Paul Lee is really excited about midseason.
Using the equivalent of the “Super Bowl for woman” that is the upcoming February 26th Oscar telecast as a launch pad, ABC Entertainment President Paul Lee kicked off this morning’s TCA Executive Session by touting his Network’s upcoming midseason schedule including the February 7th premiere of THE RIVER (“A really extraordinary show”), the March 4th premiere of GCB (“A really fun show brought to us by Darren Star”), the March 15th premiere of MISSING (“Marking the return of Ashley Judd to primetime”), the April 5th premiere of SCANDAL (“It’s so sticky, and it’s really sexy”) and the April 11th premiere of DON’T TRUST THE B—- IN APARTMENT 23 (“It’s one of my favorite comedies of the year”). The latter of which will get the plum post-MODERN FAMILY time slot when HAPPY ENDINGS finishes out its second season.

ABC had one helluva fall!
In an effort to ensure his excitement about his Network’s midseason lineup didn’t completely overshadow the success of ABC’s fall one, Lee singled out REVENGE and ONCE UPON A TIME as two of the strongest shows of the fall. Said Lee, “I think [Creator] Mike Kelley is doing a fabulous job with REVENGE, I adore that show. And ONCE UPON A TIME came back with a great number… is a really inventive show and [Creators] Adam and Eddie are doing a fabulous job with that show.” Also of note was Lee’s belief — after sidestepping the issue of the original cast member’s still up-in-the-air contracts, that is — in the resurgent GREY’S ANATOMY. “GREY’s came roaring back. It’s creatively still at the top of its form and Shonda [Creator Shonda Rhimes] has a vision like nobody else,” said Lee. “She knows what she’s doing, and she knows where she’s going. We’ve heard her vision, not just for the end of this season, but for beyond, and it’s really, really strong. I’m feeling very good about the show.”

COUGAR TOWN still has a home on ABC.
Not only does Lee promise that he’s a big fan of creator Bill Lawrence’s penchant for pot-stirring (“I always say to my showrunners, take a page out of Bill Lawrence’s book because he does such a great job of getting a passionate audience around a show.”), he promised that when COUGAR TOWN does launch (Tentatively schedule for March), the network will promote the show (“Well, the reality is COUGAR TOWN is having one of their best seasons to date and I think you’ll find that, when we launch it, it will bring a big strong message that we love the show.”) More interesting still Lee could one day foresee a dream situation of young comedy block featuring COUGAR TOWN, HAPPY ENDING and APT 23.

Paul Lee is still pretending WORK IT and PAN AM have futures.
Although Paul Lee gets serious points for kicking off this morning’s Executive Session by asking a roomful of tired critics what they really thought of WORK IT, the ABC Entertainment President loses some by pretending the not-so-well received show actually has a future, “I think it was right in the middle there,” said Lee referring to WORK IT’s ratings. “We’ll see where it goes in the next few weeks,” Along those same lines was his hesitancy to outright proclaims PAN AM dead on arrival, claiming that the show will run original episodes through February and that no decision has been made about the show’s future.

GENERAL HOSPITAL is not dead yet.
Despite the impending arrival of Katie Couric’s Fall 2012 chat fest, Lee isn’t ready to take GENERAL HOSPITAL off life support just yet. “I don’t know whether we’re going to make a decision on that. I’ve come in, sort of, very recently into that whole decision, so we’ll see. We will have to make a decision at some point,” said Lee. “I have to say, I started my life in soap operas. My first job was a second assistant director on a Brazilian soap at 7 o’clock. Not the greatest soap ever made, but I loved it. In Rio. And then I worked on soaps in the U.K., and I’m a fan of GENERAL HOSPITAL, but we have not made a decision, and don’t really have a time frame for it either.

From “needing some work” to “a drag in every way” television critics throughout North America have had quite a field day in writing about ABC’s cross dressing comedy WORK IT. And for good reason, it’s not a very good show.

