Category Archives: TV & Not TV

What is TCA Press Tour? (Summer ’15 Edition)

Tonight marks the start of the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour. While some scheduling quirks this year are delaying my arrival until Sunday night, I’ll be covering it from afar this week (don’t worry; even though I’m missing the first week, I’ll still be there for almost two weeks). I put together a “What is TCA press tour?” primer before winter tour in January, but given that this will be my first TCA press tour as an Adweek employee, I wanted to update it for new followers to explain what press tour is, what I’ll be doing there for Adweek and why I—and almost everyone else who writes about TV—will be talking (and tweeting, using the #TCA15 hashtag) about it nonstop for the next three(!) weeks.

Twice a year, hundreds of TV critics and writers from all over the U.S. and Canada assemble at an L.A. hotel (the Beverly Hilton in summer; the Langham Huntington in winter) for press tour. Each day, a new network presents a variety of panels featuring talent and producers from their new (and sometimes returning) programs, as well as a panel with their top executives. There is also a “scrum” after each panel where smaller groups of reporters gather around certain panel members to ask additional questions, as well as one-on-one opportunities throughout the day and at receptions held during most evenings.

Between the news that breaks during the panels (and at least one panel per press tour goes completely off the rails; Girls, 2 Broke Girls, Stalker and Fresh Off the Boat are recent examples of this) and the interviews I land outside of the panels, each TCA press tour yields dozens of stories for me, both during the event itself and pieces I bank for the weeks and months to come. I’d estimate that my winter press tour reporting for Adweek generated at least 50 stories, including three cover stories, and influenced countless other pieces I’ve written since then, including Friday’s story about Showtime cancelling Happyish.

I first attended press tour, and became a TCA member, back when I was TV Editor at People. I covered the last few press tours for a variety of outlets—even though I covered winter tour primarily for Adweek as a freelancer, it also led to stories that ran in Quartz, The Daily Beast and Emmy Magazine—but now that I’m working for Adweek, I’ll be covering summer press tour for them exclusively.

It’s an exhausting, but essential, couple of weeks. Wish me luck!

Mike’s Fate and Other Season 3 Secrets from the ‘Graceland’ Set

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As USA’s drama Graceland returns Thursday night (at 10 p.m. ET) for Season 3, the show’s fans have just one question: did Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit)—who had flatlined at the end of Season 2, after corrupt FBI agent Sid (Carmine Giovinazzo) cut off his air supply at the hospital—survive?

The answer seemed obvious to me—of course Mike wasn’t going to die, because a show that needs all the viewers it can muster would never jettison its most popular actor (Tveit has spawned hundreds of stories like this; the internet can’t get enough of him)—but when I recently visited the show’s Fort Lauderdale set, Tveit was nowhere to be found.

No, that doesn’t mean that he’s off the show. More likely, the network figured that the best way to keep his fate quiet was to keep him far away from reporters.

However, the rest of the cast—Daniel Sunjata (who plays FBI Special Agent Paul Briggs), Vanessa Ferlito (FBI Agent Charlie DeMarco), Brandon Jay McLaren (U.S. Customs Agent Dale Jakes), Serinda Swan (DEA Agent Paige Arkin) and Manny Montana (FBI Agent Johnny Tuturro), whose characters work undercover and live together in a Southern California beach house—were all on hand and ready to talk. Together, they shared seven big secrets about Season 3 of Graceland:

1) Yes, Mike is back.

Tveit’s on-set absence aside, there’s no doubt that he is still part of the cast, and is prominently featured in the Season 3 key art.

While USA wants to keep the details of his fate under wraps until Thursday’s premiere, consider this: the show hasn’t suddenly taken a supernatural turn (so Mike isn’t a ghost), nor has it gone the Lost or Orange is the New Black route (i.e. heavy flashbacks). So, that leaves only one clear answer as to whether he survived.

Stil, Tveit’s costars insist they weren’t sure if he would ultimately be a part of Season 3 or not. “I personally didn’t know,” says Sunjata. “They certainly left it so ambiguous, even to us, that it was a big question mark hanging in the air, even to us. And then we finally found out the capacity in which — especially in the season premiere — that he would in some sense be back, that was a surprise too.”

