Category Archives: Stories

‘Schoolhouse Rock': A Trojan Horse of Knowledge and Power

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Schoolhouse Rock

This is the favorite thing I’ve written in quite a long while. To celebrate ABC’s upcoming Schoolhouse Rock special, I reflected on the show’s lasting legacy — it was an essential part of my Saturday mornings as a kid — for The Daily Beast:

Each song was a perfectly constructed Trojan horse: it was entertaining and infectious, while clandestinely packing an astonishing amount of information about lessons about word usage (“Verb: That’s What’s Happenin’”), America’s expansion (“Elbow Room”), women’s rights (“Sufferin Till Sufferage”), health (“The Body Machine”), the solar system (“Interplanet Janet”) and much, much more.

Like nothing before it, Schoolhouse Rock made learning fun and effortless. Multiplication tables were suddenly a breeze thanks to songs like “Lucky Seven Sampson,” while “The Preamble” was essential for anyone who had to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution in school. “I’m Just a Bill” is so concise and catchy that my high school U.S. History teacher played it in class to explain exactly how a bill becomes a law.

Not only did I get the chance to listen to watch all these segments again, but I also managed to get my two kids hooked on the show as well.

And that continues to be the brilliance of Schoolhouse Rock; it’s completely irresistible, and endlessly rewarding, whether you’re watching it for the first or the hundredth time.

Even after all these years, knowledge is still power!

Schoolhouse Rock: A Trojan Horse of Knowledge and Power 

Joan Rivers Pulled Off Hollywood’s Greatest Comeback

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joan-rivers

As Hollywood mourned the death of Joan Rivers, who passed away yesterday at 81, I appreciated the opportunity to recount how she pulled off Hollywood’s greatest comeback, by clawing her way back into the spotlight after Johnny Carson had turned his back on her. As I wrote at Quartz,

Rivers also discovered that once you’ve survived Carson’s wrath, you can survive anything Hollywood can dish out. Who cared if Sharon Stone or Kristen Stewart got offended by her red carpet quips? So what if people thought she had too much plastic surgery? There was nothing anyone could say about Rivers that the comedian couldn’t say herself — and much, much funnier.

While Rivers is rightfully being lauded for her work as a trailblazer for female comics, her journey after being blackballed by Carson was equally spectacular. Farewell, Joan.

Joan Rivers pulled off Hollywood’s greatest comeback

Why NBC is Working on a Live Sitcom

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NBC working on live sitcom

The news that NBC is developing a weekly live sitcom called Hospitality took many by surprise, but not me. During TCA summer press tour, I had chatted with NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt, who told me this summer that he had been looking to do just that. As I wrote at Quartz,

“We do it with sporting events, music competition shows and reality shows. There’s a lot of live things on television,” Greenblatt told Quartz in July. “The Today show is live every day; The Tonight Show is taped within hours of its broadcast. There’s a lot of immediacy, but not in scripted programming. So we’ve been talking about doing a live sitcom. We just have to find the right show.”

If the show ends up on the air, it will be the first weekly live primetime series since Fox’s Roc in 1992, which not coincidentally was overseen by Greenblatt, who oversaw Fox’s primetime programming at the time.

Why NBC is working on a live sitcom

Emmy Voters Just Did Something the Networks Couldn’t—Stop Netflix

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Emmy voters just did something

Last night, the networks found an unexpected savior in their efforts to keep Netflix at bay: Emmy voters. Despite entering this year’s race with an impressive 31 nominations, the network came up empty during the 66th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. As I wrote at Quartz,

Netflix seemed primed for a big night, after last week’s Creative Arts wins seemed to indicate that Orange is the New Black would be lauded. Host Seth Meyers acknowledged Netflix’s expected big night in his opening monologue when he joked, “Not very nice when someone younger comes along, is it, cable?” And Netflix was at the center of one of the evening’s early highlights: a hilarious commercial that ran during the telecast in which Gervais crossed paths with characters from House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. It was supposed to be the first of many memorable Netflix moments on Emmy night. But it turned out to be the only one.

I also touch upon a little-known fact about Emmy voters: sometimes as few as 50 of them make the decisions for each category.

Emmy voters just did something the networks couldn’t—stop Netflix 

TV is No Longer Where TV Series Premiere

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TV not where series premeire

Viewers are taking longer than ever to watch TV shows, but when it comes to news series, networks don’t have the luxury of waiting several days or weeks for audiences to sample them and decide whether or not they want to see more. That’s why the pilots for several new series are being released weeks and even months before they premiere. As I wrote at Quartz,

Broadcast networks insist that they now program year-round (and indeed, have been doing just that), but almost all of their biggest shows still debut during the same two-week period in late September and early October. This makes it especially brutal for new shows to find an audience, so the online premieres gives viewers an early opportunity to sample them and, the networks hope, get hooked and start spreading the word before the shows enter the TV equivalent of Thunderdome.

I question whether viewers who watch and like the A to Z pilot will still be interested when the show actually premieres in October, but until the broadcast networks stop premiering all their fall shows in the same two week period, they’ll need all the help they can get.

