Rescue Me’s Disturbing Sex Scene
Posted by Auburn Scallon Categories: Drama, Cable, Editorial, Gossip,
Okay, so I’ve previously accepted that Rescue Me has succumbed to soap opera antics in order to maintain ratings this season. They’re no longer a gritty real-life fire fighter drama. They took things a step too far this week, and I’m not referring to the homosexual blow jobs (I actually applaud them for taking on that story line). Tommy Gavin, after a ridiculous amount of emotional trauma in his life, goes to discuss his divorce settlement with his ex-wife, and in the heat of the moment, throws her down on the couch to prove his manhood. She struggles, fights back, and after accepting that she is currently being raped, sits back, enjoys it and orgasms? What kind of message is this sending?! It’s one thing to portray sex with an ex, but this was a huge step backward in our attitudes about domestic violence. Did this bother anyone else? Let me know your thoughts…
Read More 
| Cinemablend
Gallery: Rescue Me’s Disturbing Sex Scene
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Cable Scrambling To Close In On TNT’s The Closer
Posted by Eric Chaloux Categories: Drama, Cable, TNT-HD, Nip/Tuck, The Sopranos, News, Ratings,
The Closer, starring Kyra Sedgwick, has made a big splash kicking off the summer television season. First, its second-season premiere was commercial free. Second, it was a good show. And third, it blew away the competition with 8.3 million viewers, the most-watched scripted series ever on basic cable. Historically, “the only thing that’s owned by broadcast is scripted series,” says TBS and TNT’s chief operating officer Steve Koonin to USA Today. “Now, with The Closer, Nip/Tuck and Monk, that’s not true anymore.” Just to put into perspective just how many viewers watch The Closer try this on for size: the show had an audience that matched HBO’s biggest series, The Sopranos.
Joining TNT, USA, and FX in the scripted game are Spike!, ABC Family, E! and TBS. All four have several scripted dramas shows that could hit your TV as early as this fall.
Read More | USA Today
Gallery: Cable Scrambling To Close In On TNT’s The Closer
If you have only one hour a week to cram in all of your pop culture, VH1’s Best Week Ever is your saving grace. They manage to take all of the top stories, gossip, and television that everyone has been talking about, and still manage to surprise us with fresh one-liners.
This past week they took on Britney’s Matt Lauer interview, the “gay” Superman debate, Ann Coulter’s media blitz, and Janice Dickinson. They’ve collected some of today’s funniest comedians, with the occasional celebrity contributor (who knew Kelly Pickler was funny!?) to dissect everything that people were talking about his week.
Airing Friday nights at 10pm (and replayed constantly, for all of you with a social life), you’ll have enough fuel for small talk during your week-end cocktail parties and Sunday brunches. This really is the Best Show Ever! Visit their website, and you can help decide what they skewer next week.
Read More | VH1
Gallery: Best Week Ever
The Beauty Business Gets Downright Ugly at the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency
Posted by Abby Rose Dalto Categories: Reality, Cable, America’s Next Top Model, Editorial,
After being ousted from Tyra Banks’s show America’s Next Top Model, Janice Dickinson has struck back with her own show and it ain’t pretty. The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency which premiered on Oxygen earlier this month, shows a darker, harsher side of modeling than most people get to see.
One episode shows a group of genetically-superior men and women stripping down to their skivvies and subjecting themselves to criticism from Dickinson and her staff. The better-looking contestants were rewarded with smiley-face stickers – the less fortunate ones were given frown-faces and drawn on with magic marker – but none were safe from Dickinson’s verbal abuse. Later in the same episode, she instructed another young woman that she needed to have a nose job (and even set up an appointment for a consultation).
Dickinson herself is a terror; the moods keep swinging and insults keep flying. But while her personality is a lot to take, she does know her stuff. She’s all too familiar with the unforgiving nature of the industry and has a keen instinct for a model’s marketability.
Dickinson claims to be the “world’s first supermodel” but many would argue otherwise. While she did have a extensive modeling career as a household name, many others came before her including Lisa Fonssagrives, a model whose career began in the 1930s. According to Wikipedia, she appeared in nearly every fashion magazine of that era and graced the cover of Vogue over 200 times. (Dickinson only had that honor 37 times). Top models such as Twiggy, Beverly Johnson, and Verushka were household names way before Dickinson became famous.
