Music Break: "You're Sixteen"

Composer Robert Sherman has died, and while everyone is talking about his Disney work, I've always loved this one:



Or, of course:



I love some of the Disney songs too, though, so maybe we'll have a few more Sherman songs this week.

Morning Coffee (3/6/12)

Good morning. I am unhappy with my cereal. I thought you'd want to know. Also, a lot of shows are off this week, so I've been catching up on Cougar Town, and boy, is it amazing. Ignore the title! It's really good! Give it a try!

A bunch of celebrities (including Matt Bomer) did a reading of the play 8 (about Proposition 8 and marriage equality) over the weekend. Head to Alyssa Rosenberg's blog to see what she has to say about it and watch it for yourself. (I haven't had a chance to watch yet, but am planning to do so ASAP.)

Freema Agyeman was cast in the CW's Sex and the City prequel, and I cannot settle on an opinion about this. More Freema on my TV! Yay! But will this show be awful? Probably. Will I watch it anyway? Yes. Does this mean bad things for either Law & Order: UK as a whole or her role on it? Unknown. Do I support the CW hiring real adults who can actually act? Absolutely. Will I watch the whole thing while screeching "Martha/Alesha, what are you doing?" Possibly. See? It's a complex issue.

In other Doctor Who-adjacent casting news that will interest many of you, John Barrowman has been cast in one of the starring roles on Gilded Lilys, an ABC pilot about a family running a luxury hotel in New York City in 1895. This pilot also stars Matt Lauria and may in fact be God's way of convincing me that He does actually exist.

Justified has been renewed for a fourth season, and the A.V. Club says it best:

Considering that Raylan Givens has only shot more and more people with each passing year, expect the next season to just be Olyphant making laconic wisecracks from atop a heap of pill-strewn corpses. Note to FX: We would still watch that.

So say we all.

Take a gander at the cover of Beautiful Redemption, the upcoming fourth book in the YA Southern Gothic series you should be reading.

And finally, two new (or at least new-to-me) Tumblrs for your amusement: The West Men, "the most Emmy-winning TV mashup blog of all time," and the inevitable Hey Girl, Matt Bomer edition.

Has the CW found a reality show I'll watch?

I got a press release from the CW yesterday detailing the four - FOUR - reality shows they're airing this summer, which . . . yeah. Three of them sound so dumb I can't be bothered to finish reading the descriptions, never mind tell you about them, but one - perhaps by virtue of the monkeys-with-keyboards rule - actually sounds interesting:

BREAKING POINTE goes behind the stage curtain for an intense, unfiltered look at one of the most competitive ballet companies in the country, Ballet West, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Beneath the beauty and glamour of the dance and costumes is a gritty dog-eat-dog world of extreme athleticism, focus, dedication, passion, pressure and, of course, the hunt for the unattainable…perfection. Kate Shepherd (“Big Brother: According to Russell Brand”) and Bill Langworthy (“The City”) are executive producers. Izzie Pick Ashcroft and Jane Tranter are executive producers for BBC Worldwide Productions. BREAKING POINTE is from BBC Worldwide Productions.

Ballet! Whee! This is the sort of reality show that actually makes sense to me - the people involved have a specific skill or talent, and are going about their careers, and the "show" part is just that we get a window into an already-existing world we don't normally get to see. That's way more interesting than most "reality" shows, which put people into carefully constructed situations that are in no way real..

On the other hand . . . this is the CW, and while I love some of their dramas, their reality shows are generally awful. (Though this one seems to have been made by the BBC, so, again - hope!) I guess I'm saying that I'm more or less expecting to be disappointed and give up two episodes in, but for the moment, I'm enjoying the idea of what this show could be.

Pilot Thoughts: GCB

I'm kind of torn about GCB so far. I think this is one of those very rare cases in which I don't like the premise of a show, but do sort of like the execution. The opposite issue is much, much more common: There are so many shows that sound great on paper but just don't work. But here, well, the fact that this is about a bunch of adults whose lives revolve around high school doesn't interest me at all, and in fact turns me off. But if I manage to forget that high school is the supposed source of the conflict that leads to the show's hijinks, those hijinks themselves are enjoyable enough to watch. I mean, I wouldn't call it great TV, or even encourage the uninterested to watch it, but there's a definite place in my life for soapy fun with underlying interesting family dynamics (that remind me of Gilmore Girls). And there's always a place in my life for Kristin Chenoweth. (I'm so glad that they found a way to work her singing into the show, and in fact I like the church service framing device/anchor rather a lot in general here.) I can't imagine getting really into this show - though, hey, it's welcome to prove me wrong - but for mindless relaxing fluff on Sunday nights, I'll stick around awhile.

Morning Coffee (3/6/12)

Oh, hi, Tuesday.

