TVSquad

Kim Voynar
-

Kim Voynar is a writer living in Seattle with her husband, four of her six kids, her mother and three lazy cats. Fave TV shows include The Apprentice, Smallville, ER, and Third Watch. She is addicted to Adult Swim, anime, and admits, if pressured, to watching American Idol (but only, you understand, from a purely intellectual standpoint - ahem). In addition to writing and homeschooling four kids under the age of 8, she loves theater and spends far too much time designing costumes and makeup and acting in community theater with her daughter. Occasionally, she sleeps.

I was watching American Idol last night (okay, I admit it, it's my secret guilty pleasure). In between admiring a couple of the singers  - Ace, Taylor, and Chris (oh yeah, bald guys do it for me) and cringing over others (WHAT the heck was up with that performance by David Radford? He looked like an epileptic Elvis! And don't get me started on Bobby Bennett's gut-churning rendition of "Copa Cobana"! My eyes and ears haven't recovered from that one yet), I focused on my favorite part of American Idol - Simon. Yes, Simon can be a tad acerbic at times, he occasionally dabbles in sarcasm, but he's still my fave of the three judges, and here are five reasons why.

As we reported yesterday, Franklin Cover, best known as dorky white guy Tom Willis on The Jeffersons in the 1970s, passed away. His death made me ruminate on The Jeffersons, which was a mainstay of my childhood. Good old George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley, the little man with big ideas, who grew to see race issues in a different light through his relationship with interracial couple Tom and Helen Willis. Helen was played by Roxie Roker, mother of rocker Lenny Kravitz, and the character of Tom was supposedly based on her real-life white husband (an interesting tale related to me by Roker's nephew several years ago).

George and wife Lousie (Weezie), played by the late Isabel Sanford, were always struggling with issues of equality in their household, not to mention issues caused by sweet-faced-but-evil Mother Jefferson (Zara Cully) but Weezie didn't take any guff from her man, and neither did their maid, Florence (the best character in the show, played with deadpan perfection by Marla Gibbs). What made The Jeffersons great was the way it dealt with issues of race, class, and equality with sharp-witted humor; George was never really quite as bad a guy, at heart, as much as he might have seemed to be at times. Through his friendship with Tom Willis and bumbling Brit neighbor Bentley (Paul Benedict), and eventually through son Lionel's marriage to mixed race Jenny, daughter of Helen and Tom, George learned to face his own prejudices, even as he dealt with the realities of racism himself, which didn't go away when he moved on up to that deeeeeluxe apartment in the sky.

But here's one thing that I find disturbing: how is it possible that in all these years, I've never realized there were TWO actors playing Lionel? Mike Evans played Lionel in 1975; his job duties as creator of Good Times forced him to leave the show, and he was replaced by Damon Evans, who played the part from 1975-1978. Mike Evans took the role back again from 1979-81. Am I the only person on the planet who didn't know there were two Lionels? I knew there were two Beckys on Roseanne, and two Masons on Santa Barbara (sorry, but Terry Lester just never did it for me as Mason Capwell #2), but two Lionels? Wow.

It's not entirely unheard of for stars to accidentally omit thanking someone during the heady rush of an awards acceptance speech. Hardly anyone forgets to thank God or Jesus, but accountants, personal assistants,  ex and current spouses, sure. I can totally understand how someone might forget one name out of the long list of names they have to rattle off in 20 seconds. When accepting two Grammy awards Wednesday night, however, Kelly Clarkson neglected to mention the show that gave her big start - American Idol. Clarkson, who won awards for best pop vocal album for "Breakaway" and female pop vocal performance for "Since U Been Gone", thanked pretty much everyone else on the planet, but not Idol or its judges, Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul. Clarkson defended herself afterwards, saying she thanked "the fans" and that's American Idol.

Well, not exactly, Kelly. I mean, don't get me wrong - I think Kelly Clarkson rocks, and she's done very well for herself since she won Idol, beating out Justin Guarini (who, since that godawfulness of the film From Justin to Kelly, seems to have slipped into obscurity). But if you look back at photos of Clarkson before and during her audition, compared to now, she hardly resembles her former self. Without Idol, she might very well still be hawking popcorn at that movie theater job and singing Celine Dion songs in smoky karaoke bars instead of cradling two Grammys. I bet Simon was...displeased...at the lack of love for Idol.

Let's face it - awards shows are mostly lots of boring stuff with the occasional exciting moment when the awards you care about come up. To make things more exciting for you, though, TV Squad has come up with this fun-filled Play-Along-at-Home game to help occupy your time during the more mundane moments. We're not saying this is a drinking game, but, you know, if you wanted to make it a drinking game, or a potato chip eating game, or whatever, you could do that.

Here's how you play along. Just keep score at home (or drink, or eat a chip, or whatever you want) everytime you see the following things happen during the broadcast of the Golden Globes:

Actress Shelley Winters, whose long career ranged from sexpot showgirl, to serious dramatic actress, to playing Roseanne's outspoken, poker-playing grandmother on Roseanne in the 1990s, passed away today at the age of 85 of heart failure. Winters had been hospitalized in October after a heart attack.  Winters won Oscars in 1959 for The Diary of Anne Frank and again in 1965 for A Patch of Blue, in which she played a hateful mother who tries to end her blind daughter's friendship with a black man, played by Sidney Poitier. Winters, a serioius actress who once said "it takes twenty years to become an actor", was a devotee of The Actors Studio.

I really loved Winters in her recurring role on Roseanne, which is still one of my favorite television shows ever. Winters and Roseanne Barr had such similar delivery styles, she was completely believable as Roseanne's grandmother. What really made Winters stand out, though, was her willingness to continually reinvent herself. She began her career as a voluptous sex kitten, but later in life when she gained weight she became the butt of many comedians' jokes.

Controversial new television show The Book of Daniel has been removed from the lineup of Nashville's NBC affiliate after the show drew thousands of complaints from irate viewers, incuding letters faxed in on church letterhead. The show has now been pulled from seven network affiliates, mostly in the South.  The Book of Daniel, which features Aidan Quinn as a pill-popping Episcopalian priest with a gay son, has drawn the fire of conservative Christian groups, most notably the American Family Association, which is encouraging members through its website to protest the show and threaten boycotts of advertisers.

Bob talked last month about Fred Savage's new show, Crumbs, which debuts tomorrow night at 9:30EST on ABC. Bob didn't have a lot of info on the show at that time, but thanks to a great interview with Savage over on CNN, we now have more Fredtabulous scoop for you. Crumbs is a show about a dysfunctional family (I know, shocking to have a dysfunctional family in a sitcom, but bear with me). Jane Curtin plays the mom, who just got released from the mental hospital. Dad (William Devane) is expecting a baby with his girlfriend. One son is dead, one (Eddie McClintock) stuck around to run the family restaurant, and the third (Savage) is a gay prodigal son returning home from a failed Hollywood career.