Category Archives: Stories

How ‘Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD’ Finally Found Its Way

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No series arrived this season with more hype, and more disappointment, than Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. The show seemed destined to seamlessly expand Marvel’s bigscreen dominance to television, but as I wrote at The Daily Beast,

Instead, for much of its dreary first season, S.H.I.E.L.D. was a pretender, saddled with cut-rate CGI, one-dimensional characters (and in some cases, half-dimensional actors) and most damning of all, devoid of anything even remotely resembling fun. Yet in true comic book fashion, just when it seemed that all hope was lost, in the past month the show—against all odds—finally found its way. Now, Tuesday night’s feisty, rewarding season finale has me doing something I never would have thought possible: counting the days until next season.

I delve into the show’s many problems this seasons, and how the big twist from April’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier has finally helped Agents of SHIELD became the thrilling show it was always supposed to be.

How ‘Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD’ Finally Found Its Way

Television is Taking a Cue From Summer Movie Blockbusters

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television summer movie blockbusters

It’s upfronts time once again: the annual week in which broadcast execs unveil their new TV lineups to advertisers. And as I wrote at Quartz, as networks grapple with season-to-season ratings decline, they are trying a new tactic: approaching their lineups as if they are summer movie schedules.

The networks are coming to the same conclusion as the movie studios: the best way to potentially attract huge audiences, both domestically and internationally, is by relying on “safe” projects featuring well-established, beloved brands. That’s a big reason why Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was one of the few new series to get a renewal this year.

And if a network picks up my NCIS: Avengers idea, I’d better get a cut of the profits!

Television is taking a cue from summer movie blockbusters

‘Live Another Day’ Review: Can Jack Bauer Save ‘24’ From Itself?

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24 live another day

Four years after the clock ran out on 24, Jack Bauer is back. Fox has relaunched the franchise with a 12-episode “event series” called 24: Live Another Day. I only wish the show was closer to the show’s exhilarating early seasons rather than the formulaic later ones. As I wrote in my Daily Beast review,

Aside from the thrill of seeing Jack—and Sutherland—back on the clock, barking orders and unleashing new methods of ass-kicking (for his next trick, he’ll do it with the hands cuffed behind his back!), 24’s absence hasn’t made me grow fonder of its tropes. This time around, many of them—Jack being underestimated by everyone around him, his first anguished utterance of “Dammit!,” the first of what will be many double-crosses—seemed more dutiful than inspired. The later seasons of 24 indicated that all the format’s tricks had been exhausted, and so far, Live Another Day’s writers haven’t indicated that they’ve discovered any new ones.

“Damnit, Chloe, I need more innovation!”

‘Live Another Day’ Review: Can Jack Bauer Save ‘24’ From Itself?

Not Even Those Who Run Netflix Shows Know How Popular They Really Are

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not even those who run Netflix

This is crazy to me. We’ve all known for years that Netflix has stubbornly refused to release any ratings information on its shows. Now, I wrote at Quartz, it turns out that not even the people who make Netflix’s most popular (we think) shows have any idea how many viewers actually watch their programming.

“It’s like, ‘I’m a hit —I think,’” Orange is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan told The Hollywood Reporter. The lack of viewership metrics from Netflix “makes it hard to negotiate later,” she says, referring to the standing industry practice in which the stars and producers of hits shows leverage ratings success for significant raises in a show’s third or fourth season.

I also wrote about Netflix’s excuses for withholding that data — and why they don’t hold water.

Not even those who run Netflix shows know how popular they really are 

NBC Wants You to Make Its Next Hit Sitcom

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NBC wants you to make

At long last, NBC is admitting the truth: it doesn’t know how to make funny sitcoms anymore. So it’s launching NBC Comedy Playground, and inviting comedy writers to pitch their series projects and bypass the usual drawn-out pilot season process. As I wrote at Quartz,

NBC Entertainment President Jennifer Salke called the move a direct result of “what’s happening on the Internet and what’s happening at the network.”

Or more accurately, what’s not happening at the network, which hasn’t had a hit sitcom since The Office, which debuted in 2005. That show averaged 9 million viewers in its heyday; now most NBC sitcoms, like Parks & Recreation and Community, are lucky if they pull in half that audience.

At least NBC is admitting that its current development system is broken. And if that prevents another monkey sitcom from making it to air, then we’ll all be winners.

NBC wants you to make its next hit sitcom

‘The Good Wife’s’ Christine Baranski on Life After Will Gardner’s Death

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The Good Wife fans are still reeling from the show’s shocking March 23 episode, in which Will Gardner (Josh Charles) was gunned down in court. And while Charles, Julianna Margulies, and showrunners Robert and Michelle King have given several interviews about the devastating twist, I’d yet to hear from Christine Baranski, who has been equally stellar in the aftermath of Will’s death. I talked to her for this Daily Beast profile about her “breathtaking” year, hoping against hope that Charles would change his mind about leaving the show and the trauma of shooting those emotional episodes as her character, Diane Lockhart, coped with Will’s loss:

Even a seasoned pro like Baranski wasn’t been prepared for what was required of her in those episodes. “I’ve done so much comedy and I’ve done drama now, but I’ve got to be honest, never in my career have I been called upon to do that kind of work in front of the camera,” she says. “It was hard, but what a privilege to be able to go to that place of deep, deep sorrow and pain and trauma.”

