Category Archives: TV

Andy Griffith and how TV has changed

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Today’s news that Andy Griffith had died at age 86 was observered in predictable ways: Griffith’s role as TV icon, model father and reportedly very decent gentleman were dutifully noted.

But there was a little bit of disconnect – some of it generational – in reaction to Griffith’s passing.

Not because reruns of “The Andy Griffith Show,” the small-town sitcom in which Griffith starred from 1960 to 1968, aren’t readily available to younger viewers.

No. I think it’s because it’s hard to comprehend just how big a TV star Griffith was.

Griffith’s show was consistently in the top 10 highest-rated shows on TV for its entire run. At any given time, a quarter of the TV audience was tuned in to watch Andy, Barney Fife, Opie and the rest of the genial people of Mayberry.

Griffith was a big TV star in a four-channel TV universe. And that’s a big difference from being a TV star now.

A friend and I have often theorized that no modern-day TV stars or celebrities can ever hope to reach as many viewers as stars like Griffith, Johnny Carson or their like. That’s because, thanks to the proliferation of channels in basic cable dating back to the 1980s, the viewing audience is increasingly fragmented. A typical household receives dozens, even hundreds, of TV channels. Add to the mix DVDs, digital, streaming and on-demand shows and the 1960s standard of everyone tuning in to the same shows – a practice that brought big ratings, generated “water cooler” conversations and made stars of people like Griffith and Carson – is long gone.

Just look at listings of the top-rated programs of all time. If you discount the few remaining “water cooler” programs like Super Bowls, few shows of the modern era rack up huge ratings.

The top-rated TV episode remains the February 1983 – yes, 1983 – series finale of “MASH.” Sixty percent of households tuned in that night, making for a viewing audience of 50 million households.

The “Who Shot J.R.” episode of the original “Dallas” ranks right up there, followed by the “Roots” miniseries, big sporting events and a handful of other shows.

Very few broadcasts from the past two decades are near the top of the list. Most shows from today would be happy with a fraction of the viewers. In May, “American Idol” pulled in 16 million viewers.

Griffith, a canny entertainer with a way of knowing what viewers wanted, may have like-minded modern-day equivalents.

But none of them will ever have his reach or his impact.

 

Unsung actors: RIP Richard Lynch

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Richard Lynch is another of those Hollywood actors whose name you might not recognize. But once you see his face, you think, “Yeah! I know that guy!”

With Lynch, who died this week at his home in Palm Springs, California, there was another reason he was so memorable.

Some of the obits for Lynch, who was 76, note his scarred face. Some attribute it to injuries he suffered in an accident in the 1960s.

Whatever the cause of Lynch’s unusual looks, he used those, his Draco Malfoy-blond hair and his distinctive voice – a mixture of distinctive and gravelly – to make an impression on a generation of movie and TV fans.

For me, Lynch was best known for playing a vampire reborn in modern-day in the 1979 TV thriller “Vampire.” I didn’t know until I read his obits that the TV movie, which was made on the cheap but had an impressive cast and some nice visuals, was a pilot for a TV series. It would have been cool to see Lynch menacing the show’s heroes each week.

Lynch was also familiar to geeks for his role as the villain in the low-budget sword-and-sorcery flick “The Sword and the Sorcerer,” released in 1982.

He had an impressive TV resume that included guest appearances on shows ranging from “The Streets of San Francisco” to “The Bionic Woman” to “Starsky and Hutch” to “Galactica 1980” to “The Fall Guy.”

More recently he starred in a lot of low-budget horror films and appeared in the Rob Zombie “Halloween” remake.

Richard Lynch might not get included in the “In Memoriam” video shown at next year’s Academy Awards. But he’s the kind of memorable character actor that the movie and TV industry is built on.

‘Dallas’ returns in fine form

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JR Ewing is back and he’s sportin’ some damn fine eyebrows.

More importantly, below those tangled white brows is a gleam in Larry Hagman’s eye. In tonight’s premiere of the “Dallas” continuation on TNT, Hagman returned as Texas bidnessman JR Ewing. He began the episode in a nursing home — faking out family members — cast off his walker and ended the two-hour premiere by finding out his son, John Ross, is double-crossing his own efforts to double-cross brother Bobby (Patrick Duffy), in his efforts to seize control of Southfork Ranch, the family stronghold.

