the west wing-related stories
Posted Oct 13th 2009 12:33PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Programming, Celebrities, Reality-Free
I was looking forward to Matthew Perry's new Showtime show
The End of Steve, a drama about a radio talk show host. Unfortunately, Showtime wasn't looking forward to it as much as I was and didn't pick up the show.
Instead, Perry is going to produce, co-write, and star in
a new comedy about a sports arena manager who finds himself thinking about where his life is at after he turns 40. Fans of
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and
The West Wing (two other shows that Perry was in) will be interested to know that Thomas Schlamme will be involved in the show too as director and co-producer.
Continue reading Matthew Perry to produce and star in new sitcom
Posted Aug 27th 2009 10:04PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, American Idol, Celebrities, Judges
Could the departure of Paula Abdul from
American Idol actually result in a revitalization and renewal of the Fox monster hit? I ask that question because in the past couple of days, guest judges have been announced to sit in Paula's place and I'm absolutely psyched by the choices. The other day it was
How I Met Your Mother star
Neil Patrick Harris. Today,
Pushing Daisies' Kristin Chenoweth has been snagged as an American Idol guest judge. She's currently filming auditions in Orlando, Florida.
Continue reading Kristin Chenoweth on board as American Idol guest judge
Posted Jul 16th 2009 2:04PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: OpEd, Reality-Free, TV Squad Ten
As I mentioned before,
I recently completed my summer project of watching the entire series of
The West Wing from start to finish. After using a month or so to cogitate, I decided that while the show feign realism, it didn't quite achieve the mark.
Many of the events I refer to occurred after creator Aaron Sorkin was ousted from the series. I take that as more than coincidence.
Major spoilers for the show follow after the jump, so if you haven't seen it yet, turn back now.
Continue reading TV Squad Ten: Events from The West Wing that wouldn't really happen
Posted Jul 1st 2009 4:21PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
The celebrity death march continues.
Karl Malden has died at the age of 97. He was probably best known for his role as Lt. Mike Stone on the ABC series
The Streets of San Francisco. Actually, he was probably equally well-known for his American Express "Don't Leave Home Without It" commercials that ran in the 70s and 80s.
He played the lead role in the short-lived NBC series
Skag in 1980, but most of his roles were in movies, including
Patton,
On The Waterfront,
A Streetcar Named Desire, Kiss of Death,
How The West Was Won,
Birdman of Alcatraz,
Murderer's Row, and
Meteor. One of my favorite Malden roles was in the 50s movie
Fear Strikes Out, where he played the pushy father of Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall. His last role was a first season episode of
The West Wing.
Continue reading Karl Malden dead at 97
Posted Jun 29th 2009 4:29PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free
About a month ago, I mentioned my
television summer project.
The West Wing was such an excellent series that I stampeded by way through the episodes and am done already. In fact, if you summed up the quality of every reality show on television, it wouldn't come close to the quality of
The West Wing (thus furthering the argument that writers are mandatory for good television).
I agree with most of the critics that the series took a drop in quality in Season 5. With the departure of Sorkin, the characters began to make decisions that seemed inconsistent with the first four seasons (I'll write more about that in a separate article). Seasons 6 and 7 saw an upswing in quality, mostly due to the change in the whole premise of the show (making it about the Presidential Election rather than the Presidency).
The West Wing was a very deep and intelligent program and probably better than we deserve. Next up: Aaron Sorkin's other television contributions,
Sports Night and
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
Posted Jun 4th 2009 10:10AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: News, OpEd, Law and Order, Celebrities, Ratings, Reality-Free, Celebreality
If Jay Leno isn't the answer for NBC prime time, perhaps the network should think about booking President Obama. NBC News devoted two hours, on Tuesday and Wednesday night, for
Inside the Obama White House and the
ratings were strong. Better than the insipid
I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, which acted as a lead-in. Of course the season finale of
Law & Order: SVU on Tuesday didn't hurt the news production.
Having watched the two hours, NBC should sign the president ASAP. There's always the curiosity factor when a viewer is being given access behind the scenes, and that's what
Inside the Obama White House did. It was a look at the real West Wing, which reminded me a lot of the fictional, Aaron Sorkin
West Wing creation, and that was quite cool. President Obama still fascinates me, and
it's well past 100 days.Continue reading NBC scores with Inside the Obama White House
Posted May 25th 2009 2:19PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: Programming, OpEd, Reality-Free
When the summer rolls around, there is obviously less new programming to watch on television. Oh sure, certain networks run original alternative programming over the summer to garner better ratings, but most people don't really get excited about summer programming. The good stuff returns in the fall. The summer is "time off" from television.
This summer, I have given myself a personal project that relates to television. I wanted to watch a complete series, end to end, that time had never allowed me to watch and was generally considered to be excellent by viewers and critics. In this case, I have chosen Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing. I started last week and I am captivated, having already gotten to Season 2, Episode 5.
Continue reading My summer television project
Posted May 24th 2009 1:31PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, OpEd, Reality-Free
In Plain Sight has become one of my favorite TV shows. I didn't think that way last year, its rookie season, when the show lurched a bit to try and find balance between Mary's professional life as a U.S. Marshal in the Witness Protection Program and her dysfunctional personal life with an alcoholic mother, a troubled younger sister with a drug-dealing boyfriend, and an on-again/off-again relationship with a hot Latin minor league baseball player.
When it went well, it was very satisfying, but the show seemed to be struggling to find its tone. Well, this season is a whole new thing. Perhaps there were changes behind the scenes, perhaps the first year was about shaking out all those story strands and building a stronger foundation, perhaps it was simply the actors getting more comfortable in their roles. Whatever the case,
In Plain Sight is now hitting on all cylinders.
