Time | Network | Show | Viewers | 18-49 |
---|---|---|---|---|
8PM | CBS | Big Brother 12 | 6.63 | 2.2/8 |
NBC | Minute to Win It | 5.94 | 1.8/6 | |
FOX | So You Think You Can Dance | 5.33 | 2.0/7 | |
ABC | The Middle (R) | 4.18 | 1.0/4 | |
CW | America’s Next Top Model (R) | 1.08 | 0.4/1 | |
8:30PM | ABC | The Middle (R) | 4.04 | 1.1/4 |
9PM | NBC | America’s Got Talent (R) | 9.52 | 2.5/8 |
CBS | Criminal Minds (R) | 6.29 | 1.6/5 | |
FOX | So You Think You Can Dance | 5.35 | 2.0/6 | |
ABC | Modern Family (R) | 4.07 | 1.4/4 | |
CW | Plain Jane | 980,000 | 0.4/1 | |
9:30PM | ABC | Cougar Town (R) | 3.27 | 1.1/3 |
10PM | CBS | CSI: NY (R) | 6.25 | 1.3/4 |
NBC | Law & Order: SVU (R) | 4.78 | 1.5/5 | |
ABC | Castle (R) | 3.54 | 0.8/3 |
Archives for July 2010
Must Read TV: HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, THE BIG BANG THEORY, LONE STAR & More!
• For Your Consideration: MODERN FAMILY’s Ty Burrell talks Emmys.
• A MOTHER mea culpa, with HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER creators promising a new direction for season 6.
• On a more positive albeit somewhat spoilery note, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHE creators reveal plots for next season.
• Rumor Patrol! ABC Entertainment boss resigned amid sexual harassment probe.
• Good News: Lack of big bucks for BIG BANG cast won’t delay the season.
• Let the [much-deserved] hype begin, as Fox plans mega-marketing blitz for LONE STAR.
TCA Press Tour Roundup: CBS Edition
FAT ABOUT YOU
Despite the fact that the entire MIKE & MOLLY pilot plays out like one giant fat joke (albeit a funny and heartwarming with the occasional pot gag thrown in for good measure!), co-creator Chuck Lorre wants to set the record straight: His new CBS series about two people (Melissa McCarthy and Billy Gradell) who meet in an Overeaters Anonymous meeting “is a show about people trying to make their lives better and find someone that they can have a committed relationship with.” Concurs co-creator Mark Roborts. “I didn’t set out to write a show about Overeaters Anonymous. I wanted to write a show about two people at the beginning of a relationship, and that was the part of it that intrigued me the most.”
Watch, PVR, Pass: Wednesday July 28, 2010
WATCH: CONFESSIONS: ANIMAL HOARDING (9PM Animal Planet)
And not just because tonight’s instalment featuring a woman that has 87 dogs makes us feel far better about what might in fact be our slightly unhealthy obsession with our own furry friend. Okay, maybe a little. Also being watched tonight: THE MIDDLE (8PM ABC), DEGRASSI (9PM TeenNick, MuchMusic in Canada)
Today’s TV Addict Top 5: Shows We Love… Despite Not Knowing The Character’s Names
Sometimes, no matter how much we enjoy a show, it’s tough to take to friends about because, well, we find it difficult to put names to the faces of the characters. So we wind up saying, “Oh my God, how cool was it when that girl, you know, the one with the drug problem? Hooked up with the guy who always has bad hair!” Here, in no particular order, are shows we watch every week… but would be hard-pressed to talk about without IMDB’s help.
PRETTY LITTLE LIARS
The lead chick’s name is Aria. That’s pretty memorable. Otherwise, it’s the bisexual girl, the one whose mom was on both versions of MELROSE PLACE, the blind one and the girl who is already on, like, her third potential love interest.
ARMY WIVES
Lifetime’s feel-good female-centric drama is as easy to ingest as comfort food. As for our favorite wife, it’s hard to choose between the woman who was blown up on a jet ski on ALL MY CHILDREN and the fiesty southern woman who isn’t the fiesty southern one who is divorcing her husband.