2) This season is all about atonement.

As the one who tipped off Sid about Mike’s location in the Season 2 finale, Paige will have to answer for her actions this year. But she’s not the only: atonement is a key theme of Season 3. “Everyone in the house has atonement to do, has sins that they have to atone for, and karma, chickens that come home to roost – quite literally. There were some chickens in the last scene!” says Sunjata. “Everyone’s got some sins to atone for. Everybody’s trying to even the scales.”

But in doing so, they seem to be only making things worse: “There’s a lot of blood this season. There’s been some spillage of the sangre,” says Sunjata.

3) The infamous tape looms large this year.

As part of the aforementioned atonement, Briggs is still haunted by the existence of a tape which recorded his killing FBI Agent Juan Badillo (in sort-of self-defense) back in in Season 1. “This has been a dangling plot thread from season one that fans have known was going to come back,” says Sunjata.

After two seasons of lurking in the background, it finally does. “First episode, the tape is back front and center, and it’s used as leverage in a big way,” says McLaren. “And that leverage is exercised for the entire season.”

4) The whole gang is finally back together.

While the events of Season 2 served to drive the six housemates apart (often literally), this year is about reestablishing the group. “They’re trying to bring the house back, because the fans love that. They like seeing us together,” says Ferlito.

“We do come back as a unit in Season 3,” says McLaren. “I think everyone realized after the events of Season 2 that we do need each other. If we’re all islands in the house, bad things typically happen. So there’s a concerted effort this season to try and come back together and be there for one another.”

While Jakes moved out of the house at one point last year, “everybody’s in the house” this season, says McLaren (providing another clue as to Mike’s fate). “We’re all working on a big thing.”

That “big thing” is this season’s major story arc, about the Armenian Mafia. “Briggs goes undercover and it has something to do with the Armenian Mob and ends up needing the help of his housemates in order to get certain things done,” says Sunjata.

5) Charlie is still pregnant—for now.

Charlie discovered she was pregnant at the end of Season 2, and as of the first few episodes, she still is. “It hasn’t really hit her yet. It’s still very early on. She’s still in the house and still running around with crazy people,” says Ferlito. “She’s just out of control” as she tries to enact revenge on the money launderer who nearly killed her” and her unborn child.

Ferlito estimates that Charlie is about two and a half months pregnant. “ Everyday I’m like, “Am I losing the kid? What’s up? What’s going to happen?” she says. “I could make it through the whole season [without showing]. We could show up Season 4 with the baby—or not.”

6) Briggs and Charlie are on the outs.

While Briggs is the father of her baby, Charlie can’t forgive him for his Season 1 deceptions, which came to light last year. “Briggs and her, obviously they’re struggling. I don’t know if they can ever mend that, what happened between them. How can she ever trust him?” says Ferlito. “We’re not on good terms right now. I’m like, Jesus Christ, will I ever get to make out with Daniel Sunjata again? It’s just unfair!”

Ferlito hopes they patch things up, and not just so she can kiss Sunjata. “Charlie and Briggs, I think it’s real what they have,” she says. “I think Briggs and Charlie will always be in each other’s lives. It’s hard not to write that for us, because we really love each other in real life. We’re really good friends.”

7) Season 3 will go out with a bang.

While the season is just getting under way tonight, some of the actors are already anticipating what’s to come as the year wraps up.

“If Season 3 finishes the way they’re talking about it, it’s going to blow people’s minds,” says Montana. “Because when I heard, I was like, ‘How are we going to do that?’ But I loved it.”

“There’s stuff happening towards the end of the season that will forever change the dynamic of the house,” adds McLaren. “If what happens is meant to happen, Season 3 will be nuts!”

How ‘Lawman’ Became ‘Justified’

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After six mostly-wondrous seasons, tonight it’s finally time for Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to hang up his badge for good. It’s the series finale of the FX drama we all know and love, Lawman.

At least, that’s what we might all be saying today if Steven Seagal, of all people, hadn’t forced FX to execute an 11th hour title change for its new drama, based on an Elmore Leonard character, and come up with what turned out to be the perfect name for the series: Justified.

