Reporters from The Hollywood Reporter sat down with two groups of leading dramatic TV actors who were surprisingly willing to talk frankly and openly about their work, the challenges of their craft and their own foibles, sometimes in gruesome detail.
Representing the female actors were The Good Wife's Julianna Margulies, Homeland's Claire Danes, The Closer's Kyra Sedgwick, The Killing's Mireille Enos, Mad Men's January Jones and Shameless' Emmy Rossum. Their male counterparts included Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Homeland's Damian Lewis, Parenthood's Peter Krause, Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston, Touch's Kiefer Sutherland and Boss' Kelsey Grammer.
I found it curious that the tone of the round-table discussions between the women versus the men was starkly different. Whereas the men seemed to be jovially trying to one-up each other with gross and embarrassing tales while they munched on snacks (like cubes of cheese), the women were deferential to one another and had flowers instead of food on the table in front of them. (The men are allowed to eat but the women weren't?)
My favorite parts of the discussions:
January Jones said that people she sees on the street give her grief for Betty Draper's bad parenting.
Jones said appearing as "fat Betty" during the fifth season of Mad Men was a pain in the neck due to all the prosthetics she had to wear.
Peter Krause admitted to once suffering from sudden gastrointestinal problems while acting on stage in a play.
The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies, struggles with being the "good girl" on her show's set even when she doesn't think she needs to be there all the time, particularly for scenes where she has no lines. Her quote seemed very Katherine Heigl to me, almost a cry for help: "There are days when . . . I had worked until midnight and then I had to go and shoot something else at five in the morning. I looked at my husband and I was like, 'This is why Judy Garland was on pills. I can't keep this up. I need a pill!'"
Jon Hamm was once told he'd never make it as a TV star.
Damian Lewis related an anecdote about getting injured on stage -- sustaining a wound that required multiple stitches -- during a sword fight with Ralph Fiennes yet he continued to act as he bled profusely from the face.
I completely concur with a person who posted a comment on YouTube after the interview with the panel of women who said that this was a fascinatingly interesting discussion, a model for what these types of discussions should be, as opposed to the vacuous fluff that passes for interviews these days.
Chloe O’Brian may be patching Jack Bauer through yet again, according to news reports. Entertainment Weekly says that there’ll be a Jack Attack on the silver screen in 2012.
Sutherland – who recently started tweeting under @RealKiefer -- has said publicly that he’s game to jump back into scowling Jack "Dammit!" mode.
Mary Lynn Rajskub who plays Chloe, tweeted on April 10, under the handle @rajskub, “I have not heard anything about the 24 movie.”
Then that was followed up with this tweet:
":) xoxoxo RT @CarlosBernard_P: @RealBrianGrazer That's very good news. Hope you call Carlos Bernard and @rajskub also for the 24 movie."
I’ve watched the first three of the five parts of the Kate Winslet mini-series Mildred Pierce on HBO (the other two parts are sitting on my DVR), but that trio of episodes gave me plenty of material for my latest pop culture column about how the mini-series was turning out differently than I anticipated, particularly when the lead character put up with wretched treatment from her spoiled brat of an odiously haughty daughter and even rewarded the kid for acting like a selfish twit:
“I went into this Depression era dramatic series with the expectation that I’d be watching and rooting for a plucky mother of two who’d been left by her cheating husband, scratch her way to make a living to support her family in a time when there weren’t many jobs for anyone, never mind for soon-to-be-divorced thirtysomething women with children.
. . . [I]t’s almost as if Mildred Pierce is a kind of stealth, perhaps unintended allegory that’s relevant to today’s generation of helicopter parents, those who are hovering and doting on their offspring, getting their children whatever the little darlings want . . . even when the children’s behavior doesn’t warrant a reward.”
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1: DVD Out Friday
When part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out in theaters last year, I fully intended to see it in the movie theaters. Then a whole bunch of things conspired to get in my way and prevent me from doing so. Therefore, I’ve been unreasonably excited for the DVD release of the film on April 15.
My oldest son and I have plans to watch it this weekend together. (My daughter already saw it in the theaters with The Spouse last year, and my youngest son’s a bit too young for this film, plus we’ve only gotten to the beginning of book six in our Harry Potter Reading Out Loud Project, so I don’t want to spoil the surprises which lie in store for him.)
Fox/Lindelof
Lindelof on House/Should House be Canceled?
