2013-05-21T09:36:45-04:00 Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=ed-martin Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Ed Martin Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3246176 2013-05-09T15:18:33-04:00 2013-05-09T15:18:39-04:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ All My Children and One Life to Live, produced by Prospect Park's The Online Network and distributed via Hulu, HuluPlus and iTunes, became available that Monday; this after an outcry from millions of fans of both shows when ABC saw fit to replace them with unremarkable reality efforts.

Significantly, the online versions of AMC and OLTL don't seem very different from the shows that entertained millions of loyal fans on ABC for over four decades. New episodes appear only four days a week and have been reduced to a breezy 30 minutes each, but that makes great sense these days given the thousands of viewing options that are available across all media at all times. Each show has returned with much of its cast intact, along with familiar sets (rebuilt at the new Stamford, Conn., studios where they are produced) and continuations of select past storylines (along with kick-offs of a few new ones).

Most impressively, the production values are first rate, which sets AMC and OLTL far above most of the web soaps that have popped up in recent years. With a few exceptions, most of those look like they were shot by students as class projects, and most of the dialogue and acting in them is decidedly uninspired. (Certain Web series, such as the thriller Chosen and the action-adventure The Bannen Way, both on Crackle, look spectacular but should not be categorized as Web soap operas, even if they are serialized.)

By contrast, as far as soap operas go, the new AMC and OLTL look like the real deal: handsomely executed television series that just happen to be produced for online viewing. Further, their move from broadcast, where soap operas do more to push network standards than just about any other genre but nevertheless remain compromised by antiquated FCC restrictions, has instantly loosened certain content strangleholds on these veteran franchises. Right out of the box the kids were running around without clothes on AMC and cursing up a storm on OLTL. (On OLTL, s-bombs drop over Llanview like ducks from the sky during hunting season.) As a result, it's as if these two shows have taken big leaps into basic cable territory, which ought to add to their popularity with younger viewers who grew up watching anything other than broadcast.

To put this another way, the online versions of these shows already feel more in sync with what teenagers and young adults are watching than the four veteran soaps that are still running on the broadcast networks, and while I wish only to support the latter, it's going to be increasingly difficult to do so if they don't find ways to further modernize themselves and attract new young viewers. So far, there has been a nice balance between the screen time given in both AMC and OLTL to grown-up characters and the younger generation, though I have to think the kids might claim a little more space as they progress, if only because younger people are more prone to watch television online. Then again, these may be just the shows to compel certain older people to finally explore new technology.

This column continues over at MediaPost.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2999023 2013-04-02T15:16:01-04:00 2013-04-02T15:16:08-04:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ General Hospital. Given all the excitement surrounding this event, it is somewhat sobering to note that just last year the network seemed ready to cancel this still-vital series. Had either The Revolution or Good Afternoon, America succeeded, it is entirely possible that GH would have been unceremoniously terminated before reaching its history making golden anniversary.

Happily, GH survived a real-life cliffhanger that rivals those of classic serials on the radio and at the movies, not to mention primetime and daytime soap operas themselves, and now here we are, marking a significant broadcast accomplishment at a time when significant broadcast accomplishments are increasingly few and far between. Further, GH is celebrating this milestone just four weeks before All My Children and One Life to Live, the two long-running soaps ABC dumped in September 2011 and January 2012, respectively, are poised to be reborn as daily Web serials from The Online Network (available on Hulu, Hulu Plus and iTunes). If they succeed, broadcast will have lost claim to the one programming genre that it could still call its own.

Later in 2013 I'll be marking an anniversary of my own. It will be 35 years since I began watching GH. That was in 1978, several years before the arrival of the VCR. Like millions of similarly impressed young people at the time I somehow managed to adjust my schedule and visit the fictional town of Port Charles, New York several days a week without benefit of a recording device. I've stayed with the show through good times and bad, almost bailing on it during the last decade, when it became a poorly written mob drama that favored murder and gun violence over romance and escapist adventure. Happily, the mob mess seems finally to have been put to rest.

Hundreds of features about GH will likely appear this week across all media platforms. I'd like to mark the occasion by telling a simple story that illustrates not only my relationship to the show but the amazing connection it had with the television audience long before that audience was connected via the Internet and social media. It's also a reminder of the singular power and influence broadcast television had before cable spread across the landscape.