FX has announced the project as Lawman back in 2009, but the network renamed it in early 2010 to avoid a conflict with Steven Seagal: Lawman, a now-long-forgotten A&E reality series about Seagal’s work as a reserve deputy sheriff in Louisiana. The new title, Justified, was taken from a line in the pilot, in which Raylan’s new boss, Art Mullen, asks him about his quick-draw shooting of a mob hitman in Miami, which causes Raylan to be reassignment to Kentucky’s Harlan County. “It was justified,” says Raylan.

When I interviewed Justified creator Graham Yost earlier this year for my Daily Beast story about series finales (a story that is worth rereading before tonight’s Justified farewell), we also talked about the title that wasn’t, and how the show’s fate might have changed had it kept its original moniker.

Once FX decided on a name change, “we didn’t come up with Justified,” says Yost. “That was an FX idea and we went, ‘Okay, they like it; that’s fine.’ We couldn’t come up with anything better. The people who worked on The Shield hated that title at first. It was supposed to be called Rampart, and the LAPD basically said, ‘You will not get any help from us if that’s what you call it.’ So they came up with The Shield, and no one liked it. It became The Shield and Justified became Justified.”

Now, of course, there’s no question that Justified is far superior to the generic-sounding Lawman, which seems more appropriate for a CBS procedural. “There’s a slight question in the title, a little bit of irony, it’s the whole thing of Raylan’s story in that and so it’s great,” says Yost. “And Lawman is far more straightforward. There would have been great posters, and it might have gotten a bigger audience in some ways, or at least sampling it, but I don’t think it would’ve had the core people who really got into it.”

Then again, as Yost points out, the title might not have mattered much in the end, so long as the show itself was as compelling as Justified turned out to be: “It’s absolutely ridiculous to try and equate, but The Beatles is the most ridiculous name for a band,” he notes. “It was modeled on The Crickets, but all these associations go away.”

Farewell, Justified and/or Lawman. And — here’s a sentence no one has likely ever uttered before — thank you, Steven Seagal!

Billy Gardell: No Hard Feelings if Melissa McCarthy Leaves ‘Mike & Molly’ After Next Season

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Mike and Molly will be returning for a sixth season, but beyond that, the show’s future is likely in the hands of its star, Melissa McCarthy, who will need to decide if she wants to sign a new contract for the CBS sitcom or become a full-time movie star.

News leaked out Wednesday, via this since-deleted Instagram post from Mike & Molly producer Julie Bean, that CBS had picked up the comedy for a sixth season (CBS, which tends to announce all of its renewals at once, hasn’t confirmed the news. UPDATE: CBS officially renewed Mike & Molly, Mom and 2 Broke Girls early Thursday afternoon).

While McCarthy certainly seems excited by the Season 6 pickup in that photo, it remains unclear if the actress will want to keep her day job when her contract is up next spring. Right now, McCarthy and her co-star Billy Gardell are “signed through next season,” Gardell told me earlier this year. “Then I’m sure they’ll talk about that.”

Since the series launched in 2010, the actress has become one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars thanks to films like Bridesmaids and The Heat. Will McCarthy, who is squeezing in another two movies during her Mike & Molly summer hiatus — including the much-anticipated Ghostbusters reboot — want to stay tethered to a CBS sitcom when she could be making even more films (and a lot more money) each year? If the answer is no and McCarthy opts to depart, Gardell says there will be no hard feelings.

“Listen, when you’re that big of a movie star … she’s put her time in here,” Gardell says. “If we go seven, eight years, that would be wonderful. But we also all respect and love each other and understand business is business. She’s a huge movie star, so if she chooses to do movies in another year, we wish her nothing but the best.”

Gardell, who says he is “absolutely” thrilled for McCarthy’s movie success, tells me that he’s not trying to convince her to stay (at least, not yet). “Listen, nobody controls anybody’s destiny,” he says of his costar. “She has been incredibly gracious, hasn’t changed at all and has brought the same love and professionalism every week.”

The actor credits McCarthy’s meteoric rise for convincing executive producer Chuck Lorre and the Mike & Molly producers to make a major change last season, and shaking up the format — where McCarthy’s Molly was a teacher who was getting ready to have a baby with Gardell’s Mike — to better play up her physical comedy strengths. “That was a scary change to make mid-direction,” he says. “But Chuck very smartly foresaw we were painting ourselves into a corner by heading for the pregnancy, because you’ve got the best physical comedian in 20 years. Let’s not put her in the hospital; let’s let her do her thing. And I think it’s been done smoothly and right now we’re doing great.”

