Fans Campaign to Save TNT’s ‘Men of a Certain Age’

I was among the fans of TNT’s subtle yet affecting drama Men of a Certain Age. I found it to be a soulful, smart meditation on the lives of three, middle-aged, down-to-earth guys who were neither cops nor brilliant surgeons. Their significant others weren’t supermodels or celebrities. They themselves were ordinary looking dudes with ordinary jobs who seemed mystified that they could already have arrived at middle age when inside, they still feel like young, clueless kids.

That’s what made TNT’s decision to pull the plug on the drama – for which Andre Braugher has been justly nominated for an Emmy – disappointing. There aren’t many shows like Men of a Certain Age on TV, the low-keyed ones, the quiet ones that stay with you that don’t throw in other, extraneous dramatic elements to artificially jazz up the action.

And while I hope that the folks who are currently campaigning to Save Men of a Certain Age (there’s a Facebook page and a petition, as well as a blog entry with e-mail addresses to which to send pleas find some success elsewhere, perhaps like NBC's Friday Night Lights did when it was saved by DirecTV) I’m not that optimistic. I don’t think that even compulsive gambler Joe would like the odds.

Entertainment journalist Jon Weisman wrote in Variety that he thinks the campaign is almost certainly doomed. "Watching a movement to save a canceled TV show is a little like watching a squirrel fighting for its life after being hit by a truck," he wrote. "No matter how much you're rooting for that squirrel, it's more than a little painful to witness."

"The new squirrel on the highway is Men of a Certain Age, which was canceled by TNT," Weisman continued. " . . . The 'Save Men of a Certain Age' Facebook page is off to the rescue, complimented by more save-the-show e-mails to me (and therefore, I assume, to many others) than I've seen perhaps in my entire time working at Variety."

Here’s to hoping that the squirrel recovers and comes out of this a winner.

Image credit: Save Men of a Certain Age.

Notes on Pop Culture: Some Favorite TV Shows, Magazines & Articles from Past Week

Now that it’s summer and things, pop culture-wise, tend to wind down a bit -- particularly when it comes to fresh TV programming -- I’m bringing back my favorite picks of the week, pop culture/politics items I’ve enjoyed over the past week.

TV


Image credit: USA

Covert Affairs: Still Light, Still Fun

I get bored easily with stupid TV shows and hardly ever watch anything reality-based, preferring, instead, scripted television, usually of the darker and heavier variety. The comedy programs to which I gravitate usually have some heft and/or intelligence to them because I loathe stupid, forced crap which simply bugs the heck out of me.

I would’ve thought that by now, I would’ve grown tired of USA’s Alias Lite, its summer CIA fare Covert Affairs, about rookie CIA agent Annie Walker who has a big heart, a killer smile, a quick mind and a powerful take-down. But Covert Affairs’ sophomore season has been solid, entertaining and enjoyable.

The show is populated by plenty of actors you’ve seen before – Peter Gallagher (Rescue Me, The O.C.), Kari Matchett (24, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Invasion), Anne Dudek (House, Big Love, Mad Men), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes) and Gregory Itzin (24, Big Love, The Mentalist) – and boasts two breakout stars, Piper Perabo, who’s positively charming as Annie, and Christopher Gorham (Ugly Betty) as Annie’s wise mentor, Auggie Anderson.

Covert Affairs isn’t filled with a heavy mythology that sometimes bogged down Alias, and it doesn’t insult your intelligence either. The latest episode, which featured Mark Moses (Desperate Housewives, Mad Men) as a guest star, was a good example of how Covert Affairs balances its spy intrigue with a light touch. (See my review of it on CliqueClack TV.) 

Image credit: TNT

Men of a Certain Age: Ray Romano Packed a Powerful Emotional Punch in Second Season

The TNT drama Men of a Certain Age had its finale this week, capping a strong second season that brought each of the three, middle-aged, down-to-earth main characters down different paths than one might have envisioned for them.

Ray Romano’s Joe took a detour from his rekindled dream of joining the senior [golfing] tour to traverse down a rather dark road by doing some freelance bookmaking on the side (poaching clients from his own cancer-addled bookie, then thinking twice about it and giving up being a bookie altogether). Just as Andre Braugher’s Owen finally seemed to be gaining in confidence as he took over the helm of his father’s car dealership, he was plagued by panic attacks. Meanwhile Scott Bakula’s Terry -- the Zen, surfer dude aspiring actor closing in on age 50 -- has settled down, taken a full-time job and no longer wants to play the field and sleep with everything that moves; he actually wants an adult relationship with a woman his own age.