While watching a pretty predictable episode of House this week -- I called that Thirteen had been incarcerated for doing something noble and not wantonly violent as soon as we learned she had a brother – I was mildly amused by the scene where Thirteen asked House to stop at a home and remain in the car while she proceeded to kick the guy who answered the door in the groin. As it turns out, that guy was Damon Lindelof, one of the guys who created and ran Lost.
Lindelof had been tweeting on Twitter -- @DamonLindelof -- that he had something in the works. Then he retweeted the photo you see to the right.
Speaking of House, New York Magazine had an intriguing piece suggesting that House has run its course and should be euthanized . . . kind of like Thirteen's brother. Writer Margaret Lyons gave five solid reasons including:
-- The fact that Greg House doesn’t change no matter what happens
-- The show doesn’t “hold onto a good story.” (I’d forgotten all about Kutner’s suicide, as have all the characters it seems.)
-- “House will never meet his match.”
-- Since the actor who plays Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) reportedly doesn’t want to continue beyond this season, and, Lyons said, “[T]here’s no show without Wilson.”
The promo for the eighth season of 24 -- which starts January 17 -- features a nicely recovered Jack Bauer (out of the morphine-induced coma he was in at the end of season seven after the effects of the chemicals in a bioweapon became too much for him to bear) with his cute-as-a-button granddaughter. She calls him "Jack." He asks her to call him "Grandpa."
Later in the trailer, Jack grumbles something about having "retired" from government service, even though we see shots of him racing around shouting at people and, once again, protecting the U.S. president and the entire country from certain doom.
Retirement, "grandpa," what is this, the AARP version of 24?
So we all know that Kiefer Sutherland was busted for literally headbutting a fashion designer earlier this month in New York -- supposedly while defending Brooke Shields, according to news reports -- and has a court date set for June. But leave it to Jimmy Fallon to ask Sutherland if he thinks he's actually super agent Jack Bauer.
*Warning, spoilers ahead from the previous episode of 24*
Public service announcement: There will be no head-butting/violating of probation jokes, inferences, etc. in this blog post. Personally I'm afraid Jack Bauer will come after me if I do. Now, onto 24 . . .
Next week, Fox will air the two-hour finale of 24. And I just have a tiny grievance to lodge in advance of the finale. While I've largely enjoyed this particular bad day in Jack Bauer's life -- it was heads and shoulders above the previous day -- it pains me to see that it appears to be veering toward a premise we've seen before, specifically, in the very first season. The recent episode concluded with Kim Bauer's life in jeopardy courtesy of some sinister bad guys who're going to make Jack do their dirty work on their behalf or else Kimmie's time being hunted by a cougar in the woods several years ago will seem like a walk in the park.
Is it too much to ask that the writers go with a different twist?
*Warning, spoilers from the recent episode of 24 ahead*
There's a rumbling among some TV critics when it comes to this season's 24: While it's not as bad as its previous Bauer-family centric season, the twists it has taken recently are making it a "pathetic parody of itself." That "pathetic parody" line comes from the Baltimore Sun'sDavid Zurawik who doesn't understand why anyone with any degree of intelligence is still watching this season, whose exploits have included:
-- An attack on the White House by a group of terrorist thugs abetted by a security guard.
-- The murder of a U.S. senator whose chief of staff was a traitor, who also wound up dead.
-- The violent seizing of the president who was forced at gunpoint by African terrorists to read a statement on a live internet feed denouncing the United States' military intervention in a fictitious African nation overrun by warlords and whose democratically elected president was saved from terrorist clutches by Jack Bauer, after Bauer pretended to be working with his captors.
-- The shooting and burying alive of an FBI agent by terrorists who later was saved and was running around the nation's capital because her wound was apparently only of the flesh wound variety.
-- The downing of two American commercial airliners by the African terrorists, abetted by other home-grown terrorists, including one over the D.C. Mall near the Washington Monument.
-- The torture of a couple of evil terrorists.
-- A near meltdown of a chemical plant, saved by the plant manager who died from exposure to the chemicals but saved his employees.
-- A Blackwater-esque company got its hands on bio-weapons, after masterminding the actions of the African terrorists.
-- Jack Bauer was exposed to the contents of one container of said toxic material, and he's been told there is no cure to his condition, except for some experimental technique which requires the DNA of a close relative. Now Jack's having debilitating seizures and won't let his daughter offer DNA to possibly save him.
