hashtags, and they’re the road-maps of Twitter. Put one in your tweet, and Fringe fans will see your tweet in the resulting batches they see when searching on that tag. If network TV is using it to market to you, it’s become as mainstream as oral sex jokes on the Monday CBS line-up.

3. Jessica Lange On American Horror Story: In 1992, Jessica Lange won rave reviews for her Broadway performance as Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire. Stunningly, she was not nominated for the Tony. Next September, the TV Academy will correct that oversight by awarding Lange for the role on the F/X drama American Horror Story. Sort of.

Lange’s role of Constance Langdon on Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck’s (Glee) deranged F/X drama American Horror Story is Emmy-bait on a doily-laden silver tray. Equal parts Streetcar’s Blanche, Joan Crawford’s Blanche from Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? and an extra fierce Lady MacBeth with a southern drawl, Lange’s Constance took yards of the wackiest dialogue in prime time and mesmerized us withthe TV performance of the year. Just watch her at the beauty parlor mirror in the series’ closing first season episode, “Afterbirth”, and be knocked flat.

2. Cartman and Kenny Go Legit: Fifteen years ago, two guys got a deal from Comedy Central to make a cartoon show about four dirty little boys fr0m Colorado. The result, South Park, arrived with such pop-culture heat that, history says they could only burn that bright for a year… two, tops. Right?

In 1999, about the time they were expected to be used up, Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s feature version of their TV show, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, was a mesmerizing, filthy delight of an animated musical. Instead of jumping the shark, the TV show only became more mythologically complex.  By 2010, with all this melted Colorado snow under the bridge, Stan, Cartman, Kenny and Kyle were still an integral part of the Comedy Central schedule. And a show, that once may have lived for the shock value of a dirty cartoon, had become the home of the most dazzling (but still dirty) array of American social satire to appear on TV in a generation.

So, of course, we all knew what to expect when  they announced they were teaming up with Robert Lopez (Avenue Q) and Casey Nicholaw (The Drowsy Chaperone) on a Broadway musical, right?

No. How could anyone anticipate a breath-taking, break-neck song and dance extravaganza about the world of Mormonism, genital mutilation, the AIDS pandemic in the Third World, Star Wars, The Lord Of The Rings, and a graduate-level course in Broadway musical construction from the people who brought you Mecha-Streisand? That’s The Book of Mormon, winner of nine Tony Awards, the best-selling musical cast record in forty-two years, and the thing that finally made Parker and Stone legit in the eyes of the entertainment industry.

1. Breaking Bad Explodes With A Triple WTF?: Granted, finally watching the first three seasons and half of the current (fourth) one in just six weeks helped me make up my mind, but AMC’s Breaking Bad is the hands-down TV phenomena of 2011. Vince Gilligan’s (The X Files, Home Fries) powerful creation is a Swiss-timing thriller of the highest caliber, and possibly the second finest example of story construction in series TV history. (David Simon’s The Wire is the king, of course.)

A dizzying attention to detail, an unequaled dedication to patience, and a collection of truly great performances – especially Bryan Cranston’s triple Emmy-winning and downward spiraling Walter White and Aaron Paul’s redemption-seeking Jesse Pinkman – all make this the best show on TV, no questions asked. And two season’s worth of slow boil turned to explosive steam in this season’s finale -“Face Off“.

Carefully orchestrated plans put White’s nemesis Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito, left) where Walt needed him to be. And when the Wile E. Coyote-style bomb that Walt planted finally went off, we all jumped a foot. But then, Fring emerged from the smoke, seemingly spared. Our veins ran cold, until the camera moved carefully around to reveal the image here. Fring collapsed out of frame, we all exhaled the third of our “WTF!”s, and Breaking Bad swept all other 2011 TV dramas aside with a cloud of smoke. And when Stephen King calls it a “work of art“, you know we aren’t lying to you about how great Bad is.