The real difference between Dickinson and the women who came before her comes down to money. She was one of the first models to push for the top pay that supermodels receive and she still possesses that lethal combination of confidence, cunning, and nerve. Hopefully for her, it’ll be enough to keep people watching.
Read More | Boston Herald
Gallery: The Beauty Business Gets Downright Ugly at the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency
HBO Adds New Podcasts
Posted by Eric Chaloux Categories: Cable, HBO, Entourage, The Sopranos, Internet, News,
HBO is taking some of your favorite shows and putting them on your iPod. The cable powerhouse is now launching podcasts for Deadwood, Entourage, Lucky Louie and Dane Cook’s Tourgasm. When you log on you’ll find that there are a lot of extras such as behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. HBO reportedly plans on releasing new clips until the summer season wraps up in August. If you’re going through The Sopranos withdrawal, you can also get a behind-the-scenes podcast on the HBO Web site.
Read More | HBO
Gallery: HBO Adds New Podcasts
VH1 to Air “White Rapper Show” Reality Competition
Posted by Christina Furtado Categories: Music, Reality, Cable,
Starting in 2007, VH1’s The White Rapper Show, from the producers of America’s Next Top Model, will bring the search for the next Eminem to living rooms across America. The Reality Show Twist™? According to Variety, rapper wannabes “will live together in the South Bronx as a series of challenges test their music talent and ability to mesh with black culture.” Yes, that’s right; along with $100,000, the winner will also have won the privilege of having a vacation in the South Bronx for a few weeks. Now, I lived in the Bronx for three years. Though it wasn’t the South Bronx, I definitely didn’t earn any street cred in all that time. I wish the rapper wannabes luck, though does anyone else find the potentially racist implications of this bothersome?
Read More | Variety
Gallery: VH1 to Air “White Rapper Show” Reality Competition
Spoiled Brat Shows Have Not Gone Bad Yet
Posted by Abby Rose Dalto Categories: Reality, Cable, WB, The Hills, Editorial, Gossip,
Why is it that we, as a society, are so obsessed with watching other people with bottomless pockets throw away their money? I never realized how many shows there are out there that focus on what can only be called “spoiled brats”. These past few years there have been an excess of reality programming documenting the lives of these spoiled brats.
The first one to come to mind is, of course, FOX’s Simple Life, which stars America’s most famous spoiled brat, (famous for nothing more than being just that) Paris Hilton and equally-spoiled Nicole Richie. MTV has Laguna Beach which follows around a group of rich teenagers and was so popular it inspired both a spin-off (The Hills) and a rip-off (8th & Ocean). Bravo’s Real Housewives of Orange County follow women who those teenagers will be in twenty years. Bridezillas gives us a glimpse into the lives of spoiled women throwing elaborate weddings, while MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen is the sixteen-year-old’s equivalent.
Joe Millionaire tricked women into falling in gold-digger’s-love with a “millionaire” who wasn’t rich after all, while NBC did the opposite in For Love or Money by offering the winning female contestant a large monetary prize for “winning” the heart of a man who is unaware of the incentive.
There has also been E!’s The Anna Nicole Show, A&E’s Growing Up Gotti, the WB’s Survival of the Richest, and MTV’s Rich Girls, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica and sister spin-off The Ashlee Simpson Show. At least WE’s Daddy’s Spoiled Little Girl openly admits that their “stars” are spoiled rotten.
What is it that keeps us tuning in to these shows? Do “have-not” viewers live vicariously through these “have plenty” stars? Does watching their excessive waste make us feel superior for own conscientious frugality? Do we take pleasure in their seeming lack of intelligence? (I’m not implying that all spoiled people are stupid; I’m simply questioning the brainpower of certain wealthy people from some of the above shows, no names, no names).
A male friend in his twenties recently confessed that he sometimes watches My Super Sweet Sixteen. He and I both find the show extremely funny (even when it might not mean to be), but he also described it as a type of social-commentary. While some people might watch the show from a “wow-isn’t-that-cool” position, he sees it as a mockery: “how ridiculous that these children are complaining that they’re getting a $100,000 party instead of a 500,000 party!”