-- A former U.S. agent turned bad/turned good/turned bad and killed a top FBI official, plus orchestrated the detonation of a bomb that killed other FBI agents. That and he helped a fellow baddie get away with a canister of the weaponized bio-chemicals.
-- The attempted (?) suicide of the head of the Blackwater-esque private army company at the demand of an unnamed cabal of "others" who are trying to exact bad things on the American government and, by extension, the American public.
"I have to ask sincerely," critic Zurawik wrote after seeing the latest episode, "Why are you still watching this show? Isn't your intelligence insulted by what it has become and the way it tries to exploit your feelings?"
Zurawik added:
"The Jack-is-dying-and-only-his-daughter-can-save-him storyline is debasing. Watching [Kiefer] Sutherland mimic the sudden waves of pain, the need for an injection, the loss of memory and tendency to repeat himself Monday gave me new respect for the actors on daytime soap operas. Their performances in many ways are far more honest than Sutherland's . . . All I see is a great series gone bad."
Over at New York Magazine'sVulture blog, which regularly rates the "absurd" factor of events on 24, joked about the fact that Jack's daughter Kim has a daughter named Teri (after his late wife) -- making Jack a granddaddy -- as well as the fact that it's painfully obvious that Kim's DNA will save Jack. Equally as implausible was the supposed suicide via the red pill from Jonas Jolie Hodges' attorney's doppelganger which we know didn't succeed because he was shown in previews for next week. (Way to spoil your own surprise Fox!)
But I won't go as far as Zurawik or New York Magazine. While it's true that you have to suspend a whole heck of a lot to try and enjoy 24, I don't think it has quite jumped the shark or that Sutherland's acting belongs on a daytime soap. I think the first half of this season was really strong, then it slacked off a bit in the middle, as a 24-episode show tends to do.
The killing of Larry Moss last week by Tony Almeida was shocking, an OMG moment, even though I hate the vacillating loyalty factor that is Tony. Additionally, I'm not a fan of the nakedly obvious Kim-saves-Jack storyline, because we already know Sutherland has signed on for an eighth season to be set in New York City, or of the Jonas-Jolie-Hodges-isn't-dead-yet because the previews blew that fact.
All that being said, I'm not ready to kiss of 24 yet. It's been fun this season and redeemed itself from Jack Bauer's previous bad day, which was very, very bad. I'm just hoping the conclusion of this seventh day isn't a huge let-down.
Do you think 24 has become a "pathetic parody of itself" or do you find that it's still fun?
Image credit: Fox/AP Kelsey McNeal via this web site.
What are we, a little more than halfway through one of Jack Bauer's very bad days on 24? Thus far in Jack's day we've seen:
Two commercial airlines were downed by terrorists. Hundreds are dead.
A chemical plant almost leaked deadly chemical into the air in the Midwest, however area residents and employees were saved by the quick thinking actions of the plant manager, who died from his exposure.
The First Gentleman was shot, kidnapped, rescued and then operated on. Now he's recovering in the hospital and has just spoken with his president wife on the phone.
A U.S. invasion targeting African warlords, who overthrew a democratically elected leader and brutally savaged their fictional country, commenced.
The democratically elected leader of that fictional country and his wife were abducted by the terrorists, then freed by Jack Bauer & Co.
The White House was infiltrated by terrorists who apprehended the U.S. president, whose face the head terrorist slapped. The president was forced at gunpoint to read a statement condemning the U.S. invasion over a live internet stream.
At least one White House aide was executed in front of the president, after many Secret Service members were killed.
Jack Bauer's good friend and former head of the disbanded Los Angeles Counter Terrorism Unit, sacrificed himself in order to provide cover for Jack so Jack could save the president. (How many presidents' lives has Jack saved? Anyone got a count?)
A key U.S. senator's chief of staff (a secret badie) was tortured, survived, was brought to the hospital then killed shortly before the senator for whom he was working was killed, both of 'em executed by an associate of the bigger cadre of bad guys who were funding the African warlords.
The president's chief of staff resigned because he thinks Jack Bauer killed a bunch of people he didn't kill AFTER the chief of staff let him out of custody.
A bio-weapon is now loose in Washington, D.C. in the hands of Angelina Jolie's dad, the head of a sinister company which runs a private, for-profit army, clearly meant to harken comparisons to the likes of Blackwater.
And now Jack Bauer -- who, during this one day has appeared before a Senate committee that was grilling him about his previous actions, has been put into the field by the FBI, was detained, then let go, then arrested, then let go, then fled and is now in custody again -- has been accidentally exposed to chemicals from the bio-weapon that he stole from the bad guys, but they got it back.