Yet rather than simply pile on to the chorus of criticism that the internet has been heaping upon executive producers Ted Cohen and Andrew Reich (Who we can only hope for the sake of their sanity are sitting on a beautiful beach thousands of miles from the nearest Wi-Fi connection at this very moment) we thought — in the spirit of the New Year and all — we’d do something somewhat uncharacteristic of us: Focus on the positives.

Which is to say, if you can make it past the unbelievable premise that has unemployed friends Lee Standish (BIG LOVE’s Ben Koldyke) and Angel Ortiz (PRISON BREAK’s Amaury Nolasco) successfully pass themselves off as woman in an effort to find employment in what friend Brian (John Caparulo) calls a “Mancession,” the series does have one, actually make that two, redeeming qualities to it.

First and foremost, as office mean-girl and top pharmaceutical sales woman Grace, LOST alum Rebecca Mader makes the most of her all-too-limited screen time. And second, despite a cringe-worthy music montage set to “My Humps” chronicling Lee’s somewhat less than successful initial attempt to become a woman, there is an underlying sweetness to the Extreme Makeover: Gender Edition that the show’s leading men embark upon to help support themselves and their families in these increasingly tough economic time.

Unfortunately for all parties involved both in front and behind the camera, we suspect that said aforementioned positives won’t be nearly enough to combat the show’s single biggest problem. That being, when you strip away all the controversy surrounding the series and comparisons to BOSOM BUDDIES you’re simply left with a half hour comedy that is bare on laughs.

WORK IT premieres on Tuesday January 3rd at 8:30PM on ABC (CityTV in Canada)

The Bad: Did you see CHARLIE’S ANGELS or MAN UP!? Neither did the rest of the country, which is why you won’t be seeing them on ABC come 2012. Also hurting for viewers was PAN AM, the 60′s set drama which failed to generate much, if any interest until the recent announcement that had ABC grounding the costly series after its initial 13 episode order. More worrisome still is the slight downtick in audience share for the once unstoppable ratings juggernaut that was DANCING WITH THE STARS, in addition to BODY OF PROOF, which will seriously have to step up its game if it hopes to see a third season. Oh, and don’t even get us started on the lack of timeslot for COUGAR TOWN, which brings us to…

The Future: Having made the curious decision to hold many of their most interesting shows until midseason, ABC’s future looks, well, crowded. Which is our polite way of saying that for every WORK IT! (A cross-dressing comedy that we’re convinced is expat Paul Lee’s revenge on American for how Hollywood treats many of his former UK countrymen’s adaptations), edition of WIFE SWAP (Groan!), and THE BACHELOR (Double Groan!) are a handful of must-see-shows patiently waiting in the wings including GCB (Formerly GOOD CHRISTIAN B*TCHES), THE RIVER (Think Blair Witch Project on a boat), DON’T TRUST THE B—- IN APT. 23 (Starring the artist formerly known as Dawson Leery, James Van Der Beek) and COUGAR TOWN (Which as of this posting still has yet to get a premiere date)

Grade: A-

In Case You Missed It:
• FOX Gets its Mid-Season Report Card
• ABC Gets its Mid-Season Report Card
• CBS Gets its Mid-Season Report Card\
• NBC Gets its Mid-Season Report Card

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Especially on our small screen which continues to offer up a seemingly never-ending parade of Holiday treats. Case in point, tonight at 8:30PM ABC (CTV in Canada) proudly takes the wraps off PREP & LANDING: NAUGHTY VS NICE, the sequel to last year’s animated gem PREP & LANDING. And here to preview the show, as well as talk up his hilarious work on the hit freshman series SUBURGATORY is none other than the North Pole’s newest elf, Mr. Thistleton, voiced by SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE alum Chris Parnell.

