Bravo
Spoilers for the first half of Top Chef DC's finale coming up:
I have seen every episode of Top Chef DC. I have also seen, with the exception of season 2, pretty much every episode of every season of Top Chef. So I think I can speak from experience when I say that, by the time it comes to the finale, I should at least know the names of the last four contestants by memory. So look: Al... er, Hank... er, oval-headed guy won immunity! Ooh, look what I Think Her Name Starts With a K made!
It's been a barely-veiled secret for months now, but today CNN is confirming that British journalist and sometime reality-show judge/contestant Piers Morgan will replace Larry King in primetime, starting next January.
The proof will be in the show, but my thoughts on the move are pretty much what they were back when the idea first surfaced. By hiring Morgan, a slickly telegenic journalist known for his celebrity interviews, CNN is taking the position that its problem was Larry King, not the Larry King Live format of mixing light personality chats with news-pegged interviews. The idea here seems to be to replace King, a success in primetime for years, with a younger, fresher variation, thus keeping the franchise alive.
I suspect that it's the format itself that's seen its time come and go, not the veteran King, but Piers Morgan will now have his chance to prove whether he's got talent—and whether CNN is using that talent correctly.
Update: CNN's release follows the jump:
FX
NBC has generated headlines over the past year with its attempt to remake '70s private-eye show The Rockford Files. Somebody should let them know they can stop trying now.
FX has not remade The Rockford Files with its sly-humored new P.I. drama Terriers, debuting tonight, but it has pursued what is probably a better idea: creating a new, original series that puts a new spin on the picaresque charm of the James Garner classic.
FX
The outstanding season 2 of Sons of Anarchy ended in a blaze of action: the SAMCRO motorcycle gang got revenge (of sorts) for the rape of matriarch Gemma (Katey Sagal) by the minions of a white-power group; Gemma herself went on the lam after being set up for murder; and protagonist Jax (Charlie Hunnam) was dealt another blow in the conclusion as his baby son Abel was abducted in a revenge kidnapping by an IRA sect.
Season 3 (debuting tonight at 10 ET on FX) begins like a hangover. Not that there isn't action; there's a breathtaking scene of violence in the first return episode, and the hunt for Abel and pursuit of Gemma keep the characters hurtling along, albeit on separate tracks. But the premiere also finds the characters absorbing the afereffects of what was a season of harrowing change.
David Westin, who has managed ABC News for nearly 14 years, is announcing his resignation, pending ABC's naming a replacement. The resignation comes with the usual statement about pursuing other opportunities, and the specific causes of the move are arguable: The Daily Beast pegs Westin's departure as the handiwork of Disney head Bob Iger, who's been disappointed with network performance, while a New York Times report suggests that the financial pressures were not the prime factor. But either way, the larger context of Westin's resignation is: running a network news division—like running many things in the media business—is not what it used to be.
AMC
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, buy a ticket to the closed-circuit screening at your local theater and watch last night's Mad Men.
It was structured around one historic fight, and featured a few others—some verbal, one drunken—but all around "The Suitcase" was, fittingly, a knockout.
At the center of all these battles was a conflict, and a connection, between Don and Peggy, two characters who began the series seemingly very different—younger vs. older, male vs. female, boss vs. employee—yet have both bonded and clashed precisely because of the ways in which they are so similar.
AMC
Spoilers for last night's Rubicon coming up:
In many stories, the dramatic function of lie detectors—like the ostensible actual function of lie detectors—is to eliminate ambiguity: to cut through the murk and differing possibilities and find black and white answers. Black or white, pass or fail.
In some stories, however, they show how the truth can be elided, finessed, or—think of the Xerox-lie-detector scam in The Wire and Homicide before it—gamed. Characteristically, last night's Rubicon, "The Truth Will Out," used a set of polygraph interrogations to question whether the truth was in fact knowable, and whether the investigators were even seeking the right answers.
FOX
One of the worst-kept secrets in TV finally became official today: Kara DioGuardi and Fox announced that the judge will follow Simon Cowell and Ellen DeGeneres in leaving American Idol's judging panel for next season.
"I felt like I won the lottery when I joined 'American Idol' two years ago, but I feel like now is the best time to leave Idol," she said in a statement. If not sooner; the songwriter always had the resume for Idol, but whether from personality, the four-judge system or both, never broke out of the sense of superfluousness.
This leaves the next-worst-kept secret in TV, the new judging panel, widely buzzed to be Jennifer Lopez, Steven Tyler and last surviving original Randy Jackson. Pending the announcement of new judges (and going back to a three-judge panel, if nothing else, would be an improvement numbers-wise), will you miss Kara? And is there a good reason to keep Randy around for continuity's sake, or should Idol wipe the slate?
Brief spoilers for this week's Top Chef coming up:
The finals of this season of Top Chef will take place in Singapore, a fantastic choice: a vibrant food city—or, um, so I gather from food TV and magazines—with a colorful culture that melds a numbers of Asian cuisines. And I wish they weren't doing it. Not this season, that is, because what could potentially be the series' most exciting choice of locale seems wasted on what has been one of its most uninspiring groups of finalists.
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