alec Baldwin-related stories
Posted Mar 19th 2010 12:28AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: OpEd, 30 Rock, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E15) "This is an exciting time for NBC. Not 'Friends,' 'Seinfeld,' 'ER' exciting, more like 3-D episodes of 'Merlin' exciting.' - Jack
I wonder if NBC killed off Don Geiss (that's him in the Han Solo-like cryogenic freeze thing above - another 'Star Wars' reference) because of Rip Torn's real-life problems? Sure, this episode was probably filmed before his latest escapade, but similar things had happened in the past, and maybe they didn't want to have to have him come back on the show now and then. Then again, Geiss had a lot of health problems in the past and almost died once already, so maybe his death was already in the works. And it certainly works as a sign that things are changing at NBC now that GE has sold it to Kabletown.
Continue reading '30 Rock' - 'Don Geiss, America, and Hope' Recap
Posted Mar 12th 2010 1:20AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: OpEd, 30 Rock, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E14) "How could a company from Philly buy a company from New York? That would be like Vietnam defeating the United States in a ground war." - Jack, about Kabletown
A week without
'30 Rock' is like a week without happiness, and we've gone through a few weeks without my favorite Thursday night comedy so it's really fantastic to have the show back in all of it's laugh-out-loud loopiness. The Olympics interrupted it for a while, and I truly laughed out loud when Liz just moved her mouth, saying nothing, and then Tina Fey said something about Lindsey Vonn winning a gold medal over it because they didn't know what the results were when it was filmed. That will be remembered as one of the funniest bits of the season I'm sure.
But wait ... what happened to Don Geiss??
Continue reading '30 Rock' - 'Future Husband' Recap
Posted Mar 8th 2010 7:38AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: OpEd, Music and Variety, Awards, Reality-Free
There was a great industry joke lobbed at the Hollywood awards machine by the short-lived but loved TV cartoon '
The Critic.' The joke featured a Midwestern farmer and his boy spotting a plane headed to Hollywood.
"Yep, son," the wide-eyed farm says with a big pitchfork in his all-American paw, "on that plane are the people who fill our lives with blockbuster movies, moronic situation comedies, awards shows where awards shows win awards. Get my gun, boy."
If the 82nd Academy Awards takes home an Emmy or even a nomination for their television broadcast, just about every middle American farmer with a sidearm will land on a terror alert watch list and every first class flight from New York to Hollywood will have to divert over the Gulf of Mexico in order to avoid the inevitable strafe of gunfire from America's heartland.
Continue reading Academy Awards Broadcast Was a Comedy of Errors and an Error of Comedy
Posted Mar 1st 2010 11:29AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Other Reality Shows, OpEd, Celebrities
'The Marriage Ref' is a strange beast. After watching last night's post-Olympic sneak preview of the show, which moves to its Thursday at 10PM ET slot on March 4, it feels like a '60s-style celebrity panel game show joined to a TLC marriage show.
It's a pretty straightforward idea: a married couple is depicted having an argument over a specific issue. In the pilot, for instance, one husband wanted to get his recently-deceased dog stuffed and display the mutt in the living room, over his wife's vehement objections.
The celebrity panel, who in the premiere consisted of Kelly Ripa, Alec Baldwin and executive producer Jerry Seinfeld, talk and joke about the situation, coming down one one side or the other. The final decision is rendered by the ref, host Tom Papa, who tells the couple via satellite feed.
But the pilot made me want to see much more of the couples having their funny conflicts than the celebrities yukking it up over those conflicts. And that's a problem.
Continue reading 'The Marriage Ref' Would Be Funnier Without the Celebrities
Posted Feb 14th 2010 1:00PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Celebreality
This is rich. One of the celebrity judges on Jerry Seinfeld's new reality show,
'The Marriage Ref' will be Madonna. That's right. Madonna. How funny is that? For advice on dancing or pop sings or shocking the public or even cone-shaped bras, Madonna would be the authority to go to. However, is she really the person you'd go to for marital advice?