Can you talk a little bit about what type of role you’re voicing?
Chris Parnell: I play Mr. Thistleton, who is kind of a computer genius. He runs what’s called the Database Tree Farm which is where all the information on the children around the world is kept, who’s been naughty and whose been nice. Which of course is at the heart of what Santa has to do in terms of what gets delivered to these children all over the world. He’s a really smart guy, he created this amazing system, originally called the “Winternet” and got very upset when they dropped the “W” from the name. It’s a fun character.

Your distinctive voice has warranted a lot of voice over work throughout your career. Were voiceovers something you always envisioned for your career or was it somewhat of a happy accident?
My dad is a voiceover guy, not in animation, but he’s done it my whole life and I started doing commercials and things when I was a kid with him. And when I got on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE I got to do a lot of voice stuff for the show and from that I was able to get a voice over agent, started to do commercial stuff and gradually started to audition for and occasionally be offered animated stuff. So it was something that I wanted to do for a while but it can be a difficult thing to break into and when it finally started to happen I couldn’t have been happier.

As an enormous fan of SUBURGAROY, we have to ask about upcoming episodes. Will they shed some much-needed light on the inner-workings of your character’s marriage?
They will. I’ve shot seven or eight episodes at this point even though only two have aired. I think the other ones I’ve done thus far will air in January and we’ll find out a lot more about Fred and Sheila Shay, played by Ana Gasteyer of course. I’m a recurring guest star at this point but I couldn’t be happier playing this role with Ana and the rest of the cast, including Cheryl [Hines] who I’ve also known since years and years ago from The Groundlings. Everyone is so good, so nice and when you dig each other as a cast it’s kind of a blast.

Between yourself, co-star Ana Gasteyer, THE MIDDLE’s Chris Kattan, UP ALL NIGHT’s Maya Rudolph and HAPPY ENDINGS Casey Wilson, Wednesday nights seem to have become the home to SNL alum as of late. Is that something you’ve taken notice of
It’s pretty cool to see. Chris [Kattan] and I are on these two shows that air back to back. I’m happy to see it because I sometimes feel like in the past there’s been a hesitation to put too many SNL people on one show, so the fact that they’re willing to put Ana and I together is pretty swell.

Having been off SNL for quite some time now, do you ever miss that ability to take something that’s happening in the news right now and put your own spin on it on any given Saturday night?
You know to be honest, not really. Look, I mean if they asked me back for something and I’m available I’d be happy to do it. I love watching what they do, I’m always eager to see what they’re take on a crazy political thing is because I still watch and love the show, but I don’t necessarily have the super strong desire to get back into the trenches myself and try to come up with material. I loved it, but I enjoy it the memories of it, but I did my time there.

PREP & LANDING: NAUGHTY VS NICE airs Monday December 5th at 8:30PM on ABC (CTV in Canada)

After seven seasons spent bringing one of our all-time favorite television characters to life on THE WEST WING, your very own TV Addict would be content spending a Sunday night watching Bradley Whitford read a phone book. So you can imagine our excitement upon discovering that the actor’s latest project has him teaming up with Laurence Fishburne, Anika Noni Rose and Martin Landau in an adaption of Mitch Albom’s best-selling tome Have a Little Faith. So just what attracted the artist formally known as Josh Lyman to the project, and what does he hope audiences walk away with? See for yourself, after the jump.

What attracted you to the project?
Bradley Whitford: It really was a two-levelled thing. One was the street cred of all the creative people involved, Jon Avnet, is a great director, obviously Mitch [Albom] is an amazing storyteller, Laurence Fishburne is an old friend and great actor while Martin Landau is on Mount Rushmore. That was the easy part of it. The second level of this was that I get frustrated that the only religious voices we tend to hear in the American media are voices of judgement and condemnation. This told a story from these radically different communities of the common virtue that at its best every religious community has which is the responsibility to connect and to help people who are not as lucky as you are. That kind of radical inclusion was something that very nice for me as an actor to begin with.

