TVSquad

The four CBS show panels on Friday involved four of the five new programs the network is rolling out in the fall (there was no panel for Gary Unmarried, or whatever they're calling it today, because Jay Mohr and his wife Nikki Cox are renewing their vows overseas). While the panels for The Mentalist, The Ex List, Eleventh Hour, and Worst Week had their moments, none of them were particularly newsworthy or interesting.

At least Diane Ruggiero, the creator of The Ex List, was entertaining enough to keep me from jabbing a pen in my arm to keep me awake. In fact, she might have actually convinced me to watch The Lake House, as long as I have a drink in my hand.

Ruggiero recounted a drinking game she and her friends had where she and her friends would watch The Lake House, and, "If you want to make a joke, you have to drink and we're drunk in like the first five minutes because none of us cannot like not make a joke. It's just ridiculous." I have to give Ruggiero some Jersey props; she's been in LaLa Land since landing her previous show, That's Life, but she's still got the normal feisty Jersey gal in her.

The Ex List (which, oddly enough, is based on an Israeli miniseries), as the name implies, is based on a list of previous romantic interests that Bella, played by Elizabeth Reaser, goes through after a psychic tells her she needs to get married to one of them within a year, or she'll never get married. Even though they have a list, Ruggiero feels they won't be married to it, like My Name is Earl was until this season. "There's another fated element to it, so I'm not really -- she's not just going through -- there is a list that exists, but there's also another element to it that will help propel it." Also, the people Bella may reconnect with may not be romantic interests that were reciprocated. "I have been romantically involved with some people that might not necessarily agree with that assessment," she said, making the cranky writers laugh.

When a critic mentioned that there was a lot of "vaginal humor" in the pilot, Ruggiero responded by saying, "I actually let my vagina write half of the script." She had more funny lines, and a very nice monologue about her life since moving from New Jersey to make That's Life (Alan Sepinwall has the transcript here). I kinda liked the pilot, mainly because Bella seemed like a normal cute woman in her 30's going about her life, and I was one of the three people who enjoyed That's Life when it was on, so I'll definitely keep checking the show out.

Simon Baker, sporting what seemed to be the same Clark Kent frames Tim Daly and Zach Braff wore to their press conferences, supported his producer, Bruno Heller, at the press session for The Mentalist. Fuller plays Patrick Jane, a rogue cop who used to be a fake TV psychic; he now uses the observational skills he honed as a psychic to help solve crimes.

It actually took a little while for the inevitable question about Psych came up. Heller's reply: "Patrick Jane isn't pretending to be a psychic. He was someone who worked as a psychic -- but now is very honest and direct about not having those powers. So there's no pretense. They're two quite different shows. You can always draw parallels with other shows, but this is much more like Sherlock Holmes than that show for instance."

Eleventh Hour is based on a British miniseries; it stars Rufus Sewell as a FBI consultant who helps the agency solve crimes through real science. Issues that will be explored during the series, among others, will be cloning, genetically engineered agriculture, cryonics, and cancer cures gone awry. It's so based in fact, says producer Cyrus Voris, that one of the writers "...actually used to work for NASA, actually literally was a rocket scientist. One of the (other) writers was a science journalist for years and has written about science for Time magazine, The New Yorker," and Scientific American.

Worst Week is also based on a British series. It's about a guy named Sam (Kyle Bornheimer) who gets into a series of mishaps and understandings during the week when he and his girlfriend is to tell her family that A) she's pregnant and B) they're getting married. These are colossal blunders, like Sam accidentally peeing into the pot where his future mother-in-law's famous duck dish is residing, or accidentally making his girlfriend and her mother think that the father is dead.

Creator Matt Tarses says that each "worst week" will play out over several episodes, and -- at least at first -- revolve around the wedding, the baby's arrival, and other life events. How can there be more than one "worst week?" "You think you've had your worst week and you're wrong about that is what we're going to try to explore, that he's going to keep having weeks that are unbelievably bad," he said.

How many jokes -- many of which are physical -- did he take from the British version? "I would say 90%." Not sure if he was joking about that or not. But Bornheimer, who's very good at improv, chimed in that, "The tea and crumpets scene had to be cut."

For more detailed impressions of the new CBS shows, check out the TV Squad preview from June.

As you've seen by the news I posted, Showtime took the remainder of the afternoon to peddle their wares. They had an executive session and a panel with the stars and showrunners of four of their original shows. And those panels weren't any more interesting. More later...