TVWeek Blog Critical Eye: Broadcast Press Tour Blog

After 12 days and just under 70 entries, I’m done with press tour. In reality, I was probably done with press tour about a week ago, but there were still show sessions, lunch buffets and open bars to be had.
First, some business to take care of—the votes are in from the dumbest question at press tour survey, and the overwhelming winner was C, the question to “Ugly Betty’s” Vanessa Williams that brought up not only a defunct network (UPN) and a cancelled show (“South Beach”) but also the death of Williams’ father.

A perfect cringe Trifecta.
By the end of tour, you know everyone in the room so well you have a handle on some major critic idiosyncrasies.
I won’t even get into some of the outrageous demands critics gave the networks, like one grouch who demanded to have air conditioning from the hotel hallways and guest rooms redirected to the TCA ballroom since it was stuffy.

It was the “Mutual of Omaha” observations that help you get through the more tedious sessions. One critic kept asking actors to give a “Reader’s Digest” summary of their character, something the critic apparently couldn’t do herself after viewing the pilots or from the reams of summaries provided by the networks. Another critic had the habit of bouncing up and down in his chair when he got an answer to a question that pleased him.

A third used the phrase “and/or” in every friggin’ question she asked. And some guy had the annoying habit of using “I’m just curious” to end his questions! Oh, that was me…
Anyway, the portly nerds are on their way home, wondering how they are going to sweat off their “TCA 10” from all those buffets, and content in the knowledge they understand what’s going on in television for the fall.

Some TCA veterans may not be back in January. More than once I heard critics talk to one another about the pressures on print media, and how wire copy is becoming more attractive to editors over the work of local columnists on a cost basis alone.
I hope to be back for Winter press tour, but I just found out that the broadcast TCA dates and the annual NATPE convention are running at the same time.

Even I can’t be in Pasadena and Las Vegas simultaneously.
It’s been fun doing this blogging thing. Feel free to give me any feedback on stuff that was useful/entertaining versus the self-indulgent/pointless.

And thanks for overlooking my typos… Opera legend Beverly Sills is not at all happy with the current state of television talk shows. Sills, who is the subject of an upcoming PBS “Great Performances” profile, bemoaned the state of young men on TV talk.
Speaking to TV critics via satellite Wednesday, she complained that none of the talkers are “clean shaven.

”
But the female guests are a real sore point.
Talk shows book “women with absolutely nothing to say, and when they do say something, you regret it,” she said to laughter from critics.
Sills knows a few things about talk shows.

A long time friend of Johnny Carson, she was a frequent guest and guest host on NBC’s “Tonight Show.”
“It was very unusual for an opera singer to have that opportunity,” she said, noting that her appearances helped bring her profession down to earth for the American public.
The documentary, which profiles Sills’ extensive career, features footage from her performances on stage and on television.

Although it is “not a pivotal moment” in her life, Sills said she was “tickled pink” about the retrospective of her career. A self-described “nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn” who is called Bubbles by friends and family, Sills had done everything from run Lincoln Center to perform with the Muppets.
“I’m really at the point where I’m quite content how my life turned out,” she said.

“There were tremendous valleys, but there were tremendous starry moments.” Author and academic Ari Kelman said the old adage that New Orleans is “impossible but inevitable” is a great way to describe the city.
Kelman, who is featured in the PBS “American Experience” documentary “New Orleans, said at the show’s tour session Wednesday a city built below sea level that is ground zero for terrible epidemics “makes no sense.

”
“On the other hand, it’s got the Mississippi River flowing by its front door,” he added.
In a post Hurricane Katrina world, it is a “fair question” to ask if the effort should be put into rebuilding the city. Because of its culture and its place in the history of race in the U.

S., “the film demonstrates without New Orleans we’re no America.”
Filmmaker Stephen Ives said “New Orleans,” the latest in the “American Experience” city series, felt like the “fastest film ever made” and just could not be ready to air for the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in August.

The film will premiere in first quarter 2007.
One critic asked if Ives had bumped into director Spike Lee, who is making a film specifically about the aftermath of Katrina.
“We were four people in a minivan,” Ives said, noting Lee had a much bigger film crew and a lunch truck.

“We could see him before he could see us.”
Ives said he has not seen Lee’s film, which is “focusing on the essential present dilemma, and we were specifically not trying to do that.”
Instead Ives was taking a much longer historical perspective on New Orleans, which is why he worked with New Orleans fixtures like Irvin Mayfield, a jazz musician who founded the Institute of Jazz culture at Dillard University.

Mayfield gave a trumpet performance of the New Orleans classic “St. James Infirmary Blues,” which wowed the usually unimpressed critics. Performances like Mayfield’s are the reason New Orleans is so vital, Ives said.

“It’s an immeasurably rich gift,” he said. “That’s what makes it feel different. People have sunk roots in very unstable soil there.