It was Memorial Day of 1980, about two years after I began watching GH, when I first realized how outrageously popular the show had become. The previous Friday's episode had ended with a cliffhanger that many long-time GH fans still consider the show's best ever: Tracy Quartermaine (played by Jane Elliott, who is still with the show and still commands the screen whenever she is on) had been arguing with her father, millionaire business tycoon Edward Quartermaine, who had seen fit to cut her out of his will. As their argument escalated, Edward suddenly grabbed his chest and collapsed, gasping for breath and begging Tracy for his heart medication. Tracy refused to help him unless he promised not to sign his new will. As the episode ended Edward lay on the floor, apparently dying, as Tracy gazed out of her penthouse doors, hauntingly telling her father that it was a "beautiful night."

This column continues here.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2769361 2013-02-28T13:16:15-05:00 2013-04-30T05:12:01-04:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ General Hospital. I'll be marking my 35th anniversary as a steady GH viewer just a couple of months after that. One year ago, I was almost certain that neither anniversary would come to pass, what with the show in a death spiral after more than ten years of dreadful mob-based stories that had gutted virtually everything that had once been wonderful about it and turned it into a bargain basement version of The Sopranos. Not to mention grievous mismanagement on the part of ABC Daytime, which had seen fit to cancel the network's two other signature soap operas and seemed to be gunning for GH, as well. And while it was sad to see the somewhat played out All My Children go, and distressing to see the still very vital One Life to Live die, it was damn near impossible to muster up any true outrage over the seemingly inevitable end of GH because it had been so terrible for so long.

If you had told me in early 2012 that one year later I would once again be relishing GH the way I did in the '70s and '80s, and for much of the '90s, I might have suggested that you were in need of a long rest. Like millions of other people, I was certain GH was a goner, and I wasn't all that conflicted about it, since in many ways it had been dead for quite some time.

But in the last 12 months, with GH having been in the very capable hands of executive producer Frank Valentini and head writer Ron Carlivati -- the two people who were largely responsible for One Life to Live being as much fun as it was during its final years on ABC -- something borderline miraculous has happened: It is once again pulsing with dramatic, romantic and sometimes humorous stories about the people who work at the title institution. Their families and friends, many of whom are caught up in adventures involving larger-than-life villains, the likes of which were once a staple on the show. Refreshingly, there hasn't been a mob-based story in months.

Much of the excitement surrounding GH at the moment has to do with the bumper crop of veteran characters that Valentini and Carlivati have brought back to the show. Almost always in grand fashion, and never with the complete disregard for the history of legacy characters shown by previous production regimes, not to mention disrespect for viewers who had invested years in their past stories. The cavalcade of returning fan favorites in advance of the show's 50th anniversary celebration has been glorious to see. A.J. Quartermaine has returned, undoing the corrosive impact of a particularly wretched story six years ago that seemed to end with his death, and thrusting the long-sidelined Q family back into the spotlight. Felicia Jones is back, reunited with her former boyfriend Mac Scorpio and her troubled daughter, Maxie. Her secret agent ex-husband Frisco Jones is back as well, awkwardly attempting to reconnect with his ex-wife and daughter after shutting them out for almost 20 years. Duke Lavery is back from the dead (he was actually in a Turkish prison) and after a false start, courtesy of the veteran super-villain Cesar Faison, he is trying to rekindle his relationship with former super-spy Anna Devane. (The Faison fondue face-melt was an instant classic moment, the likes of which this show hasn't delivered in decades.)

There have been appearances by Robert Scorpio, Holly Sutton, Noah Drake, Kevin Collins and Skye Quartermaine. The returns of Bobbie Spencer and Audrey Hardy are right around the corner, hopefully with Lesley Webber in tow. Murderous '80s super-loon Heather Webber is now an integral part of the narrative, as is long-time vamp, Lucy Coe. Even the long-absent Laura Spencer has returned to town -- with new fiancé Scotty Baldwin (her first husband). She was, in fact, reunited with ex-husband Luke outside the ship-turned-floating-nightclub, the Haunted Star, which they once owned. (The actors who play Luke and Laura, Anthony Geary and Genie Francis, have lost none of the chemistry that made them pop-culture superstars more than three decades ago. Interestingly, Ms. Francis and Kin Shriner, the actor who has played Scotty off-and-on since the '70s, have still got "it," as well.)