The show was really pretty fun. Some quick impressions:

Hagman and Duffy were, as before, the focus of the show.

Linda Gray had some good scenes as Sue Ellen, but unless the character starts hitting the bottle again, she’s gonna need some beefier plot lines.

I didn’t mind the younger generation of Ewings — JR’s son John Ross, Bobby’s son Christopher, Christopher’s new wife Rebecca and Elena, the maid’s daughter who is the object of affection of both cousins — nearly as much as I might have.

John Ross’ wispy little beard-substitute really should go.

We need more Ewing family members. We had cameos from Ray (Steve Kanaly) and Lucy (Charlene Tilton) tonight, but we need bigger roles for them and others, including “Knots Landing” brother Gary and his wife, Val.

Cliff Barnes got name-dropped, but hasn’t shown up. Yet.

Christopher’s new wife, Rebecca, has a brother, Tommy, who just happened to drift into town before the wedding. Of course, Tommy is up to no good. Good soap stuff here.

We really need video/pictures of the cast in the credits. If you’re gonna continue the series and even have a minor variation on them, we need to see the cast in the credits.

The new “Dallas” is fun stuff. I’ll watch again next week.

Merle’s back on ‘The Walking Dead’ — let’s give him a big hand!

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Say, that guy in the truck looks awfully familiar.

A couple of websites, including The Walking Dead News, posted this photo today of actor Michael Rooker as Merle from the set of the third season of “The Walking Dead.”

(Ah, the interwebs. We love you.)

Last time we saw Rooker as Merle he was preparing to chop off his own hand to escape walkers after being left stranded by the good guys on an Atlanta rooftop in the first season of “The Walking Dead.” That’s if you don’t count his appearance in his brother Daryl’s fever dream in the second season.

Fans of the show have been waiting for Merle’s return ever since, so today’s photo is good news for the upcoming third season, which begins in October.

A couple of other notes from the photo:

Merle’s got a new toy. Check out the spot where Merle’s hand used to be. It’s a sword, or a hook, or a machete. Something pointy, anyway. Good for killing zombies. Or whatever.

Is that the Governor’s truck? A couple of websites theorized that Merle is working for the Governor (David Morrisey), the Big Bad for the upcoming season.

Same truck?

We’ll see sooner or later.

‘Mad Men’ ends strong season with low-key ‘The Phantom’

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If the fifth season of “Mad Men” wasn’t its strongest, it was certainly one of the strongest, with Don and Megan hitting more than a few bumps on the road to domestic bliss even while Don coasted at the office, Sally struggling her way into her teenage years, Roger floundering, Peggy finding the strength to move on, Joan literally prostituting herself for the ad business, Lane meeting a tragic but inevitable end and Pete becoming even less likable, if that’s possible.

Yeah, “Mad Men” has had a busy 13 episodes.

That’s what makes Sunday night’s season finale, “The Phantom,” seem even more anti-climactic.

A day after watching the episode, I’m hard-pressed to remember what happened, right up until the end, when Don got Megan a part in a TV commercial then wandered into a bar, where he was propositioned by a young woman. We don’t hear Don’s answer. This was the season when Don choked his philandering tendencies to death in an especially memorable dream. But is he still feeling that conflicted, I wonder?

After the previous episode, in which Lane hanged himself to escape disgrace over his financial improprieties, this week seemed kind of forced and lackluster.

Pete’s little friend Beth got shock therapy.

Roger, maybe still trying to recover the high he felt when he took LSD, got buck naked in front of a hotel window.

Don and Peggy were briefly reunited at a movie theater playing “Casino Royale.” (Was it just me, or did anyone else feel uncomfortable, remembering the last time we saw Peggy in a theater?)

Pete got punched a couple of times — neither time as effectively as the whipping Lane administered earlier this season — but got an okay from his wife to get his apartment in the city.

Megan double-crossed her friend and won the TV commercial.

And the remaining partners, buoyed by the success of the firm, ended the episode looking out the windows of the floor upstairs from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, contemplating future office space and their future.

That’s about it.

I really enjoyed this season’s “Mad Men” and its emphasis on the desperation of its characters played out against a background of the most jarring news of the day. Despite the lackluster season finale, the show remains one of the best and most absorbing on TV.