Whatever it is, America has not stopped watching.
Read More | Mercury News
Gallery: Spoiled Brat Shows Have Not Gone Bad Yet
Rescue Me began as a poignant, honest look inside the life of a post 9-11 NYC firefighter, but those days have gone up in smoke. Denis Leary’s pet project has officially become a prime-time guilty pleasure soap opera. This season is already full of incestuous romantic relationships- Tommy Gavin’s co-worker is dating his sister, his wife is sleeping with his brother, not to mention his ongoing relationship with his “sister-in-law”- that leave us wondering if there is anyone in New York City that Tommy Gavin is not related to. This season also tackles the seriously overdone storyline of female school teacher seducing young male student (anyone remember the first season of Dawson’s Creek?), but they complicate the situation by adding his uncle as a competitor for attention from the hot young teacher.
The show has already begun introducing big name guest stars. Tommy’s sister is played by the delightfully trashy Tatum O’Neal, and this season adds timeless sex-symbol Susan Sarandon as Franco’s new love interest, and upcoming appearances by Marisa Tomei. Combined with the millionaire uncle in jail for murder, the best friend left destitute by a scheming porn star, and hints that “probee” will be coming out of the closet this season, and you start to wonder how the boys of Ladder 62 will ever find time to even rescue a cat out of a tree.
What do you think about this new format? Visit our Discussion Forum and voice your opinion.
Read More | Sony Pictures
Gallery: Has “Rescue Me” Gone Too Far?
Does OCD Really Help Solve Crime? “Monk” Tells Us Yes, But “The Closer” Proves Otherwise
Posted by Abby Rose Dalto Categories: Prime Time, Cable, Editorial,
I’ve been watching a lot of reruns lately (hey, it’s summer) and I’ve come across two great shows that I may have overlooked in the past. USA’s Monk and TNT’s The Closer. Both shows focus on solving crimes – those most baffling ones – but that’s nothing new to TV.
What really draws you in to these shows are their respective main protagonists: Tony Shalhoub’s Adrian Monk, a retired San Francisco police officer turned private investigator, and Kyra Sedgewick’s Brenda Johnson, deputy chief of the LAPD’s priority homicide division.
What struck me about these two shows was the differences (and similarities) of these two characters. Monk suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and a plethora of phobias, conditions that have proven to be both a gift and curse. Getting through the day is a struggle, however his attention to detail and unconventional thinking help him to figure out the cases that no one else can crack.
Johnson, on the other hand, has what I would (unscientifically) call the opposite of obsessive-compulsive disorder. While Monk is overly organized to the point of addiction, Johnson is a mess. She can never find her glasses – or anything else for that matter – in her purse full of junk; she is always getting lost; she is never on time. She has her own neuroses of course, specifically centered on food and men, but for the most part she is the anti-Monk. However, she too manages to solve those “unsolvable” cases. While Monk’s forte is noticing the clues that no one else sees, Johnson’s gift is interrogation (or more specifically, getting a confession).
These shows pose the question: “Does having a mental illness actually make you smarter?” My only current obsession is catching up on both of these shows and anxiously awaiting new episodes.
Read More | ABC News
Gallery: Does OCD Really Help Solve Crime? “Monk” Tells Us Yes, But “The Closer” Proves Otherwise
Bravo’s New Reality Show, “Tabloid Wars” Premieres June 24
Posted by Zoe Stagg Categories: Prime Time, Reality, Cable, Gossip,
Set in the newsroom of the New York Daily News, “Tabloid Wars” is Bravo’s new reality darling. Each of the 6 hour-long episodes take the viewer inside the chaos of staying on top of late-breaking news, from Britney to bombings. The show follows a handful of journalists, shot surveillance-style, and edited into a Law and Order-esque procedural drama. President of Bravo, Lauren Zalaznick states, “This unprecedented series goes beyond entertainment in many ways and imparts a truly educational and unique glimpse at the inner workings of a competitive leading daily newspaper.” Educational? This is reality TV- and “The Littlest Groom” was an anthropological study.
Gallery: Bravo’s New Reality Show, “Tabloid Wars” Premieres June 24
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