Television

As part of my physical therapy, I have to spend four to six hours a day with my arm in a machine that forcibly bends and extends it… so I have been watching a lot of television lately.

First, I went on a big GUNSMOKE binge… which is easy, since the color episodes play on TVLand every day and the black-and-white episodes air on Western Channel. Plus both networks have been running mini-marathons. You gotta love Tivo.

Anyway, besides noticing what a great, under-appreciated show GUNSMOKE was (though there were a few seasons in the mid-60s you can skip)… I was struck by how often it has been subtly imitated over the years. The key characters on the show are Marshal Matt Dillon, his deputy Chester (and later Festus), his friend ornery Doc Adams, and his girlfriend Kitty, the saloon-keeper (and, let’s be honest here, proprietor of the whore house). But that central triumvirate…  lawman, deputy, and doctor, have been repeated ever since in many series…including one very popular example.

Gene Roddenberry described STAR TREK as "WAGON TRAIN in space." It probably would have been more accurate to call it GUNSMOKE in space. Captain Kirk is Matt Dillon, Mr. Spock is Chester, and Doctor McCoy is, well, virtually the same character as Doc Adams. All the STAR TREK shows have repeated that triumvirate in some form or another…

I also caught up on the first season of NIP/TUCK on DVD… a show that deserves all the praise it has been getting. I can’t wait for season two box set to come out. And I watched the first season DVD set of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT… which left me cold. I can see why it’s struggling to attract an audience, despite its Emmy awards.

I’ve also caught a bunch of movies…among them THE BIG SLEEP (love the movie, though I still can’t follow the plot at all), TONY ROME and LADY IN CEMENT (two fun Frank Sinatra PI movies based on Marv Albert novels), THE GOOD THE BAD AND UGLY special edition (a classic), MISSING (the Tommy Lee Jones western, the DVD is loaded with deleted scenes and alternate endings), all the Bond films for the millionth time, and two PINK PANTHER movies.. in addition to my usual primetime viewing.

Tonight, the second part of the CROSSING JORDAN/LAS VEGAS cross-over airs. Jill Hennessey, star of JORDAN, is no stranger to cross-overs, as she told the folks at zap2it. When she was on LAW AND ORDER, she did a cross-over with HOMICIDE. But this cross-over was her idea…

Hennessy takes some pride in the fact that the whole thing was her idea. At a pre-upfront meeting for advertisers, NBC bigwig Jeff Zucker trotted Hennessy and the "Las Vegas" cast out as proof of the network’s recent success stories. Hennessy looked around at the glitzy "Vegas" set and suggested to that show’s creator, Gary Scott Thompson, that a meeting of the minds would be a great idea. Although she claims she threw out the idea in jest, there were ulterior motives. "From what I’ve heard, they have a very strong young male following and we’ve got a very strong young female following, which works very well for both of us," she notes. "Put them together and they can procreate. I’m all for that."

She’s thinking like a producer. She just went up a notch in my estimation.

The only reason to do a cross-over episode is to goose the ratings, get some extra publicity… and bring new viewers to your show. I’ve done it a couple of times

But it’s complicated, especially if the two shows are done by rival studios.

On DIAGNOSIS MURDER, we did a cross-over with the show that led into us, PROMISED LAND, to create a promotable event on Thursday night.  We were the higher-rated of the two shows and, arguably, the better show from a creative stand-point as well. So the motivation for us was purely the one-time ratings spike the event might get.

Unfortunately, because the show was shot in Utah, we weren’t able to do a "true" cross-over… the only cast the two shows shared were guest-stars, none of our principals guested on each other’s series, which I think was a mistake. The hardest part of doing a cross-over is crafting a story that would begins on one show and ends on another… but that stays true to the tone of each series. We worked closely with their writers who, as it happened, were old friends of ours, as managed to craft a story that meshed well. The ratings bump wasn’t as big as we hoped…but I attribute that to the fact the stars didn’t cross-ovver.

We toyed with cross-overs with JAG and NASH BRIDGES, but we couldn’t pull either of them off for various reasons. We did, however, bring back MANNIX and MATLOCK for stunt episodes that scored enormously well… though those weren’t crossovers, more like TV reunions.

On MARTIAL LAW, we did a crossover with the show that followed us, WALKER TEXAS RANGER. We came up with the idea and CBS went nuts for it. The cross-over made a lot of sense. It not only created a promotable Saturday night "event," and one that could get some WALKER viewers to sample our series, but the two shows were perfectly compatible from a creative stand-point… (unlike, say, the MARTIAL LAW/EARLY EDITION cross-over that the previous showrunner tried the season before).  As it happened, two of our writers had written for WALKER before and we were friends with the show-runner, so crafting the storyline and the two scripts was suprisingly smooth. The hardest part was having to watch a half-dozen WALKER episodes so I had a feel for the show. We made sure Sammo sounded right in their script, and they made sure Walker sounded right in ours. And most important  of all, our stars guested on each other’s show. Chuck Norris spent a few days on our show, and we sent Sammo down to Dallas for a few days as well. We even used the WALKER theme when Chuck first shows up on screen… and they did the same for Sammo when he first appeared in their show.  We got a lot of press and the ratings were terrific… the highest ranking episodes on both series that season.  We got a big bump from the stunt…but not big enough. We were canceled that season anyway.