” Helen Mirren was asked if like Cher and Barbra Streisand, who seem to have farewell concerts every few years, the seventh installment of Masterpiece Theatre’s “Prime Suspect” miniseries was really the last.
“It’s definitive,” Mirren said at the PBS series’ press tour session Wednesday.
“In the real world these people don’t go on forever,” she said.

“I like the idea of bookends. It began and it ends.”
The clip showed the iconographic Chief Inspector Jane Tennison in the last few weeks on the London police force before her retirement.

Her relationship with booze appears to be making her forgetful, but Tennison is determined to solve one last crime before ending her career.
This had critics wondering if Mirren’s character, would die in “Prime Suspect 7,” a detail Mirren had no intention of giving up.
Mirren hadn’t been suffering from any melancholy about the end of “Prime Suspect,” until she saw the clip PBS showed at the press tour session.

“I didn’t expect it, but just now, funnily enough,” she said.
“Prime Suspect” has a generous production schedule, considering for the current installment there were 11 weeks to shoot the four hour miniseries. Mirren didn’t know how much was spent on “Prime Suspect,” but “certainly I get paid more” than she did when the first installment was filmed over a decade ago, she said.

Despite being a producer on “Prime Suspect” this time around, Mirren said she didn’t involve herself in the writing and directing.
“I’m always a little hands off,” she said. I never want a writer and director coming on board feeling they have to stick to a format.

” Larry Hagman, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Dinklage, Rosie O’Donnell and Catherine Deneuve are all doing guest-star stints on the upcoming fourth season of the FX series “Nip/Tuck.” But don’t expect the sexy and disturbing show to turn into a cable version of “Will Grace” by relying too much on big guest names, creator Ryan Murphy said at his press tour session Tuesday afternoon.
Using guest stars in a show’s fourth season “energizes story telling,” Murphy said, noting that “this show is always about these three people, make no mistake.

”
The three people—Julian McMahon, Dylan Walsh and Joely Richardson—were all present on the panel, and uniformly expressed disappointment in the show’s third season, which was dominated by a homicidal maniac called The Carver.
“It felt like a different show for awhile,” Walsh said, with McMahon admitting “last year was not my favorite year, to be honest,” adding “this year I’m totally revitalized.”
Murphy stood behind the Carver storyline, but said for season four, the show would be focused more on the relationship of the show’s two plastic surgeons and long-suffering friend and mate Julia.

Responding to curious critics, Murphy said Denueve will be playing a woman who wants to put her late husband’s ashes in her breast implants, which brought on groans of horror from the crowd.
“That’s a true story,” he said, noting that all the cases in the show are based on actual procedures and events.
Critics did get more about what Denueve would be doing on the show, however.

“When you think Catherine Denueve, you think French murderess,” he said. “At least I do.” Three and a half years into his stint as a music student in Boston, Spike Feresten realized “he had made a really bad decision.

” At the Tuesday afternoon press tour session for his new Fox late-night entry “Talk Show with Spike Feresten,” the failed music student explained he had been thrown out of his dormitory after chucking light bulbs out an eighth-story window. A few months later, he saw David Letterman pull the same stunt on his late night show. and Feresten realized “there is a place for me.

”
“Instead of getting in trouble, I could make a career,” he added. One critic (and by one critic, I mean me) asked Feresten if Fox’s top ad sales guy, Jon Nesvig, had beat the crap out of him for his performance at the advertiser upfronts in May, when Feresten made cracks about Sudafed and its relationship to fueling the crystal meth epidemic. I thought it was funny back when Feresten made the joke, but apparently advertisers didn’t share my quirky sense of humor.

“It’s a steep learning curve right now,” Feresten admitted, “and very public.” Executive producer Stewart Bailey said Feresten should be free lunch for journalists for a while.
“He’s remarkably free of polish,” Bailey said.

“Enjoy it.” And the nick name Spike? It came when Feresten was the receptionist 15 years ago on “Saturday Night Live,” and his cow licked hair brought on the moniker.

“They said, ‘Do you have problem with that?’” Feresten remembered, when the name Spike started to stick. “I said, “Just don’t fire me.

” Women are obsessed with talk show host, product spokesman and super mom Kelly Ripa. That was the big message to come out of the press tour session Tuesday for Fox’s new comedy “Happy Hour.”
Executive producer Jackie Filgo admitted her obsession onstage while talking about her show, which started a “me too!

” discussion among series regulars Jamie Denbo and Beth Lacke.
“She’s got like, four different jobs,” an amazed Lacke said.
“She has like, seven nannies,” Denbo said.

Their co-star, Lex Medlin, (who you might recognize from his speed talking-auctioneer shtick he does on T-Mobile TV commercials) was frightened by the conversation, adding that his wife is a Ripa-phile as well.
One critic asked the cast if women like men who are easily ordered around, noting that actor Nat Faxon’s character fits into that mold with his relationship with Denbo’s character.
“Oh yeah, that whole we want you to take charge thing,” Denbo said, “No, no, no, no.