**************************

And though we’re celebrating 2011’s Top Ten Pop Culture successes, let’s have a moment of silence for those who sort of died this year, the sad few that missed the mark, or failed to live up to the (or, our) hype –

• Whitney Cumming’s Half-And-Half: Her co-creation Two Broke Girls is the breakout hit of 2011’s new sit-coms, but her starring vehicle on NBC, Whitney, is a stale non-starter. Sticking out like a multi-camera sore thumb, it doesn’t jibe with NBC’s usual contingent of hip, single-camera shows.
• AMC’s The Killing: You can’t have it both ways. Starting the season by promising a self-contained murder mystery, then hedging your bets with a disaster of a last episode – who really done it? did a good cop go bad? – is a disaster of Twin Peaks season-two proportions.
• Terra Nova: Expensive, yes? Stupid? Sadly, yes. Don’t make the most expensive and technically complex sci-fi show in broadcast network history if it’s actually dumber than an episode of Joey.
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Best-selling novels that feature violent tushy violation are not prime Christmas box-office fare. Who knew? If the Chipmunks can out earn you, something’s gone terribly wrong. Not the least of which was your popGeezer’s idiotic prediction of record “R-rated” drama box-office results. Ouch.
• The X Factor (USA & UK): This one hurts the most. Who hyped the coming of “X” more than us? It didn’t really suck, and its ratings were still an improvement over the same nights in 2010 for FOX. But it did not arrive with a game-changing impact. The dance routines were watered down from the U.K. version’s usual cheese, the contestants were interesting but not incendiary, and the loss of Cheryl Cole was a bone-headed error. And everyone of these faults also applied to the original ITV version in 2011, which had significant ratings fall-off, allowing Strictly Come Dancing (the original Dancing With The Stars) to win the ratings war. Which also happened in the U.S. My magic 8-Ball has been “binned” as a result.

That’s our look at the most significant moments of 2011’s year in Pop Culture. Here’s hoping we see more movies in 2012, so we can see if they can make the grade next Christmas, and that you get more fresh popGeezer content than we had in 2011. (Get to work, Cadillac Jack!!)

The Replacements Are Coming! (Can’t Hardly Wait?) Your Midseason TV Premier Dates & A Look Forward At The 2011-12 TV Season [Part Deaux]

Happy New Year, TV fans & Geezoids!

Once upon a time (not a plug for any show now or ever on any network), mid-season replacement television was strictly second string, a cobbled-together collection of shows that weren’t good enough for the original schedule. Hopefully, they just might keep you distracted long enough not to realize that the piece of crap you were originally watching on that network had been cancelled.

Now, however, thanks in large part to the original programming philosophy of the FOX network, and all the cable nets that have come after it, the mid-season has become the second season. It’s a lovely place for quality shows on smaller networks to get a chance to be seen outside of the fall season clutter and a chance for the big nets to trot out shows that need to run for a full season’s worth of episodes without pre-emption (remember 24 or Lost).  That means that there are some, dare I say “many”, mid-season shows that are better than a lot of the junk that came out in the fall. Here’s our list of what’s coming, along with premier dates (where available) and an idea of what to expect:

JANUARY:

Jan. 1: ANGRY BOYS (HBO). Did you see the hilarious Summer Heights High when it ran on HBO a while back? Did you love it? Well, if you did, chances are you love this new vehicle for Summer Heights star (and Australia’s answer to Sascha Baron Cohen) Chris Lilley. Told in a series of short scenes and sketches, Lilley plays six different characters, from a domineering Japanese mother to an American black rapper. Does it all work? No. But, like I said, if you liked Summer Heights High…

Jan 3: CELEBRITY WIFE SWAP (ABC): Oh dear God, kill me now.

Jan 3: WORK IT (ABC): Bosom Buddies 2.0-without the wit of the original or the chemistry of Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari. [Ed. note - horrifying proof pictured at left.]

Jan. 4: MOBBED (FOX): Unscripted hilarity ensues when Howie Mandel (Deal or No Deal) goes looking for spontaneous entertainment. I dunno. You tell me what this crap is about.

Jan 8: THE FIRM (NBC): Former movie star (almost) Josh Lucas (Stealth, The Incredible Hulk) stars in the Tom Cruise role of Mitch McDeere in this serialized TV reboot of John Grisham’s first big hit novel. Could be fun if they can re-capture the roller-coaster-out-of-control feel of the film. Molly Parker, Juliette Lewis, Tricia Helfer andCallum Keith Rennie round out an excellent cast.

Jan. 8 HOUSE OF LIES (SHOWTIME): As part of their determined effort to unseat HBO as the home of premium channel goodness, Showtime brings us Oscar-nom Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda), former Veronica Mars Kristen Bell (pictured from the show at left), Richard Schiff (The West Wing) and Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation’s exquisite Jean Ralphio) as a group of unethical (is there any other kind?) big-time business consultants in this adults-onlyromp filled with nekkid be-hinds and all sorts of four-letter shenanigans. Haven’t seen much on this since I don’t get Showtime, but the buzz is good and the cast is certainly top-notch.