THE GATES
Vampires and witches and succubi… oh my! Character names? Um, there’s the vampire couple… and the witch who runs a spa… and the teenage succubus…
SUPERNATURAL
Okay, confession time: Sometimes, we forget which is Sam and which is Dean. Come on! It’s tough! I mean, the one who plays Sam used to play Dean on GILMORE GIRLS!
THE HILLS
Sure, we know the ubiquitous Heidi and Spencer. People living in caves probably know the civility-challenged, surgically-enhanced, reality-eschewing pair who are more harmful to organized religion than the freaks at Westboro Baptist Church. But Lauren, Kristin, Audrina and Lo are as indistinguishable from one another as they are from actual living, breathing human beings.
Separated at Birth: SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s Andy Samberg and Discovery Channel’s Shark Boy!
Next up, in our seemingly never-ending series of actors who remind us of, well other actors comes our latest separated at birth following a quick perusal of this week’s Entertainment Weekly: SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s Andy Samberg and the guy featured in Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” adverts. Discuss.
TV Ratings: Tuesday July 27, 2010
Time | Network | Show | Viewers | 18-49 |
---|---|---|---|---|
8PM | CBS | NCIS (R) | 9.55 | 1.5/5 |
ABC | Wipeout (R) | 7.19 | 2.3/8 | |
FOX | Hell’s Kitchen | 6.25 | 2.8/10 | |
CW | One Tree Hill (R) | 830,000 | 0.3/1 | |
9PM | NBC | America’s Got Talent | 8.74 | 2.1/6 |
CBS | NCIS: Los Angeles (R) | 7.21 | 1.2/4 | |
ABC | Wipeout (R) | 6.68 | 2.3/7 | |
FOX | Masterchef | 5.75 | 2.7/8 | |
CW | Life Unexpected (R) | 710,000 | 0.2/1 | |
10PM | NBC | America’s Got Talent | 10.25 | 2.8/9 |
CBS | The Good Wife (R) | 4.90 | 0.8/3 | |
ABC | Primetime: What Would You Do? (R) | 4.57 | 1.5/5 |
Review: PLAIN JANE & HUGE
Touchy is the subject of one’s self image. We will at the same time glamorize the frail, shining figures of movie starlets as they grace the cover of a magazine as we trumpet the powers of inner beauty as a greater reflection of one’s character. For every show stalked with leggy, tanned twenty-somethings there’s likely to be a form of counterprogramming in a makeover/weight loss/reinvention program. Both types of shows have proven successful, but have yet to settle the dueling schools of thought: At what point (if such a place exists) along the inner vs. outer beauty spectrum, does true “beauty” shine?
PLAIN JANE, though it argues for the former, is strongly rooted in the latter, perhaps even unknowingly. The premiere opens to a montage of “Plain Janes” cribbed from bad Katherine Heigl movies and a Taylor Swift music video in which they play characters we are meant to suspend their obvious Hollywood beauty and accept them as “normal” looking. That no actual “normal” woman would be cast in either role and that this warped image of normality is a contributor to so many’s self-loathing is an irony completely lost on this show, which touts as its tagline: “Transforming you from the inside out.”
Hosted by fashionista and overall cheeky Brit, Louise Roe (who herself wouldn’t be out of place in a fashion spread), the show takes one girl each week in dire need of help and intervention and turns them around to conquer feats of fashion, hair, and dating. The premiere stars Cristen, a mousy music business worker who is madly in love with her friend of six years, but lacks the confidence to make a move. In comes Louise, who walks us and Cristen through a series of steps to transform our stringy-haired girl into a well-tressed woman. The process is a bizarre pastiche of transformative style programs and FEAR FACTOR challenges: In order to earn a shopping spree, Cristen is forced to overcome her immobilizing fear of snails by reaching inside a giant vase of the sluggers – in a later step, she is given a minor electric shock for incorrectly hitting on guys at a dog park.
