We've got a new e-mail address for the podcast! If you have any questions or suggestions about the 'cast, please e-mail us at tvsquadpodcast [at] google [dot] com.
This week, actress Linda Purl joins me, Jason Hughes and Kona Gallagher to talk about her guest starring stint as Pam's mom on The Office -- she's on tonight's episode, by the way. She also chats about her long acting career (remember her during the waning days of Happy Days?), her work with the California International Theatre Festival and her current success as a touring lounge singer.
After the interview, which is about 30 minutes, Kona, Jason and and I talk about the following:
The "Ask TV Squad" column, published every Wednesday, answers your questions about current and past TV shows, as well as about the celebrities appearing on TV. Every week, I will pick a question (or more) sent to us and provide answers in the column. If your question is not picked for a column, it may be answered in a subsequent column or in TV Squad's APB Podcast.
To submit questions to the "Ask TV Squad" column, you can post them below in comments or email them to asktvsquad@gmail.com.
This week, I answer questions about Ghost Whisperer, How to Make It in America and Better Off Ted.
Today I made an executive decision and gave the podcast an oh-so-creative name: "The TV Squad Podcast." This was after we recorded it on Tuesday, so I still refer to it by its old APB name. If you have any suggestions, let me know at tvsquad [at] gmail [dot] com.
In this episode, Late Show writer Bill Scheft joins me, Danny Gallagher and Kona Gallagher to talk about his new book Everything Hurts. Of course, there's lots of good behind-the-scenes info about what it was like to work at The Late Show, especially on how the events of the past month affected the staff and the show's writing, including the monologue.
He also tells some funny stories about being canned from Sports Illustrated (and spawns a new catchphrase), feeding lines to the guy who played Mike Singletary and more. It's 45 minutes of fun.
After the interview, Kona, Danny and I give our picks of the week. Run time is 1:03:02.
In the hall of TV show bands, The Blanks are The Rolling Stones. Definitely The Who, tops.
The a cappella quartet made their small screen debut on Scrubs as Ted's band The Worthless Peons, played by Sam Lloyd, Philip McNiven, George Miserlis and Paul F. Perry (not to be confused with Ted's air band The Cool Cats that was just a brief side project when they probably failed to win those water park tickets) and have since become a hard-working touring band that has gone back and forth between both sides of the U.S. coasts. But they were a band long before Scrubs was even an afterthought in Bill Lawrence's skull, assuming that Lawrence didn't come up with the idea for Scrubs when they all met at Syracuse University.
Lloyd and McNiven (the completely bald one that looks like Professor Wonder Bread) were nice enough to dish out all the backstage dirt that comes from the hard and edgy road life of an all-male vocal band.
Seth Rogen has always enjoyed Halloween specials, from the TGIF line-up when he was a kid up to The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror. Tonight, he'll be in his own Halloween special, Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space (NBC, 8 PM), based on the Dreamworks animated feature Monsters vs Aliens.
"I was a nerd and had nothing to do on Friday nights," Rogen says of the TGIF line-up during a conference call with press. "Whenever like the sitcoms would do their Halloween episode, I always enjoyed that for some reason. That always spawned some good comedy."
Rules are meant to be broken... especially for these ten television characters. For them, the rest of the world has one standard to live by and they have another. It makes them interesting and fun to watch... you just wouldn't necessarily want to be the person having to deal with them because they could drive you to distraction. Here's my ten pack of characters who live in a world of their own, according to no rules except their own. From the not-too-bad to the really bad.
10. Patrick Jane, The Mentalist
You would think that as a consultant to the CBI -- California Bureau of Investigation -- Patrick Jane would be compelled to uphold the rules and regulations of the department. However, Jane is a free spirit when it comes to office protocol. He does his own thing. For instance, bugging the office of a CBI higher-up is definitely not kosher. Jane doesn't care; he did it anyway and will probably get away with it.
This week, we're going to take a bit of a departure from the shows we normally cover. It's very rare that a show that puts out 76 episodes could be considered by anyone to be gone too soon, and yet I make the argument that 8 Simple Rules (for Dating My Teenage Daughter) is that show.
I'm also not going to try and convince you that 8 Simple Rules was one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, because it simply wasn't. It was a fairly standard, solid series headlined by a brilliant comic actor... and then it became something else.
Leoben, that tricky toaster, was right: All of thishas happened before, and all of it is happening again.
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan retells major events from the first two years of the celebrated sci-fi series through the eyes of the Cylons. It weaves together recycled scenes from the series with new footage to reveal a first-hand account of the Cylon agenda, or "plan."
The result is a film that feels incomplete, episodic and disjointed. It plays less like a movie and largely like a disk full of high quality bonus material. Most of what happens here feels irrelevant to the series -- almost like it was tacked on to the BSG mythos to satisfy completists and hardcore fans. Still, it's worth watching to see Dean Stockwell carry the film with a fearless performance as the scheming and duplicitous Brother Cavil. The veteran character actor takes center stage in The Plan, and your enjoyment of the film will rest largely on how much you like, or dislike, Cavil and his major role in the series.
As my Thursday afternoon time slot to interview Tracy Morgan came closer, I knew I was in for an interesting twenty minutes. As most people have seen and heard over the years, interviewing Tracy is an amusement park ride that even Busch Gardens couldn't conceive. He's blunt. His emotions rise and fall quicker than a roller coaster. And you never know what he's going to say.