There’s a long history of cross-overs on television… so many have been done, there’s even a site dedicated to them. Check out what they had to say about the Diagnosis Murder/Promised Land cross-over, the Martial Law/Walker crossover, and, of course, everybody’s favorite, the Manimal/Nightman crossover

The network just tested a friend of mine’s pilot in front of an audience. He writes to me that it didn’t go well. 

Death and devastation.  Surely one of the worst focus group tests ever.  They hated everything about it. 

We’ve all been there. I remember observing a focus group discussion after the audience screened a couple of DIAGNOSIS MURDER episodes. Several of the audience members said they didn’t find the guy playing "Steve Sloan" believable at all as Dick Van Dyke’s son. Fair enough. Except the guy who played Steve was Barry Van Dyke.

During testing, the audience members hold a dial, and they twist it one way or another throughout the show to indicate whether they like what they are seeing or not. In the backroom, we see a read-out of these dial reactions that reads like an EKG. You can literally see your show dying… or getting a sudden jolt of life. It allows you to get instant feedback.

We tested some episodes of MARTIAL LAW and, of course, the scores went way up whenever there was an action sequence. That was no surprise. What was a surprise was that the scores went up even higher when Kelly Hu walked into a room. She didn’t even have to say anything.

So… what did we learn? We could have scrapped every single one of those expensive action sequences and simply asked Kelly Hu to stand in front of the camera for five minutes. Naturally, the network immediately asked us to get her in front of the camera as often as possible… which infuriated our star Sammo Hung, who already felt threatened by her. But that’s another story…

Both Rob Lowe and Joe Pantoliano have starred in two TV series in two consecutive seasons… IN THE LIONS DEN (Lowe), THE HANDLER (Pantoliano) and DR. VEGAS (Lowe & Pantoliano).. and all three shows bombed. Do you think anybody will be hiring them to star in a TV series any time soon?

Novelist Victor Gischler has posted “Eleven Silver Johnnies,” a horror story, on the net, that begins like this:

I knew this guy, Johnny Christmas, from the garage. Of all the grease monkeys, he was best, a big, thick-necked, hammy-handed man, and he could spit and smoke and cough up phlegm like it was a career. He farted and swore and laughed, and he could bring down a charging rhino with his salami breath. That was Johnny Christmas.

To read more, click here.

The diagnosis isn’t good for DR. VEGAS…. CBS has picked up the mid-season series NUMBERS, starring Judd Hirsch as an FBI agent who solicits the help of his mathematician brother to solve crimes. Sounds like CSI meets MONK. Other cast members David Krumholtz, Sabrina Lloyd, Peter MacNicol, Rob Morrow, and Navi Rawat.

According to Variety, NBC is pulling FATHER OF THE PRIDE off the air during sweeps, and while they haven’t admitted this, the long lead time and the fact they haven’t already ordered more episodes guarantees that there is absolutely no way they can make more than 13 episodes this season… and odds are strong for cancellation. (Especially since — and I didn’t know this — the deal with Dreamworks has the network paying ALL costs for the show, not just a license fee.)

Also, LAX is only going to air twice in its new timeslot during November — and if it bombs again this Wednesday, it could be pulled entirely. Looks like Heather Locklear’s winning streak has finally been broken…

The networks are looking to their bookshelves this development season…

Variety reports that JUDGING AMY producer Hart Hanson is writing a pilot for Fox based on Kathy Reich’s series of Temperance Brennan novels about a female forensic anthropologist in Montreal (Reichs is also a forensic anthropologist).

But it sounds like they are making a few changes for TV…

Lead character, named Marjorie Miles, will have a team of experts to help her solve the mysteries of the bones, including a reconstructive artist and bug experts who can uncover clues about a case by analyzing the creatures surrounding a corpse.

As with Reichs, Miles also will be a writer, though that won’t be a key part of each episode. “It’ll be more of a pain-in-the-ass obstacle that she’s written this book,” which includes characters like the people she works with, Hanson said.

CBS, meanwhile, is developing a pilot based on Elisabeth Cosin’s novel “Zen and the Art of Murder,” about a PI named Zen who toiled in LA. Cosin is wriiting the script… in addition to being a novelist, she’s also a TV vet with writing credits that include BUDDY FARO and LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT.

The Drake Hotel in Toronto will start offering sex toys on the room service menu, according to USA Today. Vibrators, massage oils, condoms, velvet restraints and how-to videos can be sent up the guests. The “pleasure kits” start at $35.

The 19 room Drake is a boutique hotel that attracts artists and actors. The aim is service that complements the hotel’s artsy image.

“We see ourselves as a bit of a trailblazer,” owner Jeff Stober says. The racy room service menu, which arrives next month, is “in keeping with the theme of sex that has always played a role in artistic works. We are embracing that artistic spirit.”

Actual embraces will cost extra.

They aren’t the only Toronto hotel that’s added sex-centives. The Grand Hotel, where our MISSING directors like to stay, provides two channels of free, 24-hour porn, for their guests (for the record, I stay at the Cambridge Suites, which offers no such goodies).

If Governor Arnold wants to keep movie production in California, he can forget about tax incentives and renegotiating with unions. Free vibrators for every member of the film crew! Sexual surrogates sent to the door of every screenwriter faced with a production rewrite!