 

New ‘Dallas’ series: What we want to see

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For the better part of the 1980s, my friends and I would get together on Friday nights for dinner and a movie. It wasn’t unheard of for us to see a movie during the afternoon or evening, sometimes at a local drive-in theater, then see another at a midnight show.

But we always carved an hour out of our Friday nights for “Dallas.”

It might seem strange, a group of 20-something movie, sci-fi and comic book geeks calling a halt to everything else for an hour to tune into CBS to watch a night-time soap.

But “Dallas,” like any good TV show, became a viewing ritual for us. The show began with a limited season in 1978 and lasted until 1991, when, I have to admit, I was no longer regularly watching. But during the prime years, including the third season, which climaxed with the “Who Shot J.R.” cliffhanger, and the eighth season, which was later revealed to be Pam’s dream that Bobby had been killed, you couldn’t budge me from in front of the TV.

A couple of TV-movie sequels and a failed attempt at a big-screen movie — John Travolta as J.R.? No. Just no. — didn’t seem nearly as promising as TNT’s continuation of the series, which debuts Wednesday.

Larry Hagman is back as J.R., along with Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing and Linda Gray as Sue Ellen. There are some new characters too, including the grown-up versions of Ewing offspring Christopher and John Ross.

I’ll be watching Wednesday night. And here are five things I’m really hoping to see on the new “Dallas:”

A robust J.R. Larry Hagman is in his 80s, for goodness sake, and his eyebrows look like the tangled back-country brush on Southfork Ranch after an unexpected Texas frost. I’ve seen Hagman in a few clips and interviews and he looks pretty good. But what the new “Dallas” really needs is a vigorous, conniving, gleefully evil J.R. I’m hoping that Hagman is up to it and still has that wonderful malevolent twinkle.

Drinking. Lots of drinking. If you think the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce ad execs drink a lot, you didn’t watch “Dallas.” Every time a Ewing would walk into the family room at Southfork Ranch, he or she would make a stop at the bar cart and pour a scotch. Drinking was such a part of the show that, when I visited friends in Canada in 1984, everybody up there expected me to drink “Bourbon and branch.”

A trip to the Cattlemen’s Club. J.R. and the rest of the Ewings frequently had lunch at this upscale eatery in downtown Dallas. It became a joking reference for my friends and me. We’ve got to have at least one visit to the Cattlemen’s Club this season.

Southfork Ranch. I want to see the new show roam all over the Ewings’ sprawling spread, from the remote oil fields — kept as nostalgia pieces by the family — to the pastures where cattle grazed to the barns and haylofts where Lucy once tussled.

Visits from lots of familiar faces. I’ve heard that Charlene Tilton might return as Lucy Ewing Cooper and Steve Kanaly could show up as Ray Krebbs. I really want to see Indiana’s own Ken Kercheval as J.R.’s antagonist Cliff Barnes. And why not bring back, at least in some form, other favorites like Carter McKay and Jenna Wade?

Lots of nostalgia. I want to hear a lot of references to Miss Ellie and Jock. I want to see that portrait of Jock in the family room. I want somebody, somebody, to make a reference to J.R. getting shot before this first season is out.

Then I’ll know we’re back in “Dallas.”

 

Look! It’s The Governor from AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’

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Here’s a first look at actor David Morrissey as The Governor from AMC’s “The Walking Dead” series, which returns this fall.

AMC has released the first shot of Morrissey as the scary and controversial character from the comic book series, expected to play a huge role in the third season of the series.

It’ll be interesting to see if AMC’s character has as many bizarre quirks as the character in the comic series. It looks as if he starts out with more body parts, at least.

AMC plans 16 episodes for the third season. I haven’t heard if they’re planning to break that into eight-and-eight episodes again, but that seems likely.

 

Craig Johnson’s old sheriff ‘Longmire’ in books, TV

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For a grizzled old sheriff in a small Wyoming county, Walt Longmire is getting a lot of attention lately.

“As the Crow Flies,” author Craig Johnson’s latest novel about Longmire, came out a few weeks ago and “Longmire,” a new weekly series about the character, debuts tonight on A&E.

It’ll be interesting to see how A&E does with the series. Robert Taylor plays Longmire and, in the few clips I’ve seen, looks like he might be a good fit for the character, a laconic modern-day cowboy who’s a dogged detective but wears his heart on his sleeve.