Jan 11: ARE YOU THERE CHELSEA? (NBC): A couple of years ago, funny gal Chelsea Handler (E’s Late Night with Chelsea Handler) wrote a best-selling book about her life called, Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea, and the brain trust at NBC got it in their heads to make a series of it. Not a bad thought perhaps, but this heavily tinkered-with mess, with Laura Prepon (That 70’s Show) as Handler and Handler herself playing her own sister (WTF!!!), looks like train wreck just waiting to happen.

Jan 12: ROB! (CBS): Sweet Mary, Mother of God, what is this? The one-note and so-not-capable-of-carrying-his-own-show Rob Schneider (SNL, practically everyAdam Sandler movie) stars along with the soon-to-be-humiliated Cheech Marin (Nash Bridges) in this uncomfortably offensive sit-com about a white guy who marries a Hispanic girl and immediately alienates her huge family. CBS has had a good go of it so far in the 2011 season, so they’re due for one unmitigated disaster.

Jan 12: THE FINDER (FOX): Ostensibly a spin-off of Bones, The Finder stars Geoff Stults (She’s Out of My League, The Break Up) as Walter Sherman, a guy with an uncanny knack for being able to find anything. Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile, Daredevil) co-stars as his buddy Leo. I’ve seen the pilot, and there is a lot of chemistry here between the leads. Plus, it comes from Bones creator Hart Hanson, so I’ll give it a try.

Jan 14: THE FADES (BBC AMERICA): Manufactured by our friends “across the pond”, Fades is the story of a young man named Paul (Iain de Caestecker) who sees dead people. I know nothing else about this show, but the Beebs love this kind of thing and crank these shows out like clockwork. If you’re really curious, it probably ran in England already and you can probably find some reviews [if not more] online.

Jan 15: NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (FOX): Fox sets out to prove that there truly are no new ideas. And apparently, no good ones either. Nevertheless, prepare for the sweet animated antics of the original cast (shown at left) from the 2004 film.

Jan 16: ALCATRAZ (FOX): To make up for the previous night’s crap-fest of Napoleon Dynamite, Fox brings us the latest from J.J. Abrams (Lost, Person of Interest, Fringe), starring Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), Jorge Garcia (Lost) and Sarah Jones (Sons of Anarchy). I’ve already waxed poetical about this once, so I won’t repeat myself. Just watch.

Jan 16: LOST GIRL (SYFY): If this show sounds familiar, it is. The Canadian network Showcase has been running this show since 2010. However, since few U.S. outlets carry Showcase,SyFy has picked up the show for U.S. distribution. Unlike SyFy’s hit series Being Human, which is based on a BBC program of the same name, Lost Girl is not a remake of the Canadian show. SyFy has purchased broadcast rights to the first two seasons of Lost Girl’s northern run and if it does well, will probably pick up season three. Lost Girl is the story of Bo (Anna Silk), a teenage girl who discovers she’s a Succubus, a member of the Fae who can suck the life force out of unsuspecting  men (I have an ex or two that fit that description). Apparently, the Fae are divided into two camps, the Light and the Dark (the Dark Fae are lead by genre fave Emmanuelle Vaugier [Smallville], and Bo is being forced to choose allegiance to one or the other. Typical teenage girls and their angsty ways…

Jan. 17: REMODELED (CW): Modeling guru Paul Fisher is creating a network of small modeling agencies in order to wield some big time clout. And he’s perfectly prepared to tough-love as many wannabe supermodels as he has to along the way. Oh goody, as if what the girls do to themselves after a meal isn’t punishment enough…

Jan 29: LUCK (HBO): Two-time Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man, Kramer Vs. Kramer) stars in this new premium cable series from Deadwood creator David Milch about the fun and frolic of horse-racing. I almost don’t care what this is about; it’s Dustin-freaking-Hoffman. On my TV. Every week! Nerdgasm. Geekspasm. Aaah…somebody, hold me. Oh, and Michael Mann directs the pilot and co-executive produces the series (pictured at left).

Jan. 31: KEY AND PEELE (COMEDY CENTRAL): New sketch comedy show from the guys who brought us Tosh.0. Why am I not more excited by that?