”
“I prefer them not to speak,” Lacke added.
The male cast members seemed to take note. While Medlin got a few words in, Faxon and fellow cast member John Sloan were pretty quiet throughout the session, speaking only when spoken to.

Just like Lacke likes it.
It’s not often that a press tour session begins with some interpretive West Coast swing, but this is Fox we’re talking about. At the press tour session for the summer reality hit “So You Think You Can Dance?

” Tuesday, cousins Benji and Heidi cut up the stage, along with rival couple Travis and Allison. Critics actually applauded afterward, and for once it was deserved.
The four dancers reappeared onstage just moments later, along with the other four finalists, four judges, host Cat Deeley and executive producer and host Nigel Lythgoe.

One critic wanted to know if the dancers, most of who have been training for years, are enjoying a newfound popularity with the show, which has made dancing cool among the kids.
Benji noted that he had received an email from an “old school bully” who wanted to apologize for spitting on him and making his life miserable in high school.
Another critic asked Lythgoe why the winning dancer will receive such a small prize—an SUV, Las Vegas dance contract and $100,000—compared to the cool million he gives on some other show of his, called “American Idol.

”
“If you give somebody a million dollars as a dancer, you’re almost detracting from the dancer,” he said, noting that the cash on “Idol” is not a prize but a contract from a recording company. The top 10 kids are not going to be hurting for leg warmers and tap shoes, however. Lythgoe is trying to organize a multi-city dance tour that will feature the final ten dancers.

“Hopefully that will generate some money for them,” he said.
Choreographer Dan Karaty was asked what it’s like to work with big music stars. He admitted that Britney Spears picks his steps up quickly, but some other performers, “like Jessica Simpson takes a really long time to learn things.

”
Something tells me that’s true of other things as well.
It’s time for a reader’s poll. I thought it might be interesting to let you decide which has been the most ridiculous question asked at press tour.

Yes, we still have a couple days to go, but there are already plenty of contenders out there. I’ve chosen three examples of what seemed to me the most egregious, perhaps even unprofessional, questions asked over the course of the last three weeks-anything that was purposely comedic or facetious was not considered. Critics were serious when they asked these questions.

Really. Feel free to cast your vote by emailing me or posting your vote in the comments section below.
A.

Asked at the syndicated talk show “Dr. Keith Ablow” session July 23. Faithful readers of this blog might want to know the “Flashdance” critic asked the above question:
“The first one is something I’ve always wanted to ask a psychiatrist, but I don’t know any… are our dreams like a secret window to what is happening to us emotionally?

”
B. Asked at the Sundance “One Punked Under God” session July 11.“So what is — in your mind, is your vision of what you would think God would look like?

”
C. Asked of Vanessa Williams at the ABC “Ugly Betty” session July 18. This is an exchange, but I think it needs to be read entirely to get the full cringe effect it had on the whole room.

Note he’s asking a question about a show that lasted two episodes on a dead network… Critic: When this room met with UPN in January, there was a scheduled “South Beach” session.
All of your ensembled cast members were out here. But the morning of the press conference, we were told that there would be no press conference because of the unfortunate news of a death in your family.

I just wanted to ask you, were you aware that “South Beach” cancelled its press conference because of this news? Some of us were skeptical. We thought that possibly UPN had already lost faith in the show and that’s why they cancelled the press conference.

What did you know about the cancellation of the press conference?
Williams: I knew nothing. But thank you for mentioning my father.

Critic: You are welcome.
Vote early and often for A, B or C. Polls close Wednesday at 5 p.

m. (PT). I’ve edited for brevity and clarity, but not idiocy.

Jonathan Shapiro, the executive producer of the Fox legal drama “Justice,” is happy his new show about a dream team of elite defense attorneys will balance out the proliferation of prosecutors currently on network TV.“Everybody hates lawyers, but they love their lawyer,” Shapiro said Tuesday morning at his Press Tour session. “I have such admiration and love for the defense lawyer.

”Shapiro, an attorney himself, also pointed out that a recent American Film Institute survey showed moviegoers picked “To Kill a Mockingbird’s” Atticus Finch as their favorite lawyer of all time.
In the “Justice” pilot, the producers chose a conclusion that let viewers know that the defendant, who ultimately gets off, was indeed innocent. One critic wanted to know if they specifically chose an innocent defendant for the first episode, because if a guilty person got off it might be too big of a jolt for the initial audience.

A guilty defendant getting off was considered, Shapiro said, but “that would have worked well, too.”
But guilt and innocence isn’t the issue.
“Our lawyers don’t know and they don’t care, because in our system they can’t care,” he said.