Still, it's a big time booking for
Seinfeld's new show. She's a star. And when you consider that Alec Baldwin is another choice for marriage judge, the requirement for appearing on the show is not personal success with marital relations. Lately,
Alec Baldwin has been the poster boy for how not to handle joint custody of a child post-divorce!
Continue reading Jerry Seinfeld Gets Madonna for 'The Marriage Ref'
Posted Feb 12th 2010 12:50AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: OpEd, 30 Rock, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E13) "Valentine's Day is a sham created by greeting card companies to reinforce gender stereotypes." - Liz, to Pete's daughter
So here we have a Valentine's Day episode of
'30 Rock,' where we find Liz without a date, Toofer set up on a date (with an ... urban woman), Frank doing his usual Frank stuff, and Lutz talking to the gang about his girlfriend, who no one believes is real. But he says that he has the proof on his web site.
And the web site is real! He insists that she, too, is real, though the pics show Karens Carpenter, Black, Allen, Walker, and whatever the last name of the girl from 'Frosty The Snowman' is.
Continue reading '30 Rock' - 'Anna Howard Shaw Day' Recap
Posted Feb 11th 2010 12:23PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, 30 Rock, Reality-Free
If you haven't heard this morning,
'30 Rock's' Alec Baldwin was rushed to the hospital late last night.
CBS News says that someone, probably his daughter, called 911 after Baldwin was "unresponsive" in his New York City apartment. A law enforcement source told the AP off the record that Baldwin had argued with his daughter and had threatened to take pills, which prompted the phone call.
However, Baldwin was only at Lenox Hill hospital for about an hour and then he was released. In fact, his publicist says that he is
already back at work today. So this is either a misunderstanding, a real incident that they're trying to cover up for obvious reasons, or it's the
worst promotion for '30 Rock' (tonight at 8pm) that I've ever heard.
Posted Feb 5th 2010 1:00AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: OpEd, 30 Rock, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E12) "It was perfect. Like a John Mayer song." - Jenna, on meeting with her mom
There's a 1984 episode of
'Kate & Allie' titled 'New Year's Eve' where Kate and Allie make a bet: Kate has to give up smoking and Allie has to give up eating chocolate (never mind that we never even saw Kate smoke before, but that's another story). Sound familiar? OK, so Liz had to stay away from all junk food and not just chocolate, but still, that was one of the plots of tonight's
'30 Rock.' It's an old staple with sitcoms, of course, I just didn't think that '30 Rock' would necessarily go there.
I also don't want to see yet another character have to stay at Liz's apartment. Pete has stayed there, Tracy, and now Frank. Who's next, Jack? Kenneth? Luckily, even a couple of creaky plots can't completely hurt an episode of this show because there are so many great jokes flying at you from all directions.
Continue reading Review: '30 Rock' - 'Verna'
Posted Jan 22nd 2010 2:30AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: OpEd, 30 Rock, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E11) "They're all named Sean, they're mean, and I hate it here." - Kenneth, about Boston
Being from Boston myself, I'm really enjoying these Boston (and Waltham)-centric episodes of
30 Rock. I often cringe at shows that have episodes set around this area. They'll get a location wrong or make dumb assumptions about us or get an accent wrong (more on that after the jump), but this show is getting a lot of little things wrong. Even the street scenes were well done, with the brick and all that.
And wait... Nancy mentioned Kelly's Roast Beef and, holy crap, Jack and Nancy actually imitated Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson? That is 55 kinds of awesome. Someone at
30 Rock knows Boston well.
Continue reading Review: 30 Rock - Winter Madness
Posted Jan 18th 2010 2:00AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: OpEd, Watercooler Talk, Celebrities, Awards
Did your favorite actors and TV shows score Golden Globe awards tonight? Let's take a look at how things shook out in the TV categories at the 67th Annual Golden Globes.
Mad Men, Best Television Series - Drama. With competition from
Big Love,
Dexter,
House, and
True Blood, I'm really glad I wasn't picking the winner here. They're all fantastic. I wouldn't say that
True Blood delivered its best episodes last season, so I don't have a problem with that one not winning (though I'm a big fan of the show).