This past season Romano stood out as a revelation.

Magazines/Newspapers

EW’s Potter Issue

Love, love, LOVED this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly dedicated to all things Harry Potter. A fan’s delight, the package provides all manner of cool trivia about the $2 billion film series, which comes to a close on July 15 when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 hits the theaters.

If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, this is a must read.

FYI -- My pop culture column over on Modern Mom this week focuses on the wonderful message about the importance of parents and parent-like role models that the Potter series has given my three resident Potter-heads.

New Yorker Fiction Issue

I rarely buy the New Yorker. But when I stopped by my local independent bookstore – yes, an actual brick and mortar store -- seeking a periodical to bring on the airplane during my family’s trip to Orlando (and our pilgrimage to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios), I impulsively picked up the June 13 & 20 Summer Fiction issue and wound up reading quite a bit of it, including the odd little story, “Home” by George Saunders and Lauren Groff’s “Above and Below.”

New York Times & Politicians' Kids

Frank Bruni penned a provocative essay for the New York Times this past weekend in which he suggested that politicians stop parading their families around as presidential campaign props and then turn around and declare them off-limits for other people to discuss. Citing the Obamas’ desire to keep their daughters “off limits” to the media, Bruni said the Obamas also try to have things both ways. “That’s one of the problems with converting progeny into props,” he said. “It has a facile, cheap tinge.”

Citing other presidential candidates who’ve also brought their children on the campaign trail, Bruni is not a fan of the practice. “Because so many politicians make such a studied pose out of their parenthood, it’s fair to point out that jumping into the fray of a national campaign and hauling the clan into an unforgiving spotlight don’t necessarily do children any favors, especially if they’re young,” he wrote. “For all the candidates chatter about building a better tomorrow for their kids, they may be building a worse today.”

Image credits: USA, TNT, Entertainment Weekly.

Notes on Pop Culture: What Are You Looking Forward to Seeing This Summer?

Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

The end of the series chronicling the exploits of The Boy Who Lived hits the big screen on July 15, and I plan on enjoying it in the theaters with my Potter-crazed kids, whom my husband and I are taking to Orlando this summer to visit Universal Studios’ the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. (I don’t know who’s more excited about it, them or me.) This is the BIG film to which I’m looking forward to seeing in those slow months, pop culture-wise.

TV-wise, other than Red Sox games, there are a few shows I intend to view this summer. (You can find the summer TV schedule here.)

I’m going to catch the final, gut-wrenching season of Denis Leary’s Rescue Me on FX, which starts on July 12 and will conclude right before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, sure to be a poignant moment for this series which rose from the debris and emotional wreckage of that horrific day.

The subtle and moving Ray Romano/TNT drama Men of a Certain Age returns with the second half of its second season on June 1. I’ve grown to really admire the way the three lead characters depict the disappointment they feel about where they are as they arrive at mid-life and try to figure out whether they should do something about their disappointment or just give in to it.

Image credit

The gritty, clever but pretty depressing AMC show Breaking Bad -- about a high school chemistry teacher upending his life and leaping into the crystal meth business after being diagnosed with cancer -- comes back for a fourth season on July 17. If you’re in the mood for dark, brooding drama about the violent underworld of drugs, Breaking Bad fits that bill perfectly.

Speaking of drugs . . . I’ll be setting my DVR to record new episodes of Showtime’s Weeds, which’ll be starting its seventh season on June 27. Though this show has had its ups and downs, I’m intrigued, now that Nancy Botwin has surrendered herself to the authorities, where it’ll go next. Perhaps it’ll enjoy a creative renaissance like Grey’s Anatomy did in its seventh season.

If you’re an Alias/spy genre fan, USA’s Covert Affairs, whose second season starts on June 7, is like Alias-lite. It’s set in D.C., has a light-hearted streak and isn’t excessively complex like some of the other spy shows out there as it follows the journey of Annie Walker, a new CIA agent.