Mike & Molly is not a huge hit for CBS, but as I wrote in my Adweek cover story on the state of TV comedy, it has become a prized utility player for the network, coming off the bench each midseason to plugs leaks in the schedule from the fall. “You get to this place where you know your fans will wait for you, and you know they’re going to come back strong,” Gardell told me in that story. “And the network knows that, so they know they have a little room to try new stuff.”

But if McCarthy opts to leave TV behind, CBS will only have that safety net for one more season.

Everything is Awesome, Especially Chris Miller’s Plans for the Next Three ‘Lego’ Movies

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The Lego Movie was an unexpected smash last year, grossing $468.8 million worldwide and captivating parents and kids alike — everyone, it seems, except Oscar voters (grrr). A year later, the film’s writing-directing duo, Chris Miller and Phil Lord (who also wrote and directed 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street), are tripling down on their “Everything is Awesome” gamble, overseeing not one but three different Lego Movie sequels and spinoffs.

First up is Ninjago, a spinoff based on Lego’s popular Masters of Spinjitzu line of sets, which will be out Sept. 23, 2016. That will be followed on May 26, 2017 by a Lego Batman spinoff, with Will Arnett returning as Batman, directed by Chris McKay. Finally, 2018 will bring The Lego Movie Sequel, directed by Community and The Mindy Project director Rob Schrab, with Miller and Lord producing and writing the script.

I spoke with Miller (above, right) — who along with Lord (left) is also executive producing the innovative, hilarious new Fox comedy, The Last Man on Earth, debuting March 1 — for my recent Adweek cover story on the not-so-funny state of broadcast comedy. (“To do something that’s going to get people’s attention,” he told me of Last Man on Earth, “my theory is you have to do something that feels unique and special and gets people talking: ‘Did you see this thing?’ We wanted to do something that didn’t feel like anything you’ve seen before, because otherwise, what’s the point?”) But he also talked to me at length about how he and Lord were able to successfully rebrand a pair of beloved franchises, and how they’ll (hopefully) do it all over again with the upcoming three Lego films:

Between Lego Movie and the Jump Street films, how were you able to take these brands that people have known and loved for years, and…
And make something new out of them? Well the first thing is to take it very seriously and to think about whatever you’re talking about and find the love and the joy in it. And to try and be smart about it, and not just do the most common denominator. When we were doing The Lego Movie, our big fear was it was going to feel like a giant toy commercial. And that was the last thing we wanted to do, ever. So I think by making it feel like it was just a piece of personal expression that was using the bricks as a medium to tell a story made it feel like oh, this is something that somebody made, not something that came from corporate, on high.

I feel like people can sniff that stuff out. When a corporation is trying to make a viral video, and everyone in it is drinking Dr. Pepper or something, you’re like, ‘Oh, you’re trying to sell me Dr. Pepper here, man!’ And people don’t like to feel like they’re being sold something. So we just don’t ever let a choice be made for that reason. Then in the end, it ends up being, you know, good!

After you pulled off 21 Jump Street, did that make tackling Lego Movie less daunting?
That was a crazy risk, obviously, turning that into a weird, self-aware comedy. That was mostly born out of our embarrassment about knowing that rebooting television shows is a morally bankrupt approach to making movies. But we loved the concept of guys getting a second chance to go back to high school and I enjoyed the original show, so it seemed like it was mostly us apologizing. Like, “We know this is a crazy idea for a TV show, but we know it and we’re trying to make it good. So just be on our side on this!” So one of our things is trying to get the audience on your side and going, “Hey, we’re all in this together, let’s have a good time.”

How do you replicate your Lego Movie success with the next three films?
Yeah, there’s three so far. The key is hiring different filmmakers for each one who can make the tone their own. They can’t all feel like the same exact thing. So, the Ninjago one has a very distinct tone of its own. It feels like a comedy Kurosawa movie or something. And the Batman one has got some of the most crazy action you’ve ever seen. Each one has its own voice and it feels true to the thing that we made, but it also feels like again it’s a filmmaker making something and using this as a medium to tell a fun story.