Mad Men is definitely deserving (especially the "lawn mower" episode), although
Dexter and
Big Love both had great seasons.
Continue reading Michael C. Hall, Mad Men score Golden Globe awards
Posted Jan 15th 2010 10:45AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: OpEd, 30 Rock, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E10) "For four years I've had to make do with what passes for men around here, with their untucked shirts, boneless faces, their Stars,
both Wars and Trek." - Jack
So Tina Fey got a lot of action in this special double-header. In the
first episode, she did it with James Franco (and a pillow - I don't want to know more than that), and in this one she makes out with Danny. Which reminds me: we need more episodes where they actually show what's going on with
TGS. We don't see many skits anymore or anything else to do with the show, just plots involving the personal lives of the characters (with the occasional plot about a problem/scheme Jack has concerning NBC and executives). I'd like to get back to more of that.
In the meantime though, this was another good episode. Facebook!
Posted Jan 15th 2010 2:40AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: OpEd, 30 Rock, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E09) "The local station edited 'Will & Grace' so much that it was just called 'Karen'." - Randy Lemon
In my mind, Jack Donaghy had nothing to do with the whole
Leno/Conan/NBC mess. Sure, he's not as high up as Jeff Zucker or Jeff Gaspin or any other executives named Jeff that the Peacock Network might have. But he's the head of a couple of divisions, so they might have asked him for his opinion on the matter. Jack cares about money, sure, but he seems like a Team Conan guy to me.
But I don't like him in "lost Jack" mode, where's he's lovesick and/or frazzled. And that's how he was in both of the new episodes tonight.
Continue reading Review: 30 Rock - Klaus and Greta
Posted Jan 7th 2010 5:30PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Video, Celebrities, 30 Rock, Reality-Free
I'm not sure what the heck
James Franco is doing on General Hospital (though I kind of admire his quirky career strategy), but I do know what he's doing on
30 Rock: he's playing himself, trying to set up a fake romance with Jenna. Here's a sneak peek of the episode, which airs on January 14.
[via Zap2it]
Posted Jan 3rd 2010 11:01AM by Nick Zaino
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Animation, Curb Your Enthusiasm, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, 30 Rock, Reality-Free
More of our best of the decade coverage, which started on Tuesday. You can read the other posts at the link above. Here, we talk about the funniest actors of the last ten years.
If you want to be a great comedic actor, you can never let on that you know you're being funny. Your character never knows what the joke is. That's why Rodney Dangerfield was a great, legendary stand-up comedian, and a fairly poor comic actor.
Everyone on this list excels at the comedic poker face. Steve Carell and Ricky Gervais, in their
Office boss characters, don't know that most of the rest of the office is laughing at them. Or at least they don't understand why. Stephen Colbert, despite all of the attention
The Colbert Report have received, may be the most underrated comic actor, because the character is so seamless, sometimes it's hard to tell it's a character. Shatner is a legend for playing campy with a poker face. And Neil Patrick Harris as a cad? A
straight cad? Perfect.
Here are a few of our favorite comedic actors from the past decade, and may their characters never realize the joke's on them.
Continue reading Best TV of the '00s: Comedic Actor
Posted Dec 23rd 2009 2:05PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Video, Reality-Free
When Neil Patrick Harris hosted the Emmys, Dr. Horrible conveniently invaded for a moment, spreading webseries fear throughout the TV industry audience. It was a funny bit, serving mainly as a vehicle for some jokes about buffering and tiny screen sizes. Hopefully that made the TV people feel better, if only for a little while, because online video is showing no signs of stopping.
Continue reading Top TV Stories of 2009: The continued rise of online video
Next Page >
The TV Squad Podcast: New Shows, Conan Tour, 'Breaking Bad' and More!
'Breaking Bad' Tidbits from Cranston, Paul and Odenkirk
Andy Cohen on Jersey Housewives, 'Top Chef,' and Being the Face of Bravo