Another item on my pop culture agenda this summer: Watching the first two seasons of CBS' The Mentalist on DVD with my eldest son. We started watching this show together this past winter, about halfway through the third season, culminating with The Mentalist’s fantastic season finale. Now we want to go back and gather some backstory, just me and my eldest boy child.

What movie and/or TV shows are you looking forward to?

Image credit: AMC.

Notes on Pop Culture: 'Grey's' Goes Dark 'til 2011, 'Men of a Certain Age' S2 Premiere, Bieber/Brady Hair Spoof

Grey’s Goes Dark ‘Til 2011

Grey’s Anatomy is going on hiatus until January and had a strong close to 2010.

The latest episode – which I reviewed over on CliqueClack TV – was entertaining from beginning to end, from Callie spitting in McSteamy/Sleazey’s shower and trying to persuade Alex to become “the male me,” to Cristina’s inability to shut up during her fishing trip and Bailey’s flirtation with Eli (Daniel Sunjata from Rescue Me). The light moments were, as usual, accompanied by serious twists: Owen telling Meredith he doesn’t want her around the formerly bartending Cristina, Callie shutting the door in Arizona’s face and Teddy impulsively proposing marriage to Denny Duquette Redux (this could go well or could turn hellishly soap opera-ish).

While watching the last episode, it felt very reminiscent of the first and second seasons in its tone. And that’s a good thing. Given that the season seven premiere began in the aftermath of the Seattle Grace shooting that capped season six, how do you feel about the first half of the season? I think it’s been, for the most part, a solidly entertaining and thoughtful season that hasn't gone for the easy answers, at least not for the series regulars.



Men of a Certain Age Season 2 Premieres

Men of a Certain Age is one of those solid, quality shows that's on the quiet side but really ought to have a larger audience than it does.

Ray Romano is not Everybody Loves Raymond’s Ray Romano in this one-hour drama about three friends dealing with the disappointments, challenges and struggles that occur in middle age. Ray isn’t whiny or incompetent or pushed around by his mother or his wife. Instead, he’s Joe, the freshly separated dad of two, who owns a party supply shop (which is ironic because he’s so glum), whose gambling addiction led to the death of his marriage. In the freshman season, Joe was living in a hotel and by the finale he’d gone back to gambling in order to try to scrape together a deposit for a home he wanted so his children could come and stay with him.

Accompanying Romano’s raw and vulnerable Joe, are Scott Bakula’s Terry, a never-married actor who never got his big break and wears his disillusionment on his face, and the fabulous Andre Braugher’s Owen, a married father of three who spent most of the first season under his father’s thumb working at his dad’s auto dealership and stress eating.

It’s rare to see this kind of detailed portrayal of the day-to-day life of a group of guys who aren’t cops or doctors or lawyers or Hollywood agents or ad men from the 1960s. They’re regular guys, with regular problems that are expertly dramatized on the small screen in such a way that it makes Men of a Certain Age a pleasure to watch, if you like insightful dramas about the small moments that, when taken together, make up a life.

Its second season premieres on TNT tonight at 10.

Tom Brady vs. Justin Bieber from Kenny Mayne

Bieber/Brady Hair Spoof

Okay this thing with Tom Brady’s hair, it’s annoying. Sure, at the beginning of the football season, I was mildly curious as to what was up with the new shag do, but that’s about it. Months into the season, I could care less about Tom Brady’s stupid hair and chirpings coming from the little moppet Justin Bieber who sports a similar look.

Brady attempted to demonstrate that he’s a good sport about this contretemps by appearing in a Funny or Die video about it but, like with the entire Brady/Bieber Hair controversy, I’ve not deriving much amusement from it. You?

Thirty- & Fortysomething Men Having Angst on 'Men of Certain Age' & 'The League'

We've had plenty of TV shows as of late spotlighting modern mid-life challenges faced by women -- on Sex and the City, Lipstick Jungle, The Cougar, Desperate Housewives, etc. And now, two brand, spankin' new freshmen shows have waded into the terrain of men's middle aged issues.

In my Mommy Tracked pop culture column this week I spotlighted the guys of TNT's Men of a Certain Age and FX's The League. One's a dramedy about fortysomething men which provides a kind of serious look at the death of one's life's dreams starring a melancholy Ray Romano, while the other's a crude comedy about thirtysomething men obsessed with their fantasy football league, as well as swilling beer and aiming sexually lewd commentary at one another:

"The guys in this fantasy football league see their hobby as a way to avoid facing the oftentimes difficult responsibilties of adulthood because they know that it's just a matter of time before these guys morph into the guys from Men of a Certain Age."

