May 7, 2008 2:01

Corporate Press Release Theater: Breaking Good

AMC announces a second-season pickup for Breaking Bad—yay!—giving the dark dramedy which had to cut its first season short because of the strike—boo!—a chance to complete a full season and do it right. Quotes from the release follow:

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May 7, 2008 11:53

Calling It, Kind Of, for Obama

I confess I didn't stay up past midnight for the resolution of yesterday's primaries—American Idol or the Democrats, people! I cover one election a night!—but former TV reporter Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times has a good roundup on the sudden and stark shift against Hillary Clinton's chances after the final Indiana returns came in. The standout, already much quoted, was NBC's Tim Russert, who pronounced on the Clinton campaign like a doctor in the E.R. standing over a body and looking at his watch: "We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it."

Pundits and journalists generally have to be careful about overstepping their bounds and not calling races before they're actually over. But I can't be too judgmental here: the fact is, there comes a point in any primary where it would be malpractice not to acknowledge the facts on the ground, and that point usually comes before the loser concedes. Russert's call seemed a little much and a little hasty to me, but I don't know his sourcing: if he'd actually talked to notable superdelegates, Clinton associates, etc., who were told him something big had changed, then it's a fair call to make. [Update: Ana Marie Cox has further thoughts at Swampland: "Over the past few weeks, I've become increasingly annoyed with the pundits who have been all but pulling her physically off the stage. She is not Huckabee, she's not straggling behind with some kind of symbolic support."]

What surprises me about the sudden rush to call the race is something I've written about before: the sort of punditry meta-game in which the analysts seem not to know in advance what their own reaction will be to a result they've already anticipated. In other words: there were only so many ways last night could have gone. Clinton wins two: game-changer. Obama wins two: end of the road for Clinton. A split, with healthy wins on each side: status quo ante. And finally, two in-between results—one of which we got—where there's a split, but one where one candidate almost wins two.

All those possibilities were there before last night; all were discussed and wargamed on cable well in advance. And yet you had the sense that the on-air pundits didn't quite know how they would interpret the results until they actually occurred, and until they felt the intangible rhetorical tide of what other pundits—and they themselves—were saying.

You ever hear that E. M. Forster quote about writing? "How can I know what I think until I see what I say"? I think TV punditry is like that: they simply can't know what they think until they hear the words come out of their own mouths.

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May 7, 2008 11:16

Why TV Critics Fear Their Mail

Nobody, understandably, pities TV critics for their work. It's not exactly Deadliest Catch or factory work—we don't run the risk of falling into freezing seas or having our arms sheared off by machinery if we're not careful. (The chief hazard is strangulation by getting your necktie caught in the DVD-loading tray.)

Nonetheless, we complain. One of the big occupational annoyances is the "creative" PR packaging and/or swag gift. In the past I've received screeners packaged in film canisters and oversized popcorn drums and braved monstrous paper cuts to extract DVDs encased in carapaces of plastic and cardboard, like the trucklike plastic contraption in which History Channel sent me Ice Road Truckers, opening which was like removing Excalibur from the stone. The waste alone is staggering: 95% of my job essentially involves throwing things away. Discovery may be launching Planet Green and NBC may plug the environment in primetime, but the TV-publicity business is singlehandedly killing the Earth.

If you do not like to read people paid to watch TV complaining about how they are sent TV to be paid to watch, for the love of God do not click past the jump:

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May 7, 2008 10:48

If You Do It and You're Still Unhappy, Then You Know That the Problem Is You

I just received, but haven't yet watched, the pilot screener for CBS's Swingtown, which debuts June 5. The ensemble drama is about a group of married friends and their encounters with the rising era of sexual experimentation in suburban Chicago in 1976. "The title Swingtown," says a letter from the producers, "describes the ever-shifting 'swing' of the pendulum that reflected the change in our country's collective value system—morally, politically, and socially." It also refers to married people doing it with other married people.

The show was one of the few announcements from last year's upfront that genuinely interested me, way back when CBS screened the trailer at Carnegie Hall almost a year ago. So I'm excited, and also disappointed that the network has apparently decided to consign it to summer burnoff status.

Anyway, you have a show that appeals to Gen-X nostalgia (even though the characters are Boomers, nostalgia for the '70s has been a Gen X trademark at least since Boogie Nights and That '70s Show) and that is about the emotional repercussions of sex and infidelity. And who do you think of when you think of Gen X and sad sex? Liz Phair, that's who! So I was doubly intrigued to see that Phair did the soundtrack for the pilot and will score the remainder of the season.

No sign, inexplicably, that that song made the soundtrack. I'll let you know how it goes.

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May 7, 2008 7:39

The (Jingle-Jangle) Morning After: Idol Edition

In fairness to Jason Castro, "Do do do do / do do do / do do do / do do do / do do" is an easier lyric to remember. / Frank Micelotta / FOX / Getty

My American Idol reviews are up at time.com. At first I was surprised that it David Cook didn't have a better night on Rock and Roll Hall of Fame night, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense. Cook's biggest success has been as a counterprogrammmer, taking non-rock songs and turning them into rock songs; he just can't generate the same excitement turning doing rock songs as rock songs. (Though I thought he did a fairly effective job with Baba O'Reilly O'Riley.)

But who's going home?

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