The show is suddenly loaded with fresh details from past storylines that may be a bit jarring to newer viewers but have long-time fans smiling from ear to ear, like the Pickle-Lila relish with which the late Lila Quartermaine once saved the fading fortunes of ELQ, and the Ice Princess diamond that brought the Cassadine family onto the canvas and kicked off the legendary story about a weather machine that caused a blizzard to cripple Port Charles in the summer of 1981. If Luke and Laura pay a visit to Beecher's Corners or run into Hutch, the Hit Man, the old-timers and their aging-fan base just might expire from nostalgia overload.

Even as they have thoroughly revitalized it, Valentini and Carlivati have skillfully used GH to keep alive their previous series, One Life to Live, having brought three characters (Todd Manning, John McBain and Starr Manning) from it to GH on a full-time basis and three others (Cole Thornhart, Blair Cramer and Tea Delgado) in limited capacities. With the exception of Cole, who came and went in two episodes before he was "killed," they have all brought a great deal to what has been their new home, all the while keeping other OLTL characters alive through conversations they have with each other and the new people in their lives. This has been a bold experiment and a surprisingly satisfying one, though much of it is in jeopardy now that Prospect Park has finally reactivated OLTL (along with AMC) as an online series and is staking claim to its characters. (Prospect Park has suggested in a statement that it will agree to share the Todd, John and Starr characters with GH as scheduling permits.)

As if fixing past mistakes and making essential corrections to GH and keeping OLTL alive aren't challenges enough, Valentini and Carlivati have also taken it upon themselves to address the madness that surrounded the 1997-2003 GH spin-off Port Charles. An epic fail of a show that in its later years added vampires and other supernatural entities to its canvas in a desperate attempt to attract new viewers, only to drive away the few it had left. Caleb Morley, the villainous vampire on that series, has resurfaced on GH, and because he was played by Michael Easton, the same actor who played Det. John McBain on OLTL and has continued the role on GH. The writers are having a field day with the old mistaken-identity-thing. It looks as if Caleb will be exposed as a serial killer who made his past crimes look like the work of a vampire, but I'm not sure how Valentini and Carlivati will explain away the near-insanity of Lucy Coe as a manic vampire slayer, or Sam McCall's resemblance to Caleb's lost love Livvie Locke (both played by Kelly Monaco), or the death of Scott Baldwin's daughter Karen in some kind of supernatural scenario ten years ago.

For all the wonderful surprises they have brought to the show, and despite having once again made it an essential five-day-week viewing experience, not everything Valentini and Carlivati have done has been worth shouting about. For example, consider the strange story of Maxie Jones, which so far hasn't worked on any level. Maxie was a surrogate for her friends Lulu and Dante, but lost their baby on New Year's Eve, and then in her grief had sex just a few hours after her miscarriage with her ex-boyfriend Damian Spinelli. Now she's pregnant again and trying to pass off her pregnancy as the one initiated for Dante and Lulu, ostensibly to keep everyone happy, including Spinelli, who is deeply in love with another woman. But she's setting Dante and Lulu up for massive heartbreak down the road once the medical history of the baby's parents inevitably comes into play, and she's preventing sweet Spinelli from experiencing the joys of impending fatherhood. She was being blackmailed by the evil Dr. Britt Westbourne (so far a very poorly developed character), who threatened to expose her secret if Maxie didn't do her bidding, which involved destroying the career of innocent young nurse Sabrina Santiago, but the visiting Frisco put a stop to that. Nothing about this story has been all that interesting or entertaining.

And speaking of stories that don't feel quite right, I can't help but wonder why there has been no mention of the late Edward Quartermaine's illegitimate son Jimmy Lee Holt in the ongoing drama over Edward's estate. Jimmy Lee was a big part of Edward's life, for a while, anyway. This oversight doesn't wash with the show's sudden rich respect for its history. I keep waiting for Monica Quartermaine to ask, "What about Jimmy Lee?" After all, he had a torrid affair with her cousin, Lorena Sharpe.

I also think killing off Kate/Connie's son Trey was a mistake, as there was a lot of story to play there with his mentally ill mother and her boyfriend Sonny.