Phew! Just an ordinary day in the life of Bauer.
Some outstanding questions/observations:
-- Why, why is there another bad family member in the persona of the president's daughter Olivia running around? I had plenty of bad seed family member drama last season with Jack's father and brother.
-- Why does Larry Moss, head FBI dude, persist in leaping to wild assumptions that Jack has done wrong, gone mad and wantonly killed, when all day long he's proven his allegiance? Yet when the vice president ordered Moss NOT to enter the White House after Moss & Co. believed the terrorists had seized the president, he blew off the VP?
-- Do the characters of 24 experience some kind of special, miracle healing after they've been wounded, a la Lost's island? Otherwise, how do people like FBI agent Renee Walker, who was shot in the neck and buried alive, run around mere hours after sustaining serious wounds?
-- How many lives has Tony Almeida used up already? Is he on his last one yet? If you go by the promo, it seems as though he'll need it because Angelina's daddy seems quite agitated in the promo for next week.
Now we wait 'til Monday to see if Jack "survives" his exposure. But given the news this week that Kiefer Sutherland has signed on for an eighth season, I guess it's no big leap to guess that Jack'll be okay.
While praising the much-improved seasons of two popular, primetime dramas that have unfolded since January, USA Today's Robert Bianco says that Lost and 24 are "remarkably good," and "the two best shows on TV."
"Because it fell further from grace, the course corrections at 24 are probably more noticeable. In place of the hysterics and overdone family histrionics of the last go-round, we have a stripped-down plot that frees Jack (the reliably terrific Kiefer Sutherland) from back-story build-up and returns the show to its roots."
On Lost, he said:
"If people seem less happy with Lost, it may be because the show rejected more-readily grasped answers to its mystery (dream, purgatory, alien abduction) in favor of a smarter but more complicated solution . . . And you can think of Lost now as the network equivalent of The Wire, a challenging show telling its story in its own way, and brilliantly."
Are Lost and 24 the best shows on TV? That would leave out 30 Rock, and doesn't include, I'd think, Mad Men, which isn't currently airing new episodes.
When the sixth season of 24wrapped up in May 2007, I was distinctly unimpressed. A fan of the show since the beginning -- notably adored its fifth season -- I'd been blogging at TV Squad about 24 through its entire, mediocre sixth season.
I haven't thought much about 24 since the last tick of that 24 clock. Due to the writers' strike, 24 has been on hiatus. (The seventh season isn't slated to begin until January 11. 2009.) So when I watched last night's 24: RedemptionTV movie, my expectations were low, although I was still watching. And those low expectations were exceeded. Dramatically.
I thoroughly enjoyed the off-campus (as in not in LA for a change), two-hour moviethat did a stellar job of setting up the seventh season and trying to literally redeem itself from the sadness that was season six. The movie had Jack Bauer in Africa, volunteering with a humanitarian mission spearheaded by a former colleague of his who ran a school for boys. Jack spent much of the two hours of the movie guiding a group of boys to safety all the while putting his own freedom at risk.
It was quite stark, seeing Jack as a humanitarian, surrendering himself to U.S. authorities -- who, for a year, had been unsuccessfully trying to serve him with a subpoena to appear at a hearing regarding his torturing of a terrorist suspect way back in season six -- so that a group of orphaned boys could be evacuated from their country that was about to collapse due to an impending coup. It was Jack, totally on the defense.
And, in typical 24 style, we saw other storylines unfold, alas, no Chloe O'Brian though. A new president, Allison Taylor, was inaugurated. Taylor has a distinctly different position on the use of force and foreign policy than did her predecessor, the sinister President Noah Daniels, who was the commander in chief during the previous season of 24. Taylor seems no-nonsense and has a cute adult son who, in the new season, will be in danger because a friend tried to leak him info about government ties to terrorists.
When Redemption ended, Jack was being flown back to the United States in handcuffs, the boys he'd helped were being evacuated and the first woman president had been inaugurated.
How well will Jack Bauer, rouge and violent anti-terrorism agent, play with the viewing public after the election of Barack Obama? I think he'll play well, particularly given that Jack, for the first time, will have to answer to U.S. officials in Washington for his methods. It promises to be an exciting season and we'll have to see if the show can maintain its quality throughout an entire 24 episode span. After all, the first four hours of season six were great, then it was downhill from there.