There’s lots more from Baranski, on juggling The Good Wife last fall while also shooting the movie adaptation of Into the Woods and how she’ll decompress after such an emotional roller coaster this season. Robert and Michelle King also spoke about how deftly Baranski pulled off her character’s darkest, and lightest, moments this spring.

‘The Good Wife’s’ Christine Baranski on Life After Will Gardner’s Death

Stephen Colbert and the Viral Video-Fueled Generation Hijack Late Night

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David Letterman officially has a successor. Stephen Colbert will be the next Late Show host, CBS announced yesterday. I reflected on the news, and what this means for late night, at The Daily Beast, where I wrote,

With yesterday’s news that Stephen Colbert will take over the Late Show next year, the long-held notion of what it means to be a late-night host, and what it means to be a late-night audience, has been forever eradicated.

In 1992, your late-night options were Letterman and Leno, period. As of next year, the lineup will consist of Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel on the broadcast networks, along with cable hosts like Conan O’Brien (remember him?), Jon Stewart and whomever replaces The Colbert Report. Late night is no longer all-or-nothing; it’s an all-you-can eat buffet. Thanks to the Internet, you can sample as many late-night clips from as many late-night shows as you’d like.

In the piece, I trace late-night’s evolution and transformation over the past two decades, and how Letterman has changed from scrappy innovator to odd man out. As Kimmel, Fallon and Colbert have proven time and again, “Late-night” is now late-night in name only.

Stephen Colbert and the Viral Video-Fueled Generation Hijack Late Night

‘Turn’ Star (and New Dad!) Jamie Bell on Sleepless Nights with Wife Evan Rachel Wood

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At Parade, Jamie Bell spoke with me (back at TCA winter press tour) about his new AMC Revolutionary War drama Turn, fatherhood, the hardest thing about period acting and how he avoided the usual pitfalls that plague child actors as they grow up:

 “I can only speak for myself, really. I was fortunate to have a really good manager who kept me very grounded, [as well as] my family, my mom especially. I was just working all the time. I didn’t really have time to go off the rails in that way. I’m sure I did it in my teenager kind of ways, but I wasn’t publicized. I wasn’t a Disney kid, I wasn’t Bieber, I didn’t have the attention of the world on my shoulders. I did for a second and then I just went and did a bunch of work, and started to live an actor’s life. You go from one to the next to the next to the next. In that regard, I was lucky that the focus wasn’t so heavy on me. I don’t really know another way around it. Just having really good, solid people around you that you trust.”

Turn Star (and New Dad!) Jamie Bell on Sleepless Nights with Wife Evan Rachel Wood

U.S. Morning Talk Shows Have a New Strategy: If You Can’t Beat Them, Steal Them

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us morning talk shows

As Josh Elliott leaves Good Morning America for NBC Sports, I wrote at Quartz about NBC’s new approach to morning show success: if you can’t beat them, steal them.

Of course, poaching is nothing new in the morning show wars (CBS hired away Today’s Bryant Gumbel in 1997; he began hosting The Early Show in 1999), but this is a new evolution as media conglomerates have continued to expand. NBC Universal can in essence kill two birds with one stone: fill a vital need in one area of its company (NBC Sports was searching for a viable heir apparent to Bob Costas, the Weather Channel was looking to keep viewers tuned in more than 15 minutes each morning) while simultaneously boosting another property—Today—by damaging a competitor, and the tight-knit five-person anchor team that propelled GMA to first place. Suddenly, two of those five anchors have been snapped up by NBC Universal.

Watch your back, GMA!

US morning talk shows have a new strategy: If you can’t beat them, steal them

‘The Blacklist’ is Dead Without the Psychotic Red

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blacklist

Few shows have been as agonizingly schizophrenic this season and NBC’s The Blacklist, which is unmissable whenever James Spader is on screen as Raymond “Red” Reddington, and unwatchable whenever he is offscreen. As I wrote at The Daily Beast, the producers have done a superb job at dialing back on Red’s camp from the pilot:

Rather than going over-the-top, Spader has chosen a markedly more intriguing route. While he’s always the only one on screen having fun, he’ll frequently pull back the curtain to reveal the heartache and torment lurking underneath, especially in a rapt monologue about the torment of discovering his wife and child’s murdered corpses, or a recent conversation with Keen about how one comes to terms with taking a person’s life. More heart than ham, Red has become an intriguingly complex character, a 10-course-meal the likes of which broadcast television rarely concocts these days, and Spader has dug into each new dish with relish.

The rest of the show, however, is a mess, and I propose some radical changes that would help fix the series — and make Red even more compelling.

‘The Blacklist’ is Dead Without the Psychotic Red