TVSquad

(S01E02) - "You're just one boy. What good can you do here against all that?"

Kings is a show about a lot of things: love, money, greed, power, guys in suits that cost more than one year of college tuition. Mostly it's about action and consequences. So if the show's premiere episode was about war as a consequence, then naturally the next episode should be about its root cause: politics.

We finally get a taste of the aristocracy from the inside in the second episode. All the scheming and conniving that makes the greatest primetime soap operas and dramas like The Shield and The West Wing so great to watch. The fun comes from figuring how people like Vic Mackey and President Bartlet are going to get themselves out one bear trap without chewing their own foot off and choking on the marrow.

In Kings' case, however, the plot seems to have found its way out of one bear trap and inadvertently stepped right into another.

(S01E01) - "We give up what we want when we want power."

The two-part premiere of NBC's new political morality drama Kings kicks off in ways you would expect.

It's not just a political soap opera. It's a war epic. It's a family drama. It's a historical fantasy, even though such a thing sounds completely improbable. At times, it's even a comedy. All of these genres get their chance to shine in the show's first episode, "Goliath," and not all of them work, but they make for an interesting mix of television conventions.

Dylan Baker is one of those "That Guy" actors, a guy you've probably seen in a million different shows and movies, but can't quite place his name. But his "That Guy-ness" has a twist: he generally plays creeps, scumbags, pedophiles, and otherwise not-so-nice people. It's a lot in life he seems to be perfectly OK with. "I think they're more interesting. They're more fun to play."

In Kings (which Danny previewed earlier today), the Biblical-themed soap that premieres on NBC on Sunday, March 15, Baker finds himself in as equally reprehensible role: he plays William Cross, the head of a huge conglomerate that holds the purse strings behind the power of King Silas Benjamin of Gilboa (Ian McShane). The complicating factor is that he's also the brother of Silas' wife, Rose (Susanna Thompson).

I spoke to the 49-year old character actor about the show, how he thinks his character has a little bit of Dick (Cheney) in him, how he can play a child molester (fans of the 1998 movie Happiness will know what I'm talking about) and how much he loved working on the doomed sitcom The Pitts.

A few weeks ago, I was invited, along with a number of writers from websites and blogs (including our friends at AOL TV), to screen the two-hour premiere of NBC's new Blblical-themed fantasy soap, Kings. The show, which premieres on Sunday, March 15, has gotten a lot of hype since the Peacock network introduced it last summer. That hype was mostly due to its star, Ian McShane. Everyone knew that the former Deadwood star would bring a stern intensity to the show; heck, his orneriness during the summer TCA session for the show alone made people look forward to his performance.

Alas, the bloggers wouldn't get a chance to question McShane during the post-screening Q&A; they did get a chance to speak to creator Michael Green and co-stars Susanna Thompson, Allison Miller, Dylan Baker, and Eamonn Walker. Some choice quotes and video of the session are after the jump.

Call us crazy, but wouldn't it be rad if Lindelof and Cuse, the bigwigs behind Lost, had a little fun in light of the superspeed at which we're plowing through the final two seasons of the show? Specifically, would it not be absolutely amazing if one of the characters from Lost left the island for greener pastures, and those greener pastures were a sitcom?

Picture it: Rose Henderson (L. Scott Caldwell) (disclaimer: my favorite character on the show) has escaped the island with her hubby, Bernard (and, because it's a sitcom, she's completely healthy). The lovebirds have returned to The Bronx, where Bernard (Sam Anderson) has resumed his dental career while Rose has taken a job as a safety specialist at Kennedy Airport (*wink wink*).

Do you remember the Fox sitcom The Pitts? Of course not and why should you? The show premiered in 2003 and aired for only a couple of weeks before joining Drexell's Class, Costello and Freakylinks in that great big network in the sky.

The series, which starred Dylan Baker (Curt Conners from the Spider Man films) was about a family who had a continual run of bad luck. The series was as funny as the premise, which is exactly why it was cancelled.

(S01E01/S01E02) To be honest, I was sold on this one long before we finally got a look at what the Drive team has been working on all this time. I count myself as a Tim Minear fan, so his involvement was enough to get me interested. Add in a cast including Nathan Fillion (Firefly), Melanie Lynskey (Two And A Half Men), Kevin Alejandro (Sleeper Cell), Kristin Lehman (Tilt), Dylan Baker (The Book Of Daniel), and Taryn Manning (Hustle & Flow), and you really have something.

Take a bunch of good-looking people, put them in cars and have them race across the country, and what do you get? Drive, the latest series from Tim Minear, who's probably best known for his efforts on Buffy and the cult favorite Firefly. Right after Peter Ligouri gave his executive session, FOX decided to have the Drive cast out on stage for a Q&A. And when I mean the cast, I mean the entire cast; twelve actors, including Nathan Fillion, Dylan Baker and Melanie Lynskey. They were joined by Minear and his fellow executive producers, Ben Queen and Greg Yaitanes.

The most intersting thing about this series is that, while it shows ordinary citizens who are persuaded to participate in an illegal cross-country race for a $32 million prize, all the actors' in-car scenes will be shot in front of green screens. The challenge, according to Minear: "Could you make a show that takes place partially in moving vehicles that go across the country and not make it look bad?" He took a cue from War of the Worlds, which had in-car scenes where the audience saw the environment from all angles, inside and out. The effects experts who did that effect also worked on Drive.