ESTABLISHED SHOWS RETURNING IN JANUARY:

1/2: THE BACHELOR (ABC), HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER (CBS), 2 BROKE GIRLS (CBS), TWO AND A HALF MEN (CBS), MIKE AND MOLLY (CBS), HAWAII 5-0 (CBS), PRETTY LITTLE LIARS (ABC FAMILY), THE LYING GAME (ABC FAMILY)

1/3: BODY OF PROOF (ABC), LAST MAN STANDING (ABC), NCIS (CBS), NCIS: LOS ANGELES (CBS), UNFORGETTABLE (CBS), BIGGEST LOSER (NBC), PARENTHOOD (NBC) SWITCHED AT BIRTH (ABC FAMILY), JANE BY DESIGN (ABC FAMILY)

1/4: REVENGE (ABC), HAPPY ENDINGS (ABC), THE MIDDLE (ABC), MODERN FAMILY (ABC), SUBURGATORY (ABC)

1/5: GRAY’S ANATOMY (ABC), PRIVATE PRACTICE (ABC), WINTER WIPEOUT (ABC), VAMPIRE DIARIES (CW), SECRET CIRCLE (CW), JERSEY SHORE (MTV-SEASON PREMIER)

1/6: A GIFTED MAN (CBS), CSI: NY (CBS), BLUE BLOODS (CBS), NIKITA (CW), SUPERNATURAL (CW), MERLIN (SYFY-SEASON PREMIER), PORTLANDIA (IFC-SEASON PREMIER), THE INCREASINGLY POOR DECISIONS OF TODD MARGARET (IFC-SEASON PREMIER)

1/7: COPS (FOX), SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (NBC)

1/8: DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (ABC), ONCE UPON A TIME (ABC), PAN AM (ABC), THE GOOD WIFE (CBS), CSI-MIAMI (CBS), HELL ON WHEELS (AMC), AMERICAN DAD (FOX), CLEVELAND SHOW (FOX), FAMILY GUY (FOX), THE SIMPSONS (FOX), CALIFORNICATION (SHOWTIME-SEASON PREMIER), SHAMELESS (SHOWTIME-SEASON PREMIER)

1/9: CASTLE (ABC)

1/10: 90210 (CW), THE GAME (BET-SEASON PREMIER), LET’S STAY TOGETHER (BET-SEASON PREMIER)

1/11: LAW & ORDER-SVU (NBC), WHITNEY (NBC), ONE TREE HILL (CW-SEASON PREMIER), FACE-OFF (SYFY-SEASON PREMIER), GHOST HUNTERS (SYFY-SEASON PREMIER)

1/12: BIG BANG THEORY (CBS), PERSON OF INTEREST (CBS), THE MENTALIST (CBS), THE OFFICE (NBC), PARKS AND RECREATION (NBC), UP ALL NIGHT (NBC), 30 ROCK (NBC-SEASON PREMIER), BONES (FOX-MIDSEASON FINALE),

1/13: FRINGE (FOX), KITCHEN NIGHTMARES (FOX)

1/14: THE NERDIST (BBC AMERICA)

1/15: UNDERCOVER BOSS (CBS-SEASON PREMIER), LEVERAGE (TNT-SEASON FINALE)

1/16: GOSSIP GIRL (CW), BEING HUMAN (SYFY-SEASON PREMIER)

1/17: GLEE (FOX), NEW GIRL (FOX), RAISING HOPE (FOX), JUSTIFIED (FX-SEASON PREMIER), WHITE COLLAR (USA-SEASON PREMIER), SOUTHLAND (TNT-SEASON PREMIER)

1/18: CSI (CBS), AMERICAN IDOL (FOX-SEASON PREMIER), ROYAL PAINS (USA-SEASON PREMIER),

1/19: ARCHER (FX-SEASON PREMIER), UNSUPERVISED (FX)

1/23: HART OF DIXIE (CW), HOUSE (FOX)

1/25: TOUCH (FOX-SPECIAL ONE TIME ONLY SNEAK PEAK)

1/27: CHUCK (NBC-2 HOUR SERIES FINALE), SPARTACUS: VENGEANCE (STARZ-SEASON PREMIER)

1/31: RINGER (CW)

FEBRUARY:

Feb. 6: SMASH (NBC): Well, I’ve already gone on and on about how this is one of the most anticipated shows of the year for me, so I won’t do it again. I won’t tell you that is a great send up of Broadway from Steven Spielberg, starring Katherine McPhee (American IdoI), Debra Messing (Will & Grace) and Angelica Huston (Lonesome Dove). I’ll just tell you as emphatically as I can, watch this show. Watch this show! Watch this show!!