Continue reading In praise of In Plain Sight
Posted Apr 10th 2009 11:07AM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: Industry, OpEd, Celebrities, Reality-Free
According to PopWatch,
Aaron Sorkin might be returning to television. And for the third time, it might be a television-show-within-a-television-show (his first two in this vein were
Sports Night and
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). This time, the fictional world would be a cable news program such as the one hosted by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.
His last show utilizing this concept,
Studio 60, didn't fare so well and was cancelled after a single season. However, this program concept would also incorporate the discussion of politics, which Sorkin excels at, as proven in
The West Wing. We may have a winner here.
Sorkin is certainly a multi-talented writer. He's written movies and plays as well as television. I believe he can make this sort of program work. I even confess to liking an earlier incarnation of this concept, Al Franken's
Lateline.
So what do you think? Do you welcome a return by Sorkin to television or is his reputation overblown?
Posted Mar 25th 2009 2:10PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, OpEd, Video, Reality-Free
Question: Is
The Sopranos the best drama in the history of television, or is it
one of the best dramas in the history of television that often gets the top spot because it's fairly recent?
That's one of the questions to ponder as you read
AOL's Top 50 Dramas Of All-Time list.
The Sopranos comes in at number one.
It's not a bad list, actually. When you narrow down a TV show to a specific genre and go all the way up to 50, most of the shows we would all pick will show up on the list:
The X-Files,
Deadwood,
The Rockford Files,
Mad Men,
St. Elsewhere,
Columbo,
The Wire. Those are all classic dramas (and good ones) that you would expect to see.
One thing I didn't expect to see?
Friday Night Lights in the number 10 spot, ahead of
all the shows I just mentioned above.
Continue reading Here's a list of the top 50 dramas of all-time (OK, maybe 45) - VIDEO
Posted Mar 20th 2009 5:03PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
It's still odd to think about Ron Silver, who
died of cancer earlier this week, being gone. I mean, sure, cancer can hit anyone at any age, but it's odd to see it happen to someone in a fairly recent show, and one that I watch a lot of (thank you, DVD sets). I felt the same thing when another
West Wing cast member, John Spencer, died a few years back. That was even more shocking because he was still on the show at the time.
West Wing creator/writer
Aaron Sorkin pays tribute to Silver in Time. He says that Silver was not only the type of actor who was very generous ("someone who's there for the piece and not for himself"), but one that would make the other actors laugh and get into a good mood between takes.
Continue reading Aaron Sorkin pays tribute to Ron Silver
Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:01PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Celebrities, Reality-Free
Note to Rob Lowe: Stop looking so damn healthy. Signed: The powers that be at ABC.
Seriously,
Brothers & Sisters' star
Rob Lowe has been ordered to stop tanning. Apparently, the actor just looks too good -- bronze and healthy and full of that Kennedy-style of vigor for the role he's playing. ABC brass, the president of the network no less, has told him to stay out of the sun. According to Lowe, he was warned that he is getting too dark and has to mend his ways now.
Continue reading No more tan for you! Hear that, Rob Lowe?
Posted Feb 27th 2009 2:55PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Pushing Daisies, Reality-Free, TV Squad Ten
When TV shows have made the leap to the big screen, the results have not always been great, except when they keep the same cast and come up with a good story that builds on the series, like
Sex and the City and
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. The same is true of some TV movies that have built on a show's lingering appeal even after it's been canceled. James Garner came back for a couple of
Rockford Files movies, for instance, and
The Return of The Man from UNCLE with David McCallum and Robert Vaughn was excellent. Of course, it doesn't always work -- the Rhoda and Mary reunion was painful to watch -- but I'm still a fan of the follow-up TV movie.
Here's my ideas for ten TV shows I'd like to see as TV movies.
Continue reading TV Squad Ten: Shows I'd like to see come back as a TV movie - VIDEOS
Posted Feb 10th 2009 3:02PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Video, Reality-Free
Everybody loves lists, right? That's why I was attracted to this
AOL Television list of the best TV shows of the 1990s. Lots of good entries, some head-scratchers, and two incredibly glaring omissions.
You can immediately guess which shows are on the list:
Seinfeld,
The X-Files,
Sports Night,
Oz,
The Sopranos,
The Larry Sanders Show. There are some shows that I certainly would never put on such a list, but I can understand why they were chosen, such as
Party of Five,
Dawson's Creek, and
Ally McBeal. I think this is probably yet another example of "best" being confused with "popular" or "buzzworthy." Actually, I would never include
Ally McBeal on any sort of best of list.
But what really confuses me? There are two major shows, two shows that are often mentioned in a "best of" list (not just the 90s, but all-time) that aren't on the list! Can you guess what they are? Both appeared on NBC, and one of them was created by someone who created one of the above shows.
Continue reading Guess which two shows are missing from this best of the 90s list - VIDEO
Posted Nov 26th 2008 1:01PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, OpEd, Standout Episodes, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(Originally aired November 22, 2000)Last year I picked
The West Wing's "The Indians in the Lobby" episode as a standout episode of the series. It just so happens that we're blessed with
two Thanksgiving episodes of the show that are standouts. This one is called "Shibboleth."
The plots: While President Bartlet has to figure out what to do with dozens of Chinese immigrants who have stowed away on a freighter, Toby tries to get Leo's controversial sister nominated for an education post, C.J. has to pick one of two turkeys who will get to be pardoned by the President, and Charlie goes shopping for the perfect carving knife for the President.
Continue reading The West Wing: Shibboleth
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