Hair and makeup follow and by the end of the episode all has fallen (rather too conveniently) into place. I’d be interested to see a followup segment, months after Louise has left her, just to see if her tips have stuck – I’d expect them to, seeing how this poor girl seemed so intimidated by what fresh hell this Brit might incur next. Throughout the process Cristen can’t help but emphatically (though it appears insincerely) agree with everything Louise throws at her, hoping to not have to face another daunting challenge. Apparently, to transform a Plain Jane is to scare it out of her. Fine, but as a indistinguishable, trifling hour of fashion, hair, and bugs, it could use some sprucing up.
HUGE, a teen drama set at a weight-loss camp called Camp Victory, offers an interesting cross-section of the inner-vs.-outer beauty argument: Where does feeling confident and comfortable with your body intersect with being healthy? Based on the young-adult novel by Sasha Paley and helmed by MY SO-CALLED LIFE creator Winnie Holzman, it offers a strictly nonjudgmental viewpoint of understanding, acceptance, and support, staged against a less successful dramedy that features a winning turn by Hairspray’s Nikki Blonksy.
Blonksy plays Willamina (or Will, as she prefers to be called), a sarcastic, opinionated teen who is determined to gain weight during her stay, contingent in her belief that she is being made to hate herself for her weight, turning the the blame to societal obsession. She hoards a secret stash of junk food and begins dealing to her fellow campers, ensuing a fun scene where Will is perched inside a bathroom stall like a notorious dealer of contraband. She blithely tosses aside the remarks of stern camp director Dr. Rand (Gina Torres) and quickly befriends repeat camper Becca (Raven Goodwin) and makes merry torturing the thinner and radiant Amber (Hayley Hasselhoff, daughter of David).
Will’s attitude is of course a defense mechanism against her own unhappiness, her brazenness a form of liberation she needs to survive. In the opening scene of the pilot, she is reluctant to appear in her bathing suit, but after being harped on by Dr. Rand, she turns her insecurity into empowerment: she performs an aggressive, hyper-sexualized striptease, whipping her clothes off before the camp director with palpable defiance. Shortly after, she audibly regrets her actions, quickly crossing her arms to hide behind herself.
This is where HUGE succeeds: pinpointing those delicate moments when denial becomes acceptance, however painful or powerful they may be. It at times is in serious danger of playing it too close to an after school special (it handles a bulimia story line with almost too much righteousness and tears), though this seems to be more of an after effect of what is really an overwrought, conventional drama. Too often does the show turn to moody music, histrionics, and sullen glares across the screen; Will’s lines are notably zipless. It’s admirable how HUGE explores the relationship between weight acceptance and self esteem, but it would be better served by a punchier, less melodramatic delivery. Perhaps this is a future case for Louise Roe.
PLAIN JANE premieres Wednesday July 28 at 9PM on the CW, HUGE airs on ABC FAMILY on Mondays at 9PM
Is a contributing writer to The TV Addict. He has seen every episode of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER four times, has once referred to his DVR as his “best friend,” and has only seen the pilot episode of THE SOPRANOS — and has no intention to apologize for it. He lives in Austin, Texas. Email him at alekschan.thetvaddict@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter (@alekstvaddict). His name is pronounced like Alex.
Must Read TV: PARENTHOOD, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, AMERICAN IDOL & More!
• ABC to President Steve McPherson: You are the weakest link.
• Talk of the neighborhood, has DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES creator Marc Cherry eyeing a change of address.
• Change we can believe in, Original executive producer Nigel Lythgoe is expected to return to AMERICAN IDOL.
• Hello Ladies… Isiah Mustafah nabs a movie role opposite Jennifer Aniston.
• There’s no crying in the break room, a collection of some of the best advice ever given from MAD MEN’s Joan Holloway.
• PARENTHOOD Scoop! Direct from the set of our favorite new NBC show.
Good News, Bad News: PARENTHOOD, 90210 & GLEE
Good News: Billy Baldwin (GOSSIP GIRL, DIRTY SEXY MONEY) is close to signing on to the cast of PARENTHOOD where he’ll play Adam’s (Peter Krause) boss and Sarah’s love interest. Bad News: For Lauren Graham, who let’s face it, can do way better. We’re just sayin’ [Source: EW]