TV is no longer where TV series premiere

‘You’re the Worst’: TV’s Best Couple is Awful and Perfect for Each Other

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youre the worst

Some shows are so terrific that I feel as if I have no choice but to sing their praises to as many people as possible. That’s the main reason that I pushed so hard to review You’re the Worst for The Daily Beast. It’s the best, and most surprising, new series of the summer. As I wrote,

Here’s the unexpected thing about You’re the Worst: While Jimmy (played by Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash) are both, yes, the worst—I wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with either of them in real life—they also happen to be the most perfectly matched couple on television. There’s none of the usual forced chemistry, where a show pairs up its main characters regardless of whether it makes sense or not. These two click in every sense of the word—sexually, emotionally, comically—and it’s obvious that they need to be together, in part because no one else on the planet deserves to be subjected to either of them.

How great is this show? So great that it’s worthy of a second excerpt from my review:

We all know, and spend our lives trying to avoid, people like Jimmy and Gretchen. Thanks to You’re the Worst, now I can’t get enough of them. And while you might not have had time for the show earlier in the summer, there’s no excuse now as we limp toward September. Go to FX now and start catching up (the first five episodes are available there; the sixth airs on FX tonight). Because every once in a great while, two wrongs actually do make a right.

Start watching now — especially if you’re a Nielsen family!

‘You’re the Worst’: TV’s Best Couple is Awful and Perfect for Each Other

How Amazon Built a Studio That’s Finally Challenging Netflix

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transparent

As Amazon prepares to launch its third pilot season, I had a lengthy chat with Amazon Studios director Roy Price about his company’s strategy, measuring success, his terrific new series Transparent and competing with Netflix. He answered so many of my questions about Amazon, including what defines a successful series for them:

The main thing we’re focusing on is making Prime fantastic. And one of the things people really respond to is original new series, so we’re paying attention to, are people engaged with the show? Does it add value to the service as a whole? So it’s about views, and talking about the shows, and if you watch the whole season, how did you rate the show…Basically, do people really seem to value the show as part of the service?

Last year, we premiered Alpha House and Betas, and they premiered at, and hung around at, the number one and two series for awhile, so that’s very encouraging, because it shows that people are really getting into it and heavily sampling the shows. That’s the kind of thing we want to see, that it becomes a meaningful part of the value that the service provides. Ultimately, you’d like to see more people joining the service, and you’d like to see that people who watch the shows and enjoy the shows renew their subscription.

Price, who was a terrific interview, also talked about Amazon’s rationale for not disclosing ratings, how the public pilot process really works and whether Amazon considered picking up beloved-but-canceled shows like Community and Enlisted.

How Amazon built a studio that’s finally challenging Netflix

How Robin Williams Shared the Spotlight to Forge a Beloved Hollywood Career

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robin williams

I was in the middle of vacation yesterday when I heard the shocking news about Robin Williams, who died of an apparent suicide. So I paused my family fun to I write this Quartz appreciation of Williams, who had seemed to crack the code for career longevity in Hollywood.

But Williams wasn’t content to just coast on comedy. He honed his dramatic skills in not-just-comedic films like Good Morning, Vietnam. That led to full-fledged dramatic roles in movies like Dead Poets Society, Awakenings and 1997’s Good Will Hunting, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Note the word “supporting”—even then, Williams was happy to accept smaller roles and cede the spotlight to others. That certainly wasn’t something his fellow comedy superstars like Eddie Murphy, Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal and Jim Carrey were doing then—or now—with any regularity.

Even as he brought his career circle last year, returning to TV in The Crazy Ones, Williams went in another unexpected direction, generously ceding many of the show’s funniest lines to his costars. CBS had canceled the show in May, and now, sadly, we’ll never get the opportunity to see how the actor would have reinvented himself next.

How Robin Williams shared the spotlight to forge a beloved Hollywood career

Life After Deaths: Sean Bean on ‘Game of Thrones’ Paternity and ‘Legends’

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sean bean

Spoiler alert about Sean Bean’s acting career: He dies. All the time. And he does so spectacularly well.

That lede for my Daily Beast profile on Sean Bean pretty much says it all. But for a man who has been killed 20-plus times on screen — so many that even Bean himself has trouble remembering them — the actor was remarkably chipper as we sat down to discuss his new TNT drama, Legends. As I wrote,

Spending time with Bean is somewhat disconcerting after seeing him play so many somber, doomed roles. His infectious smile is permanently plastered on his face, and he punctuates most sentences with laughter, emotions that are foreign to almost all of his characters over the years. The actor talked, and laughed, about life after onscreen death, his toughest death scene to film, the time he almost died for real—and why we may not have seen the last of him on Game of Thrones.

Can’t stress enough how happy this guy is, and how delighted he was to talk about Game of Thrones (he really wants to figure out a way for Ned Stark to return!).

Life After Deaths: Sean Bean on ‘Game of Thrones’ Paternity and ‘Legends’