Feb. 7: THE RIVER (ABC): Another one I’m really looking forward to from Paranormal Activity guy Oren Peli, starring Bruce Greenwood (Nowhere Man), Leslie Hope (season one of 24) and Paul Blackthorne (Dresden Files). Hopefully, it’s as good as it sounds. [Ed. note - I thought this was an adaptation of the Bruce Springsteen song].

Feb. 19: LIFE’S TOO SHORT (HBO): Ricky Gervais’ latest faux doc, in the spirit of the original The Office, features little person Warwick Davis (Willow, The Harry Potter films, Wicket the Ewok) as he tries to beg, borrow and steal his way back into the limelight. A whole raft of celebrity cameos, from Johnny Depp to Liam Neeson to Sting are featured on a weekly basis.

RETURNING SHOWS IN FEBRUARY:

2/2: I JUST WANT MY PANTS BACK (MTV-SEASON PREMIER)

2/3: SHARK TANK (ABC-SEASON PREMIER), GRIMM (NBC), WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? (NBC)

2/5: THE VOICE (NBC-SEASON PREMIER RIGHT AFTER THE SUPER BOWL)

2/12: CELEBRITY APPRENTICE (NBC-SEASON PREMIER), WALKING DEAD (AMC)

2/17: *UNDERCOVER BOSS (CBS) MOVES HERE THIS WEEK.

2/19: AMAZING RACE (CBS-SEASON PREMIER), EASTBOUND AND DOWN (HBO-SEASON PREMIER)

MARCH:

3/4: GCB [aka GOOD CHRISTIAN BELLES/BITCHES] (ABC): The fact that ABC already backed off the title on this one and changed it from Bitches to Belles to an acronym is one indicator that the net may have siphoned all the snark of the original book right out of this Kristin Chenoweth (Glee, Wicked) vehicle. And really, the show’s lead isn’t Chenoweth at all (though I’ll bet she steals every scene she’s in), but Leslie Bibb (Iron Man 2, Crossing Jordan) who plays a scandalized, poverty-stricken LA socialite forced to move home to Dallas. The church angle gets played up big here, with one example of hometown hypocrisy after another as everyone insists on never “practicing what they preach”. Also starring Annie Potts (Designing Women) who’s certainly no stranger to the southern-fried material, I just don’t know about this one. The trailer is laugh out loud funny, but will ABC have the gumption to stand up to the thin-skinned church groups who are going to get their choir robes all out of joint? We’ll see.

3/6: BREAKING IN (FOX): I know, I know, this show was on Fox last year, but they cancelled it for the “official” reason of “we don’t have anything to put it with”. Now, thanks to the success of The New Girl, they apparently do, and FOX has brought it back. Adding Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) to the mix as the new owner of the security company still run by the perfect Christian Slater (My Own Worst Enemy), Brett Harrison (Reaper) is still the focus of the series, and Odette Anabelle will be back (juggling this show with her newer duties on House) as the love interest. Michael Rosenbaum’s (Smallville) return is dependent on his current feature film schedule, but the show would be hurt by the loss of his character, the human tsunami that is Dutch. It’s a miracle that this show got a second chance, people! Please don’t miss out on giving one of the funniest shows on TV a shot before Fox decides they still “don’t have anything to put it with” and it goes away.

3/13: FASHION STAR (NBC): Blah, blah, blah, who the hell cares? More fashion/runway reality crap from the Peacock. Argh!

3/15: MISSING (ABC): I can read the first line of the press release from here, “Film star Ashley Judd comes to television…” Judd, who began her acting career way back in the day on Star Trek: The Next Generation as Ensign Robin Leffert, went on to do movies with the likes of Morgan Freeman and Hugh Jackman before getting relegated to B-movie/straight to DVD fare, one step away from the Where Are They Now? file. On the Alphabet, she’s starring as a mom and widow of a CIA agent played (presumably) in flashbacks by Sean Bean (Game of Thrones). While on holiday in Europe, her son goes missing, and is presumed kidnapped. Mom immediately goes into action, and she’s got skills, ‘cause you see, Mom was a CIA agent too! I don’t know if the premise of this show is really as ridiculous as it sounds, or if the press release was just written that way, but this one seems like a stretch. Still, it is Sean Bean (talk about a guy who knew how to make the step from movies to TV!) and all the European locations should be really pretty. In fact, every episode is set on location in a different city. It’s just that ABC has really been keeping their mouths shut about this one. That can’t be a good thing, right?