You talked before about being worried The Lego Movie would seem like a commercial. It would seem that’s even more of a concern now.
That’s the danger there, exactly!

Because now, Lego is probably saying to you, “Come up with this so we can sell even more Legos!”
Exactly. Part of doing Lego 2 was saying, we want to make everybody nervous again like they were the first time. We want to make the Lego group nervous, and we want to make Warner Bros. nervous. And if we’re not making them nervous, then we’re not pushing it far enough and we’re not doing our job.

‘Scandal’ vs. ‘The Blacklist’: Inside This Season’s Biggest, Bloodiest Time Slot Battle

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Red Reddington and Olivia Pope are two of TV’s most fearsome, cunning figures, and woe to the person who ends up opposite either of them on the battlefield.

But starting tonight, they’ll be facing off against each other, as NBC shifts The Blacklist to Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET, opposite ABC’s Scandal, setting up this season’s biggest, bloodiest time slot battle: NBC’s top-rated scripted show in adults 18-49 (Blacklist averages a 3.32 rating this season), pitted against ABC’s number two scripted show in 18-49 (Scandal’s 3.21 average is behind only Modern Family‘s).

Yes, the brutal time slot competition seems somewhat illogical, especially given that NBC is the number one network in 18-49 this season, in part because of Blacklist’s robust Monday night ratings. But NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt explained last month that Blacklist offers NBC its best chance to claw back into contention on Thursday nights, which the network had dominated for years. “It’s an important night for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is it is a great, desirable night for advertising,” he said.

Indeed, it’s essential for the broadcast networks to be competitive on Thursday, which is primetime’s most lucrative night. While Thursday actually has the week’s third-lowest viewership, advertisers of movies and other weekend-themed products pay handsomely to run their commercials on Thursdays, and NBC is tired of missing out on its share of the dough.

Thursdays “used to be the big night of television for NBC,” said Greenblatt, as the network’s Must-See TV lineup ruled the Nielsens for decades. But as NBC’s stalwarts went off the air — Friends in 2004, Will and Grace in 2006, ER in 2009 — the network lost its luster on the night. Now Thursdays are more like a graveyard for NBC, riddled with dead shows walking like The Michael J. Fox Show, Bad Judge and A to Z. “Putting comedies we love there and having them fail started to feel like the definition of insanity,” entertainment president Jennifer Salke said last month.

This isn’t the first time a network has shifted a big show into Thursday night to successfully establish a foothold there. In 1990, Fox moved The Simpsons from Sunday to Thursday, opposite the then top-rated The Cosby Show, and the animated series more than held its own for years, before returning to Sundays in 1994. As CSI began taking off in its first season, CBS made a midseason shift in 2001, relocating it from Fridays to Thursdays, where it dominated for the next decade. And when Grey’s Anatomy returned for its third season in 2006, ABC moved it from Sundays to Thursdays, where it helped lay the foundation for what ultimately became its powerful TGIT lineup.

“It’s a risky, but necessary, move for us to make,” said Greenblatt. “The only way to really reinvigorate that night is to jumpstart it with something like The Blacklist. If you don’t start that move at some point, you’ll never get there.”

And both shows arrive at tonight’s battle loaded for bear. NBC gave The Blacklist its coveted post-Super Bowl berth, where Sunday’s episode drew a series-high 25.72 million viewers (and an 8.4 rating), and ended with a cliffhanger that will be resolved in tonight’s episode. The show also is running a $25,000 sweepstakes for viewers who watch tonight; in essence, NBC is paying viewers (well, one viewer, at least) to tune in to its Thursday debute.

Meanwhile, Scandal returned from its midseason hiatus last Thursday with one of the show’s best episodes ever, featuring a tour de force, give-her-the-damn-Emmy turn from star Kerry Washington which also ended in a cliffhanger that will pick up tonight. That episode also generated 527,335 tweets, one indication that it should likely have the edge in live viewing among audiences that watch both shows.