In Plain Sight comes back in ten days. Not that I'm eager or anything. Also, I noticed while looking at the calendar this morning that we're springing ahead this weekend. Thought you might like the warning.

FOX's Breaking In returns for its unlikely second season tonight, and while the presence of Christian Slater kind of just makes me miss The Forgotten, I recommend that you watch it anyway. If you'd like to catch up, you can download the whole first season for $10.99 on Amazon.

Terra Nova is dead (unless another network buys it, which seems unlikely). I'm hoping this means that Fringe and/or The Finder have slightly better chances. And please, someone, cast Jason O'Mara in something I actually want to watch forthwith. "Slightly rogue cop" looked awfully good on him in One for the Money. I'm just saying.

The MLA now has a citation standard for tweets. That makes me very happy.

Everyone should read author Lauren McLaughlin's feminist manifesto.

Here's my rather long TV news column from Sunday.

Morning Coffee (3/5/12)

Happy Monday! Waking up at my parents' house on a weekday is weird, let me tell you. And also means I have a 3-4 hour commute ahead of me. Onward!

Because I've been traveling, I haven't had a chance to watch the GCB pilot yet (tonight!), but Alyssa Rosenberg's review is worth a read.

Her Majesty's new Diamond Jubilee portrait, um . . . kind of looks like an ad for Ringer.

Emmy Rossum as Ridley in Beautiful Creatures? PERFECT.

Cat Naps on Router; ISP Provides Decoy Router in Exchange for Cat Pictures

The Vanity Fair Oscar party photo booth always produces some great stuff, but the Revenge cast is particularly delightful. (And that is an SEO-friendly URL if I ever saw one.)

The AV Club has a characteristically hilarious write-up of the Game of Thrones video game news.

TV Trailer: Veep

HBO's Veep, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the Vice President, starts on April 22, and if this trailer is anything to go by, I am so in.



It would be awesome if it took place in the same universe as HBO's Newsroom, which premieres two months later, but I guess that would probably be too difficult.

Morning Coffee (3/2/12)

It's FINALLY Friday. Everyone I know seems agreed that this was the longest week ever, for some reason.

Andrew Breitbart has died.

Firefly fans, get excited: Adam Baldwin will reunite with his captain by guest-starring on Castle!

In other interesting casting news, John de Lancie will be on The Secret Circle, and actually, if either Q OR Al Kiefer showed up in Chance Harbor, the show would immediately be way more interesting. Alas, he will be playing neither of those characters.

I discovered while writing that that John de Lancie did a voice in a few episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. I just thought you'd want to know.

I read about a lot of book deals and don't often mention them, but OMG Claire Legrand is doing a YA retelling of The Nutcracker and I am so excited!

Some people he didn't know got into a fight kind of near Colin Firth. In other words, it was a very slow news day.

Pilot Thoughts: Awake

Kyle Killen's last drama about a man leading a double life, Lone Star, was critically beloved. It had one of the most perfect pilots I've ever seen. But then nobody watched it, and it was cancelled almost immediately. And, frankly, some of us (including myself) still aren't over it. This history undoubtedly informs some of the critical buzz and heavy marketing push behind Killen's new drama about a man leading a double life, but when I finally watched the Awake pilot last night, I was delighted and relieved to discover that it's worth the attention on its own merits as well.

Awake, if you've somehow managed to escape the ubiquitous ads, is about a police detective who loses his wife and/or son in a car accident. After the accident, he finds himself living in two different realities: one in which his wife survived, and one in which his son did. Every time he wakes up, his world switches. And he doesn't know which is real. People in both worlds try to convince him to accept that the other is a dream, but he doesn't want to lose either his wife or his son permanently, so he struggles to maintain his personal and professional relationships - and his sanity - in both lives.

I'll admit I have some concerns about the concept's long-term viability - it seems like it might have worked better as a movie or miniseries - but other than that, I'm all in. The premise is intriguing and the writing is strong. Jason Isaacs is, of course, wonderful as the main character, and the rest of the cast seems fine so far. The big question of the show - What's going on? Is either reality real? - is one that I'm spending a fair amount of energy thinking and theorizing about after just one episode. So please, watch this show so that it sticks around long enough to give us some answers.

Awake premieres on NBC tonight at 10/9c.

Morning Coffee (3/1/12)

Happy March! And hey look, it's the first big snowstorm since October. This winter is very confused.

We bloggers over at Vampire-Diaries.net are nominated for a NewNowNext award. It's very exciting! Please vote for us!

Ravelry now has TWO MILLION members. I am so very proud of them, and also kind of astonished that so many people even exist who want to talk about knitting online.

If you haven't seen the spoof trailer for Jimmy Kimmel's Movie: The Movie, you should go watch it immediately.

RIP Davy Jones.