lizzy caplan-related stories
Posted Nov 16th 2006 12:01PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, CBS, OpEd, The Class, Pickups and Renewals
Despite mediocre ratings and equally mediocre reviews (
including mine), CBS has been happy enough with
The Class to order more episodes of the "half-hour comic-sudser," as
Variety so adroitly called it.
But the show is not getting the entire "back nine" just yet. According to that
Variety article, CBS is hoping the mid-season show
Rules of Engagement, starring David Spade and Patrick Warburton, will work well in the Monday comedy block where
The Class currently resides.
Another article,
on USAToday.com, says that newer episodes of the show will concentrate on fewer characers.
Continue reading CBS orders more episodes of The Class
Posted Nov 7th 2006 12:01AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, CBS, OpEd, The Class
(S01E07) Maybe the writers of
The Class are getting the hint and following what seems to be a pretty obvious suggestion: take out storylines! Let the characters breathe! Get rid of the high-strung socialite and the husband she doesn't realize is gay! This episode managed to do all of that; we don't see Holly and Kyle (and Holly's Paul Lynde sound-alike husband) at all, and Duncan and Nicole get some time to interact without Yonk in the way, and take Lina and Richie along for the ride. And, of course, Kat and Ethan do their goofy stuff, this time in a bar (notice most of the episodes have been named for the Kat/Ethan story of the week? I just figured that out tonight... I'm slow, I guess).
So, now that things are a bit smoother and less cluttered, there'd be more room for the funny right? Well, that's what you might think, but you'd be wrong.
Continue reading The Class: The Class Goes to a Bar
Posted Oct 24th 2006 12:02PM by Brett Love
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, CBS, Industry, The Class, Pickups and Renewals
And then there was one. Now that CBS has picked up
Jericho and
Shark for full seasons, and canceled
Smith, they are left with just one more new show to make a decision on.
The Class hasn't made the decision easy. They had a slow start that led to the shuffling of timeslots in the Monday comedy block. While the show has performed better since it started following
How I Met Your Mother, it's not quite good enough to get picked up, yet.
CBS has ordered four more scripts for the show which gives it a little more time to impress.
I'd like to see the show get a full season. After a pilot that I didn't think was very good at all, the show has really turned a corner. The Duncan/Nicole part of the story is a little dull at times, but the rest of the pairings are working out well. Lizzy Caplan (Kat) is fantastic, while Sean Maguire (Kyle) and Cristian de la Fuente (Aaron) have had some of the funniest scenes in the show. I've even been pulled in to the strange Richie's wife plot. My guess is that the show will eventually make it to a full season.
Posted Oct 23rd 2006 10:44PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, CBS, OpEd, The Class
(S01E06) For a fleeting second, I thought
The Class was just going to concentrate on two stories this week. For the first act, it looked like all we'd see was Richie, Duncan and Yonk in Atlantic City and Holly's adventures at the petting zoo. Yes, one of the storylines would be a Holly storyline, but I was glad that the writers decided to smarten up and rotate out one storyline per week, leaving more room for silly things like effective jokes and character development.
But then I saw Lina in an FDR costume and Kat being Kat, and I just went, "oh crap."
Continue reading The Class: The Class Goes Trick or Treating
Posted Oct 16th 2006 11:31PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, CBS, OpEd, The Class
(S01E05) This review is not going to be pretty, boys and girls, because I'm starting to lose my patience with
The Class. There's too many stories and not enough laughs. Right now, the only storyline that has any redeeming qualities, the constant efforts of Kat to bring Ethan out of his nice guy shell, really is just being used as a goofy side-story to all of the other, more emotional stories. But the problem is, those stories are becoming less entertaining by the week, and the "complications" that the writers are throwing in are just distractions.
Continue reading The Class: The Class Gets Frozen Yogurt
Posted Oct 9th 2006 11:04AM by Brett Love
Filed under: OpEd, Web, Celebrities
There is an odd list over at MSN where they pick
Fall TV's Hottest Hotties. It's strange because of the haphazard way they go about the list. Apparently 25 wasn't enough slots, so they have the entire cast of
Studio 60, and the cast of
Prison Break on the list. Now, I'll give you Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell, but when you say the "cast of
Prison Break" you are including Robert Knepper (T-Bag) and Peter Stormare (Abruzzi). They are both great in their parts, but hotties?
Another oddity is that David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel from
Bones are lumped together in the list. It's strange not only because she is the third hottest woman on that show, but also because later Jason Ritter and Lizzy Caplan from
The Class take up two separate spots.
As with every list like this, someone always gets left off. I would have liked to see Adrianne Palicki (Tyra on
Friday Night Lights) in there somewhere. She's cute and that show can use all the help in can get right now. And it is hard to argue with Anya from
Deal or No Deal. Unless you bring up that her only line on the show is "Hi Howie." Who is your favorite Fall Hottie?
Posted Oct 3rd 2006 7:35AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, CBS, OpEd, The Class
(S01E03) I saw a rough-cut version of this episode about a week ago; it was so rough that the video time stamp was sitting not only in the corner of the screen, but in the corner of the TV picture Kyle and Aaron were watching. But no matter; the jokes were the same. It's sort of ironic that, in this episode, the storyline that had the least amount of plot -- Kyle and Aaron watching Holly do one of those "poor schmuck reporter in a hurricane" reports -- had the most laughs. I mean, who
didn't laugh when Holly got knocked cold by a stop sign?
Anyway, the rest of the episode shows that
The Class is going in a funny direction. It also shows that it's willing to take some time and figure out which stories work and which don't.
Continue reading The Class: The Class Learns About Hurricanes
Posted Sep 25th 2006 8:32PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, CBS, OpEd, The Class
(S01E02) For those of you who were trying to figure out how eight relative strangers, thrown together in a kind of a convoluted fashion, was going to constitute a sitcom, this episode shows you what the formula is going to be.
And what is that formula? Three parallel storylines that are not designed to intersect for some time in the future. You've got sappy Ethan's brewing friendship with the cynical Kat and Richie's accident-prone flirtation with Kat's twin Lina (how convenient is it that Kat and Lina are twins? That ensures that two of the pairs of strangers will stay connected); you have Nicole and Duncan's affair; and you have Kyle and Holly, who are still rebuilding their friendship after he came out of the closet at their prom ten years ago.
Continue reading The Class: The Class Visits a Hospital
Posted Mar 11th 2006 6:21PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, Talent
Lots of casting news
today in
The
Hollywood Reporter.
Dylan McDermott has joined the cast of the ABC
drama,
A House Divided. It's about a rift between a midwestern farming community and the federal government. I
wish I knew more because, wow, that sounds like a snoozer. Sarah Clarke (aka 'Nina' on
24) is also part of the
cast. She plays the wife of the lead character, which might just be McDermott.
Wendie Malick, of
Just Shoot Me and
Jake in Progress, has
been cast in the ABC comedy pilot,
A Day in the Life. The show is about a young couple's wedding day, from
different points of view (I imagine it'll have to advance past the wedding day). Malick plays the mother of the
bride.
Other casting news:
Continue reading McDermott, Malick join ABC pilots
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