When I got to talk to him, he had been interviewing all day in support of his surprisingly emotional and inspirational memoir I Am The New Black, and he was tired. But there was a lot of stuff I wanted to ask him about, only some of which involved his well-publicized smackdowns of SNL co-stars Cheri Oteri and Chris Kattan. There was also his criticism of David Israel and Jim O'Doherty, the creators of The Tracy Morgan Show, and just the general details about his rough upbringing in the Bronx and Brooklyn in the '70s and '80s. Tracy didn't disappoint.
So, buckle up folks, and get ready for a fun ride. Audio and a transcript is after the jump.
Word of our podcast revival must be spreading like an Alaskan oil fire because we've just booked our first celebrity guest...and it's a biggie in my book. Late Show writer and author Bill Scheft will join me and TV Squad bossman Joel Keller on next week's APB Podcast. We'll talk about his work on David Letterman's late night show and the changing landscape of late night TV as well as his newest novel, Everything Hurts.
If you've got questions for our guest (and I'm sure you do), leave them in the comments section below and we'll ask them to our gracious guest when we record the podcast at 10 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Oct. 27. I'm sure you're all dying to know the answer to one big question, so don't waste your time by posting it below: what the hell does Bill have against 49ers coach Mike Singletary?!?
It looks like the new crew at Disney's At the Movies is turning the ship around.
The new series run with fresh hosts (New York Times film critic, A.O. Scott (left), and Chicago Tribune film critic, Michael Phillips (right)) has gone 180 degrees in the other direction from the lighter, more sensationalized previous season.
Last year's host combination of Ben Mankiewicz and Ben Lyons often came off more glib than informative -- leaving both critics and fans wondering what happened to the more measured, analytical tone of former hosts Roger Ebert, Richard Roeper and the late Gene Siskel.
Between the two of them, Scott and Phillips bring decades of entertainment writing and critiquing experience -- combining a love of movies with a willingness to tick off the Hollywood powers that be when necessary.
The "Ask TV Squad" column, published every Wednesday, answers your questions about current and past TV shows, as well as about the celebrities appearing on TV. Every week, I will pick a question (or more) sent to us and provide answers in the column. If your question is not picked for a column, it may be answered in a subsequent column or in TV Squad's APB Podcast. To submit questions to the "Ask TV Squad" column, you can post them below in comments or email them at asktvsquad@gmail.com.
This week, I answer questions about our own site, TVSquad.com!
The writers and producers of Syfy's Stargate Universe could've played it safe and got along just fine with their latest series.
After Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin's 1994 feature film from MGM, the series' first TV adaption (SG1) arrived in 1997. When you throw in the follow-up series, Infinity and Atlantis, the Stargate franchise has run on TV in one form or another for more than 12 years.
When the time came to invent the next step in the franchise, show-runners Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper could have trotted out more of the same and done perfectly well. Instead, they upped the ante -- bringing a bigger budget and updated production techniques to Stargate Universe.
MGM and Syfy welcomed journalists to Vancouver's Bridge Studios to explore the show's starship Destiny set and discover how this series cruises beyond its successful predecessors.
Bravo's resident house flipper, real estate guru and OCD interior designer, Jeff Lewis, is a very complicated guy. When I spoke to him recently, I was actually a little concerned. If you've seen Jeff on Bravo's Flipping Out, you've seen him lose it on occasion. Would he yell at me on the phone if I asked the wrong question?
In fact, Jeff Lewis was extremely friendly and funny. We had a great talk and he couldn't have been nicer. He was also really forthcoming about the past seasons of Flipping Out, including this one that's concluding tonight.
What has it been like to be turned into a reality TV star?
Because of the reaction of the show, some people see me as a villain and that could be the way I do business. I handle my employees in a rather non-traditional way. I was concerned about how people would react in public, but it's actually been pretty positive. Overall, it's been a very positive experience. Many people are very nice and complimentary and supportive.
We've got a new e-mail address for the podcast! If you have any questions or suggestions about the 'cast, please e-mail us at tvsquadpodcast [at] google [dot] com.
The "
Today I made an executive decision and gave the podcast an oh-so-creative name: "The TV Squad Podcast." This was after we recorded it on Tuesday, so I still refer to it by its old APB name. If you have any suggestions, let me know at tvsquad [at] gmail [dot] com.
Seth Rogen has always enjoyed Halloween specials, from the TGIF line-up when he was a kid up to The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror. Tonight, he'll be in his own Halloween special, 
Leoben, that tricky toaster, was right: All of this has happened before, and all of it is happening again. 
As my Thursday afternoon time slot to interview 
Word of our podcast revival must be spreading like an Alaskan oil fire because we've just booked our first celebrity guest...and it's a biggie in my book.
It looks like the new crew at Disney's 
The writers and producers of Syfy's Stargate Universe could've played it safe and got along just fine with their latest series.
Bravo's resident house flipper, real estate guru and OCD interior designer, Jeff Lewis, is a very complicated guy. When I spoke to him recently, I was actually a little concerned. If you've seen Jeff on Bravo's 
The TV Squad Podcast: Linda Purl talks about The Office, we talk spoilers, and more
Ask TV Squad: Ghost Whisperer and more!
The TV Squad Podcast: Bill Scheft of The Late Show, Cake Boss, Mad Men and more
