It certainly wasn't intentional. And I by no means want to pop my head in here every now and then to talk about how busy I am. That wouldn't just bore you; it bores me too. Yet right now, it's the truth.
And it's hard, you know? Because I have all this crap hopping around in my head. I mean, there has been enough major film industry news in the past two weeks to cover many months. Take Bob Iger being named Michael Eisner's successor thereby heralding in the pending doom of Disney. No, I'm not kidding. You own Disney stock? I beg you to sell, and sell quickly. If you really examine things, you can basically blame Iger for the entire downward slide of ABC. He was its head when that slide started. And now? The people responsible for this current resurgent slate of programming? Oh they were fired last year because he's an idiot and didn't give any of his executives time to fix what he had personally broken. But failing up isn't new in this industry.
Then Gail Berman announces she's leaving Fox, and the rumors are she'll be joining Brad Grey at Paramount. And Peter Ligouri, the head of FX Network, is taking her place and has already started shuffling the decks. All of you are probably saying, "Who the hell cares?" Well this Arrested Development fan cares deeply, and I don't know how to react. Ligouri deserves major credit for taking FX from being yet another rerun network and creating some of the riskiest shows anywhere on TV. FX has often, justly, been called the HBO of basic cable, and with series like The Shield, Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me, it's easy to see why.
But Berman had, at least publicly, been a supporter of Arrested Development, and I had hope that she would give her Emmy winning best show some more time to grab an audience next season. Now with Ligouri, I'm not to sure. For one thing, I was disturbed by the end of the lede in a Variety story earlier today stating that he sent Fox staffers "an email over the weekend offering up kudos for the launch of laffer Life on a Stick." Uhm, has he seen the show? Life on a Stick may have received tons of promotion and received some promising premiere numbers, and I guess the marketing team does deserve some major props because this has to be one of the worst shows I've seen in a very long time. By far the worst of this television season. How it got to pilot, let alone to air, is beyond me. There wasn't one (uncanned) laugh in the entire show. It is the very worst example of everything that is wrong with television, especially the TV sitcom. I actually sat through the whole thing, even though it gave me a headache within its first 10 minutes. It is seriously, seriously, SERIOUSLY awful. Small Wonder awful.
In fact, how's this: it's as bad, maybe even worse, than The Benefactor, my previous nominee for worst new show of the year. Maybe that's why Ligouri is emailing out congrats! It sure as hell shouldn't have been to Fox's development staff.
And that's just some of the business news. Oy, what am I to do? Well, I'm going to try really hard to come and give brief spurts of content over the next couple days. Like, why is The Contender doing so bad when the show itself is pretty good, especially for non-boxing fans? (Although what exec producer did last week with the episode feature Najai Turpin who since taping but before the show premiered committed suicide was shameful. More on that later.) Or why you really must watch the season (hopefully not "series") finale of American Dreams this Wednesday.
And then there are the movies. Oh all the movies I haven't seen for the last month. There goes my New Year's Resolution, at least temporarily. And I was close to on-track through February! Personally, I am beyond excited for Sin City opening this weekend. I haven't been to a new movie in the theater since January -- tons of screenings in February is why -- but I will be somewhere watching Robert Rodriguez's and Frank Miller's extravaganza.
For now, though, it's time for bed. Please bear with me. I will be back with more regularity, and soon.
Welcome back Aaron.
Small wonder had a genius theme song, "She's fantastic, made of plastic
Microchips here and there. She's a small wonder,
Brings love and laughter everywhere!"
People don't stop to write themes like that anymore.
Posted by: lily | Thursday, March 31, 2005 at 12:17 AM