That’s one of the reasons that Greenblatt doesn’t expect Blacklist to win the ratings battle, at least at first. “I expect it’s not going to be everything we hope it’s going to be right off the bat, but I also think you have to plant the seed and over time, grow it and water it and nurture it, and hopefully rebuild it,” Greenblatt told me.

That said, he’ll only be so patient, especially if Blacklist’s ratings quickly crater. “If it doesn’t work, and I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but if it’s a disaster, we won’t just live with it,” Greenblatt told me. “We’ll try to correct it, sooner than later.”

Let the battle begin…

NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt on Super Bowl Promo Plans, His Risky ‘Blacklist’ Move and ‘SNL 40’

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When you’re the first place network in the 18-49 demographic, there’s nowhere to go but down. But NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt likes the view from on high, and doesn’t plan on relinquishing the top spot anytime soon. And thanks to the huge events lined up February, he likely won’t have to. First up: Super Bowl XLIX, this Sunday.

Then, two weeks later NBC will air SNL 40, a three-hour live special celebrating Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary. Plus he’s making a huge gamble by moving The Blacklist, NBC’s top-rated scripted series, from Monday nights after The Voice to Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET, where it will square off against Scandal beginning next week.

Before diving into NBC’s biggest month of the year, Greenblatt spoke with TV & Not TV about the network’s plans for February — and next season.

You’ve got the Super Bowl on Sunday. How will you be promoting your shows to an audience of 100 million-plus?

It’s one of the great things that we have every three years, and we couldn’t be happier to have it this year as we go into this midseason with all these new shows. To have that huge audience see these promos is a great thing. We try to promote everything that we can, and hopefully there’s retention. There’s a lot of stuff going on that day for people, but I know the commercials actually are embraced by the audience, so hopefully we’ll also get some of that love. We also are making new, fresh Super Bowl commercials for many of our shows. There’s a special Blacklist commercial, there’s a special Voice commercial and I hope they’ll be noticed just like the great Budweiser and Pepsi commercials that are in there.

Super Bowl XLIX coordinating producer Fred Gaudelli told me it will be a “huge disappointment” if the Super Bowl doesn’t end up as the most-watched telecast in history. Do you agree?

Everyone’s fixated on record-breaking and numbers and stuff. Even if we don’t break the record — like we didn’t with Peter Pan and we didn’t with the Golden Globes this year — to aggregate 100-plus million people for an event like that for all those hours, is going to be phenomenal. Whether it’s 100,000 viewers more than last year, or 2 million less!

You made a good case for why you’re moving The Blacklist to Thursdays opposite Scandal, and why you need to be patient to build the night back up. That said, if the show is soft on Thursdays and Mondays are hurting without it, how tough will it be to stuck to your plan?

We’ll have to play it by ear. If it doesn’t work, and I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but if it’s a disaster, we won’t just live with it. We’ll change things around. I expect it’s not going to be everything we hope it’s going to be right off the bat, but I also think you have to plant the seed and over time, grow it and water it and nurture it, and hopefully rebuild it. But if it’s a big miss, then we’ll try to correct it, sooner than later.

All your focus right now is on the Super Bowl, but just two weeks later, you’re doing SNL 40 on Feb. 15. Very little has been revealed so far. How are things going, and will it be similar to the big 25th anniversary special in 1999?

Lorne [Michaels] is still putting it together. It’s going to be a big, three-hour, live event, in Studio 8H, with a lot of people who’ve been on the show or been involved with the show over the decades. Some very exciting live things are going to happen. It’s not going to be a preponderance of clips; there’s going to be a lot of stuff happening in the studio. To try to celebrate 40 years in three hours is not going to be easy, but it’s going to be a big event and we’re going to make a big noise.

It’s going to be featured in the Super Bowl. We have several big priorities happening before Feb. 15: the Blacklist episode after the Super Bowl, the Thursday move, the launch of The Slap [Feb. 12] and Allegiance [Feb. 5]… So there’s a lot to do, but SNL 40 is going to be a big agenda for us. I think it’s going to do well.

The Voice returns on Feb. 23. As you look ahead, do you still envision sticking with two cycles each year?

Look, there’s been some erosion there, as we knew there would be, as we play it again and again. But I’m really proud of the quality of the show, and I think the last cycle we just had was as good as any cycle we’ve had in the last seven cycles. As long as the creative stays really strong and we keep monitoring the erosion, we’ll keep doing it.