While The League's very raunchy, it does have funny stuff about parenting, including a storyline about a dad who wants to make his 5-year-old daughter hate a beloved character, Mr. McGibblets (he reminded me of Elmo) which she has in the form of a doll that sings and dances. You can catch the half-hour episodes, including the McGibblets one, on Hulu.

Image credit: FX.

Pop Culture Quick Hits: 'Men of a Certain Age,' TV as Art & the SNL-Woods Controversy

Men of a Certain Age on TNT

Okay, okay TV reviewer people. I’ll program my DVR to record the premiere of TNT’s Men of a Certain Age tonight at 10. It’s a dramedy about three men -- one divorced, one single, one married -- dealing with a variety of dispiriting events that have happened to them as they flounder about in middle age. You critics have convinced me that Ray Romano demonstrates a degree of depth as the sad sack of a guy who’s been left by his wife and is trying to figure out where his life’s dreams went. You've indicated that this program -- also starring Andre Braugher and Scott Bakula -- is worth an hour of my time. You better be right.

The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley said, “Men of a Certain Age is not violent, exciting or fast-paced, but the series has a quiet charm of its own; it is a believable, sharply observed portrait of ordinary men who, through all-too-common bad breaks and missteps, feel that they are backsliding.”

But they had me at Andre Braugher.

TV as Art

When this decade began, I had twin toddlers at home who were joined by a baby brother in mid-2001. Needless to say, the decade was marked by a lot of TV watching in my house as we didn’t want to have to obtain a second mortgage in order to afford babysitting for our very young children. And while I was watching said TV programs, I noticed the same thing that Emily Nussbaum of New York Magazine did, that TV has evolved into art (which is why when people act as though TV’s just for dummies, I bristle. Have they not seen Mad Men?) In New York Magazine’s ode to the decade of the 2000s, Nussbaum penned a love letter to this new generation of TV series, of the ilk that people like me obsess about on blogs like this one:

“. . . [F]or anyone who loves television, who adores it with the possessive and defensive eyes of a fan, this was most centrally and importantly the first decade when television became recognizable as art, great art: collectible and life-changing and transformative and lasting . . . It was a period of exhilarating craftsmanship and formal experimentation, accompanied by spurts of anxious grandiosity (for the first half of the decade, fans compared anything good to Dickens, Shakespeare, or Scorsese, because nothing so ambitious had existed in TV history).”

She continued:

“But as this decade began, it had already begun to dawn on viewers that television was something that you could not just merely enjoy and then discard but brood over and analyze, that could challenge and elevate, not just entertain. And a new generation of prickly, idiosyncratic, egotistical TV auteurs were starting to shove up against the limits of their medium, stripping apart genres like the sitcom and the cop show, developing iconic roles for actors like Edie Falco and Michael C. Hall. As the years proceeded (and technology inspired new styles of storytelling), even network TV could stage an innovative series like Lost. On pay channels, especially HBO, it was a genuine renaissance: Show-runners like David Chase and Alan Ball and David Milch and Michael Patrick King (and his Sex and the City writers) reveled in cable’s freedom, exploring adult themes in shocking, sometimes difficult ways.”

Among the shows Nussbaum singled out as having elevated the craft were some of my favorites: Lost (of course), Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Alias, and a small show I might’ve written about here a few times . . . Mad Men.

SNL-Tiger Woods Controversy

Saturday Night Live went there. With the Tiger Woods scandal. And when they went there, they went, in the opinion of some, too far. With Rihanna, one of this year’s most famous victims of domestic abuse, as the musical guest, SNL had a skit making fun of Woods and domestic violence. The cue cards at the end of the skit where the actor playing Woods had written on the back of them that he was scared and feared for his life at the hands of his abusive wife . . . that was the point at which I was sure they’d gone too far. Several bloggers took umbrage – and rightly so – over the skit and the horrific timing with Rihanna on the show. NYT Arts blogger David Itzkoff has a round-up of quotes from several bloggers who thought the sketch was in poor taste.

What DID I like from SNL this past weekend? The White House party crashers skit. Spot. On.



Image credit: TNT.