3/19: TOUCH(FOX): Keifer Sutherland (24) returns to the Fox network in a show that’s just about as different from his last one as you could possibly get! In this one, Keef plays the single dad of a young autistic mute who has somehow managed to plug into the formula of the universe and tell the future. Danny Glover (Lethal  Weapon ad infinitium) co-stars as the stereotypical wise old guy with all the answers and, Sutherland apparently spends each episode deciphering his son’s cryptic warnings and then averting disaster. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but the trailer looks really good, and I still have good feelings for Mr. Sutherland from 24. Despite the presence of Heroescreator Tim Kring as creator and showrunner her, I’ll still have to check this one out. [NOTE: This is the show’s first night in its regular time slot after the one-shot 1/25 sneak preview. It will probably be a repeat of that episode.]

RETURNING SHOWS IN MARCH:

3/4: HARRY’S LAW (NBC-SEASON PREMIER)

3/11: DANCING WITH THE STARS (ABC-SEASON PREMIER), BOB’S BURGERS (FOX-SEASON PREMIER)

3/30: CSI:NY (CBS)

Also, we have months, but no exact start dates for:

AWAKE (NBC)-MARCH*

MAD MEN (AMC)-MARCH*

GAME OF THRONES (HBO)-APRIL* [*all be season premiers.]

You got all that? I hope so. You should know, just in case you have info that contradicts some of mine, that it’s difficult to get any two sources to agree on most of this. The nets themselves seem to be loathe to put return info on their own websites, lest you stop watching and go somewhere else until your faves come back.

Also, Fox isn’t going to give us a return for Bones until after the mid-season finale plays on January 12^th and TNT isn’t going to tell us when we can expect more Leverage until the season closer on January 15^th, so let’s not even ask, ok? I also don’t have dates for Rizzoli And Isles, Doctor Who (currently rumored for Fall 2012, in order to get Matt Smith’s third series to cross over in the year of The Doctor’s fiftieth birthday – 2013), True Blood or anything else we’re not expecting till next summer. It’s just too early for that.

Mysteriously, ABC has one of its most solid stand-by’s, the hysterical and relatively well-performing Cougar Town, starring former Friend Courtney Cox, off the schedule, even though they insist it’s not cancelled. And the same with NBC and Community, a favorite with critics and [smart] viewers alike, or USA with Psych. When will they return? Who knows? And what about those other two shows ABC announced as mid-season replacements, Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, featuring the return of James (Dawson) Van der Beekand the excellent Krysten Ritter, or Scandal, from Gray’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rimes, about big city publicists in Washington D.C? No-shows so far.

I do have one interesting piece of info about perennial cable favorite, The Closer. It seems that, instead of closing up the Major Crimes Division of the LAPD as they were supposed to a week or so ago (from this writing), TNT has just announced that there will be an additional six episodes of the show, out this summer and designed to launch a Closer spin-off starring Mary McDonnell, called Major Crimes. More news as we get it.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope your holiday season was a great one and that the New Year finds us all prosperous and well. I’ll be back in the near future to look into the crystal ball of my big glass eye and predict the fate of the TV landscape once again. And take your hand off that turkey leg!

We’re saving that for the puppy…

It’s The popGeezer Radio Hot 100+ For 2011!

It is that time of year – the end – where one gets in the mood to cound things down. And that’s the plan for New Year’s Weekend, starting on December 30th at 9 AM CT, on popGeezer Radio.

We’ll unspool our annual countdown of the 100 (plus!!) poppiest tracks of 2011, across all pop music genres, in a special playlist show, which will encore all weekend! And what, prey tell, are those super-pop gems for 2011? Just look:

Please join us this weekend – or any time – on the pGR stream for swell music like this year’s popGeezer Radio Hot 100+!

Girl Group Little Mix Wins U.K.’s “X Factor”

Judge-crafted girl group Little Mix won the good old original X Factor Sunday night at London’s Wembley Arena.

It was the first group win in the show’s history, and the first time a girl group had made it into the finals.

Hooray…. and I’ve decided that two X Factors at once is one too many.

So there.

• Etta James funeral set for Saturday
• 911 tape: Demi Moore 'convulsing' after 'smoking something'
• Seal on breakup: 'It doesn't really make sense'
• Mean girls: Fighting on reality TV
• Rihanna to produce UK reality show
• Review: 'The Grey' is a walk on the wild side
• Review: 'Man' is convoluted