That said, it’s not inconceivable that we could decide to cut it back to one a season. But it still does better than almost anything else we have, even at the level that it’s at now. So selfishly, it’s hard to say, oh, for half a season, we’re going to give up that rating. We just have to keep watching it. I don’t know if the ratings are going to go up if we do it one season a year. We’ll see. I think the next cycle will tell us a lot, and then we’ll make a decision for next season.

Earlier this month you said that your next December live musical will either be The Music Man or The Wiz. Given how essential you said Carrie Underwood was to boosting The Sound of Music Live!’s audience in 2013 compared with Peter Pan Live! in December, will the decision come down to casting? Or will you pick the show first, then cast it?

I think it could be either. For something like The Music Man, we really need a central star to play the role of Harold Hill. But for The Wiz, I don’t think it’s as necessary to have one featured star, because there are six iconic characters that we know and love. So I actually think in case of The Wiz, we could build an ensemble of really interesting actors that maybe aren’t superstars.

Where’s Olivia? Scott Foley Teases Tonight’s ‘Scandal’ Return

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Scandal is known for its labyrinthine twists and turns, and its fall finale ended with a doozy: Jake Ballard (Scott Foley) discovered that Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) had seemingly been kidnapped. Two agonizing months later, the show finally returns to TV tonight, with Olivia still MIA. Foley, who yesterday talked about being dropped from the show four years ago, opened up to TV & Not TV about Scandal’s return and the search for Olivia:

Does Jake feel responsible for Olivia’s disappearance?

I think he does. I think given his position in life, his job, his employment and the nature of who he is, I think he’s very protective of Olivia, and for that to have happened, basically under his watch, is pretty troublesome for him.

What would he go through to find her?

I think he would go through everything to find her! I can’t tell you exactly what he’s going to go through to find her!

What can we expect in tonight’s episode?

The first two back are going to jump in right where we left off, so you’re going to see what happened to Olivia, where she went, who took her, how we get her back. You’re going to see Jake working with the Gladiators to get her back, you’re going to see Fitz dealing with his Vice President, Andrew, and all the crap they’ve been dealing with. You’re going to see the return of Mellie. She’s no longer “Smelly Mellie” or “Fucked Up Mellie,” she’s Mellie and pulling strings in the White House. You’re going to see David Rosen dealing with his new job as United States Attorney General, you’re going to see Abby straddling the line between the White House and OPA [Olivia Pope & Associates] and succeeding in both. You’re going to see Cyrus helping the President out.

Why should Olivia end up with Jake over Fitz?

Why shouldn’t Olivia end up with Jake? I believe that Jake is the better choice. He’s available, he’s not married, he’s willing to give up everything. And he believes in them. However, there’s something to be said for maybe fate, maybe true love, maybe meant to be. I think Fitz and Olivia have something that is unquantifiable and no matter how far away they get from each other, they’re always going to be dealing with that.

Scott Foley: ABC Dropped Me From ‘Scandal’ — Four Years Ago

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Scott Foley will never forget the day that Shonda Rhimes broke the news to him that he no longer would be on Scandal.

Relax: Foley’s Jake Ballard isn’t going anywhere when the ABC drama returns Thursday night after a two-month hiatus. Instead, the actor was recalling the moment four years ago when ABC decided he was the wrong actor to play “gladiator” Stephen Finch (portrayed by Henry Ian Cusick in the first season), even though Rhimes had already promised him the part.

“I had read the Scandal pilot script very early on in the process and really wanted to be a part of it,” says Foley. “I went through the process and ABC didn’t think I was the right choice for it. It was probably one of the hardest phone calls that Shonda’s had to make, to me at least. Saying, ‘Hey, I know I said you had this role…but you don’t have this role any more!’”

Of course, Rhimes and Foley had the last laugh, as the actor ended up on Scandal anyway, in a much juicer, higher-profile role, while Cusick quietly disappeared from the series after Season 1. “Thank God I didn’t get it!” Foley says now. “Shonda, true to her word, got me on the show and found a great role and has really turned this character, with the ‘meet cute’ that Olivia and Jake had in a coffee shop, into a really important, viable part of the story. …Everything always works out!”