Some of your most famous roles are fictional character you’re playing match a real person, true story approach this originally playing a real life person.
If you’re playing Bobby Kennedy you have to do an imitation, but when you’re playing Mitch Albom, most people don’t know what he looks and sounds like so it would actually be bizarre to physically imitate him. What I tried to do is sync up with in terms of his level of skepticism at different moments in the story, the struggle that he had about faith, about organized religion and what his thinking was at that time. It’s interesting, because I was at the big opening in Detroit and everybody said, “Wow, great imitation of Mitch, you nailed it!” and I thought ,”Oh God, I wasn’t trying to!” I was just trying to convey emotionally what Mitch was going through.

Movies that fall under the Hallmark Hall of Fame umbrella often come with some sort of positive message that audiences are supposed to walk away with. Did you as an actor find yourself reflecting on how could life your life differently after this film wrapped?
In the case of this movie, I did. Becoming exposed to the community of “I Am My Brother’s Keeper,” that kind of congregation, working with Anthony Castelow who plays himself in this, meeting the Covingtons, meeting the Lewis family — and I’m someone who is extremely skeptical and critical of organized religion — bu I found this community to be incredibly inspiring and I hope that would have an affect on me.

Might a role like this, one with such a positive message, give you an itch to perhaps return to a weekly television role.
As a father I got fed up with the inevitable premature loss of my children’s innocence because of all the crap that they’re exposed to. That we live in a country where you can shoot people on TV but you can’t watch a mother nurse her baby and all sorts of assorted hypocrisies. I’ve been very lucky to be apart of some of these stories that are attempting to stay something positive. At the same time there is a tremendous paranoia when you are doing something that has that aspiration to do it well because there’s nothing worse than a crappy movie that’s trying to tell you how to behave. I can tell you, speaking on behalf off Aaron Sorking, that you had to make sure that you were telling a good story and that the requirements of storytelling and entertainment exceeded your desire to feed the world what you proceed as vegetables.

And finally, as a fan of THE GOOD GUYS I have to ask, do you miss the moustache?
You know what, as a bare lip now, as a nude lip, I can’t imagine going back!

MITCH ALBOM’S HAVE A LITTLE FAITH airs Sunday November 27 at 9PM on ABC.

Tuesday January 3rd
8:30PM: WORK IT
9PM: CELEBRITY WIFE SWAP

Thursday January 5th
8PM: WINTER WIPEOUT

Friday February 3rd
8PM: SHARK TANK

Tuesday February 7th
9PM: THE RIVER

Sunday March 4th
10PM: GCB

Thursday March 15th
8PM: MISSING

Monday March 19th
8PM: DANCING WITH THE STARS

Tuesday March 27th
9PM: DANCING WITH THE STARS RESULTS SHOW

When you think Henry Simmons, the six-foot-four actor best known for his role on NYPD BLUE, the first thing that comes to mind probably isn’t the fact that this man has to, well, man up. But that’s precisely what he’ll be doing tonight at 8:30PM on ABC when his new ensemble comedy series premieres. So just what is it like playing Grant Sweet, the beacon of manliness that is supposed to serve as a shining example for three Playstation playing, skin cream wearing thirty-somethings (Mather Zickel, Christopher Moynihan and Dan Fogler)? We recently had the opportunity to chat with the actor to find out just that.

As someone best known for his dramatic work, MAN UP! is a bit of a departure for you as an actor. Is comedy something you’ve been looking to do for a while now?
Henry Simmons: MAN UP! was a great marriage of this character and what I’ve been working on. I’ll be honest with you, I really wanted to do comedy or probably about 5 years now. So much so that I started working on comedy before Pilot season hit because I wanted to be ready and this project came which was just a blessing from God, a gift.

You’re introduced in the pilot as the new man in Kenny’s (Dan Fogler) ex Brenda’s (Amanda Detmer) life. Is it safe to say that your relationship with the three men of MAN UP will get off to a rocky start?
It is and there will continue to be tension between my character and Kenny, but eventually that will go away as the writers incorporate me into the group so it’s not just three guys now it’s four guys. Grant’s the kind of guy you think has it together and all figured out, but as we go on you find that he’s very strange. He’s working on a different level than everyone else and I just think he’s in another world.