As the series of books opened, Longmire was still recovering from the death, from cancer, of his beloved wife. His daughter, Cady (played by Cassidy Freeman in the A&E series) is an attorney in Philadelphia trying to help her father get back on track. Longmire’s lifelong friend, Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips in the series) is not only his anchor but his backup when dealing with the dangerous types — meth makers, murderous backwoodsmen, escaped convicts — that drift through the county.

A big part of the series is its spirituality. Not in the organized religion sense, but in Longmire’s discovery of the Native American beliefs of Henry and his fellow Cheyenne people as well as the Crow and other nations that populate the area.

The tie between Longmire’s small-town policing and the world of the reservation is especially strong in “As the Crow Files,” Johnson’s latest book. Longmire and Henry investigate the death of a young Native woman who fell from cliff while they watched. Her infant was clutched in her arms and survived the fall. Now Walt and Henry have to piece together who would push a woman and baby off a cliff and why.

At the same time, Walt is preparing for Cady’s upcoming Wyoming marriage to Michael Moretti, brother of Vic Moretti (ideally cast with Katee Sackhoff of “Battlestar Galactica” fame), Walt’s tempestuous deputy, a former Philly cop.

As in all the Longmire books, there’s an undercurrent of humor. Walt and Henry and Vic are dryly funny characters.

Besides the humor, there’s a somber feeling to Longmire as well as the aforementioned spirituality. Henry’s beliefs, which might come across as mysticism to some, gradually seem more plausible to Walt, who gets spiritual guidance at just the right time in many of the novels.

The A&E series, which seems intended to appeal to the type of audience that likes “Justified,” the FX series about a Kentucky lawman, might do a good job capturing the character-heavy drama of Johnson’s stories. It’s hard to imagine how it will capture the humor and spirituality. We’ll see tonight.

 

‘Mad Men’ puts a price on ‘The Other Woman’

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I want to be clear that I haven’t seen every episode of “Mad Men.” I watched early on, then faded on the show for a while, then came back and have watched religiously — every Sunday! — for the past three seasons.

So bear that proviso in mind when I argue that this season of “Mad Men” might be the best.

Part of that belief might be because so many episodes this season seem tied to a specific event — one in the news from that period or even just in the personal lives of the characters — but I think a lot of that feeling seems to be because this season is about something.

Desperation.

Sure, the series has always been about desperation to some extent. Don’s remaking of himself; Roger’s realization that his career is fading; Pete’s attempts to claw his way up the Madison Avenue ladder.

But this season the show has reached new highs — lows — of desperation, from Don’s love-hate relationship with the women in his life to Roger, Pete and Lane’s self-destructive behavior.

This week’s episode, “The Other Woman,” pushed the characters even closer to the edge. As Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce tries for a second time to land the Jaguar account, a tri-state Jaguar dealer lets Pete know how he wants to seal the deal: A night of sex with bombshell Joan.

Pete is slimy enough to take the idea and run with it and most of the other partners agree. Only Don, who has more conflicted feelings about women than anyone else, seems repulsed by the idea. But he expresses his displeasure only by saying “no” and walking out of the room.

Meanwhile, Don turns to Ginsburg for the perfect pitch for Jaguar, while Peggy fields a pitch of her own: She’s asked to join a rival ad firm at a substantially better rate of pay.

Outside the office, Megan meets resistance from Don when she wants to pursue her acting career in an out-of-town play.

Thoughts while watching the episode:

Is Pete irredeemable by this point?

For several episodes we worried that Roger was headed for a fall. Will that happen in the final two episodes?

Could Don have been more dismissive and offensive than when he threw money at Peggy, and more pathetic than when he sank to his knees before her when she said she was leaving?

Surely we haven’t seen the last of Peggy?

 

‘Walking Dead’ reveals Michonne

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If we start our “Walking Dead” countdown now, how great a fever pitch of anticipation will we reach by the time the AMC end-of-the-world series returns in October?

And yet …

Entertainment Weekly has a cool pic. Here’s Danai Gurira as Michonne, the fan favorite sword-wielding warrior woman from the “Walking Dead” comics. Michonne, played by an anonymous actor in a hooded robe, showed up in the final moments of the season finale this spring, helping Andrea, who was surrounded by walkers.

After the show aired, the producers announced they had hired Gurira to play Michonne.

I’ve only been a casual reader of the comics, but Gurira looks pretty authentic to me.

The countdown is on!