ABC’s scandalous Scandal behavior wasn’t the only juicy revelation that Foley shared with TV & Not TV as he prepared for the show’s midseason return on Jan. 29:

His wife hates Scandal spoilers. Lots of people press Foley for Scandal intel, but not his wife, Marika. “This is the first job I’ve ever had where I can’t run lines with her. I can’t tell her anything. She won’t let me! And it’s hard, because I have a lot of lines,” says Foley. “Shonda does a great job, unlike other shows, of giving you things to say and really strong, tough dialogue, and I have, for 12 years now, the night before, always been able to run my lines with my wife. I can’t do that on this. She doesn’t want to know anything. She gets mad when I say, ‘Babe, just this once!’ She won’t do it.”

He’s addicted to HGTV — and Downton Abbey. The passion that Scandal fans have for his show is rivaled only by Foley’s devotion to all things HGTV. “I’m a big HGTV watcher,” he says. “I have my cable box turned to HGTV so when my cable turns on, it’s on HGTV. Property Brothers, Fixer Upper, Income Property, House Hunters, Love It or List It…I’m pretty handy!”

The actor is also savoring the chance to catch up on the new season of Downton Abbey with his wife, Marika. “Downton Abbey’s back, and I’m very excited,” he says. “Given our schedule, we’ll usually sit down and watch two or three episodes at a time. We’ll probably watch it all in a week and a half. We like to hold out, though, because once it’s gone, you’ve got to wait another year. It’s like Orange is the New Black!”

Raising three kids is overwhelming. As the father of a two-month-old newborn, son Konrad, Foley realizes he may be in over his head now that he has three kids, all under 5. “I only have three, but I recently read that someone with four kids said, ‘Imagine drowning, and then someone throwing you a baby,’” he says. “And I thought, that’s right! I kind of feel like I’m drowning right now!”

He doesn’t miss filming love scenes with a pregnant Kerry Washington. Shooting Scandal last season proved to be a challenge for the cast and crew, who had to disguise the fact that star Kerry Washington was pregnant in real life — but not on the show. “It was so strange,” says Foley. “They did such a good job last year of not really having to deal with it. Look, it was obviously a presence in every scene we did, but the only times I really thought about it was the love scenes we would have, which made it a little awkward.”

But not any more: “Having her back in full force this year, and having her around and able, it’s a blessing for the show,” says Foley.

Check back Thursday, when Foley teases Scandal’s big return, and Jake’s frantic search for the now-missing Olivia Pope.

What is TCA Press Tour?

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In a few hours (weather permitting) I will be flying out to Pasadena, Calif. for the start of the Television Critics Association winter press tour. As this is the first TCA tour since I launched the site, it seemed as good a time as any to explain what press tour is, and why I — and almost everyone else who writes about TV — will be talking (and tweeting, using the #TCA15 hashtag) about it nonstop for the next two weeks.

Twice a year, hundreds of TV critics and writers from all over the U.S. and Canada assemble at an L.A. hotel (the Beverly Hilton in summer; the Langham Huntington in winter) for press tour. Each day, a new network presents a variety of panels featuring talent and producers from their new (and sometimes returning) programs, as well as panel with their top executive. There is also a “scrum” after each panel — where smaller groups of reporters gather around certain panel members to ask additional questions — as well as one-on-one opportunities throughout the day and at receptions held during most evenings.

Between the news that breaks during the panels (and at least one panel per press tour goes completely off the rails — Girls, 2 Broke Girls and Stalker are recent examples of this) and the interviews I land outside of the panels, each TCA press tour yields dozens of stories for me, both during the event itself and in stories I bank for the weeks and months to come. If you look at the “popular tags” cloud in the column on your right, the TCA tag is by far the biggest one.

I first attended press tour, and became a TCA member, back when I was TV Editor at People. Now, I cover TCA for a variety of outlets — material I gathered from TCA summer tour ran in Quartz, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Adweek and Today.com — but for winter tour, I’ll be writing about it primarily for Adweek. (As always, I’ll post all my stories here as well.)

And with that, I’m TCA-bound. Have more any questions? Check out Alan Sepinwall’s far more comprehensive TCA rundown here.