Having spent the better part of the summer working in a beautiful bubble completely devoid of reviews and ratings reports, do you look towards tonight’s premiere as somewhat of a judgement day, just Jow nervous are you?
The thing is that I’m actually totally fine right now because everything that I see, all the scripts, everything’s hilarious. Admittedly, I’m probably a little bias, but it’s hard to make me laugh and these scripts are just so funny. Plus, I’ve seen some of the upcoming episodes cut together and they’re funny, so I’m not really nervous because I believe so much in what we’re putting out there. That said, I’m not gonna lie, come premiere night I’m going to be nervous.

So much has been made this season about the resurgence of the comedy genre. Does the popularity of the half-hour laugher help or hurt the show?
I think it helps just because of Tim Allen’s popularity. We’re following LAST MAN STANDING and I watched his show and love it. It feels great just to follow his show and I think we have a show that is just as fun and funny.

Off camera, where would you say you fall on the scale of manliness, can you chance a tire?
[Laughs] Yeah I can change a tire on some cars, not all! Look, my thinking is the definition of man for me, is if I can provide for my family. If I can do that then I’m doing a good job.

MAN UP! premieres on Monday October 18th at 8:30PM on ABC.

For those who wish longingly for the life of a critic, you should probably know that getting paid to watch television for a living isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. For every unforgettable set visit, party or premiere, there are times like this morning that just saw us spend almost an hour watching and re-watching, Tim Allen’s new ABC sitcom LAST MAN STANDING.

Why twice you ask? Simply put, having grown up on HOME IMPROVEMENT (and Pixar’s Toy Story trilogy) we’ve always had a soft spot for Tim Allen. Unfortunately, as much as we would have liked to have been able to report otherwise, said aforementioned affection doesn’t translate to his newest show that sees the artist formerly know as Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor transform into Mike “The slightly older xenophobic and homophobic” Baxter, a father forced to become a little more involved in the parenting of his three daughters (a teen mom, a princess and a tomboy) when wife Vanessa (Nancy Travis) returns to the work place.

Cue the crux of the problem.

You see, self-proclaimed “Manly-Man” Mike Baxter has an awful lot of opinions as to how his daughters should be raised. What’s worse, they’re opinions that he doesn’t seem to want to keep to himself. From the stupidity of soccer (“It’s Europe’s covert war for the hearts and minds of America’s kids”) and GLEE (Grunts Baxter, “What the heck is GLEE?”) to his grandson’s touchy-feely daycare that welcomes.. brace yourself… gay dads and acceptance of other cultures/religions, Baxter can’t help but bemoan the current state of the world he’s living in. All of which wouldn’t be so offensive if it was the least bit funny.

Unfortunately, since the cultural criticism and grade-school-humor isn’t quite up to the level of say a Louis C.K. or a Ricky Gervais, the only one who is laughing — all the way to the bank mind you — is Allen, who was inexplicably able to convince some poor ABC executives to give him another shot at TV stardom.

LAST MAN STANDING premieres Tuesday October 11 at 8PM on ABC.

1) As fans of scripted shows in general and soaps in particular, we refuse to encourage the decimation of an entire genre by execs like Brian Frons, whom Susan Lucci (Erica, ALL MY CHILDREN), beautifully described as having “that fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance.”

2) If we want cooking shows, we’ll go to the experts at The Food Network.

3) This week, time-slot competitor DAYS OF OUR LIVES kicks off a reboot that will bring fan-favorites John, Marlena, Carrie and Austin back to Salem.

4) You know how shows always put the good stuff in the promos? If having TOP CHEF’s Carla tell us that small shrimp are cheaper and still awesome in her gumbo is “the good stuff”, we’ll pass.

5) We hate those ugly orange crocs that Mario Batali wears.