Still, these are relatively minor quibbles given the big fun that GH now provides almost every day of the week. I'm already wondering what Valentini and Carlivati will do with it once they wrap up the sweeping stories of the Nurses Ball and the return of Caleb Morley. I'm hoping they might continue to work their magic at reviving past characters and repairing the damage done to them by previous writing teams. As I have mentioned before, I would like to see them bring Emily Quartermaine and Georgie Jones back from the beyond, mainly because the serial killer storyline in which these once important characters were killed off was so bloody pointless. (Emily is a no-brainer, as she briefly returned in the form of Rebecca, an unconvincing long-lost twin nobody knew she had. Georgie might take a little more work.) Having Alan Quartermaine also return from the dead might be too much to ask for, but at least we have occasional visits from his spirit or ghost to remind us of how much he brought to the show (and how much the show lost when he left). And I would be thrilled if they could somehow correct the legendary Rick Webber mess from 2002, a storyline that left long-term viewers muttering, "WTF"?

Just thinking about everything that has happened on GH in recent months, and everything yet to come as its special anniversary storylines play out, is enough to make one's head spin. I'm not sure what anyone who has come to the show during the last ten years might make of the tsunami of nostalgia currently washing over it, but those of us who have been around for the long haul can only be delighted. There is literally something for anyone who has watched GH during any of the last five decades, not to mention fans of OLTL and Port Charles. Talk about a long tail. GH today is the finest example of something that only broadcast television can do -- that is, tell a story that lasts for 50 years and yet feels like it's just getting started.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2724297 2013-02-20T11:17:38-05:00 2013-04-22T05:12:01-04:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/
For example, NBC's consistent ratings decline in this New Year makes it increasingly clear that people don't watch television networks. Rather, they watch television shows! Take away Sunday Night Football, multiple weekly editions of The Voice, hot freshman adventure Revolution and the critically acclaimed Parenthood and the most exciting story of the 2012-13 season -- NBC's meteoric rise from worst to first among the most desirable demographic groups -- is suddenly over. All at once there is very little to watch on NBC and even less to write about. Late March -- when The Voice and Revolution return -- can't come soon enough.

The disastrous debut and quick cancellation of NBC's Do No Harm -- arguably one of the most idiotic ideas ever for a drama series with amateurish execution to match -- didn't help matters. Can we please stop with shows about men with multiple personalities/identities/lives? The collapse of the political family comedy 1600 Penn came as no surprise, either, as it was brimming with the kind of humor writers write to entertain other writers in writers' rooms, seemingly without any thought as to whether it will appeal to anybody outside those four walls.

Similarly, NBC's glossy mystery soap Deception is also a disappointment, even if its concept did sound tantalizing. There is an audience for this genre when it's done well, as we saw last season with ABC's freshman sensation Revenge and even with the premiere of Deception, which garnered respectable ratings. But that audience bolts when such shows don't live up to expectations, as we have seen this season with ABC's sophomore stiff Revenge and subsequent episodes of Deception, which have been duller by the week.

On a related note, we're seeing firsthand the difference that dedicated writers and producers who truly understand and appreciate soap operas can make in the deteriorating world of daytime drama. This was a genre that was the broadcasters' to lose, and in recent years they have done so with awe-inspiring aplomb, not to mention a profound lack of respect for what had been the last remaining program category that the networks could truly call their own. (Now, with Prospect Park finally getting around to producing new online episodes of former ABC Daytime foundation series All My Children and One Life to Live, we will soon see if the broadcast networks have willingly sacrificed that distinction, as well.) With new and improved executive producers and head writers assigned to each, CBS' The Young and the Restless, NBC"s Days of Our Lives and especially ABC's General Hospital are suddenly better than they have been in years. That's the difference smart leadership can make.

Lately we're also being reminded of the dire condition of television news. Just consider the outsize focus by broadcast and cable news programs alike last week on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) taking a sip of water during his presentation of the GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union address. Yes, the water should have been placed within Rubio's easy reach. And yes, it should have been a glass of water, rather than a bottle of Poland Spring, which last week unexpectedly enjoyed massive publicity through happenstance product placement. (These gaffs are squarely the fault of Rubio's support staff. Apparently good help is as hard to find in the nation's capital as it is everywhere else.) But watching supposedly serious news programs play the clip over and over, and listening to cable news anchors and other personalities babble on about it as if it meant anything at all, were somewhat sobering. When taking a sip of water makes that much news we're all in trouble.

Read the full version of this column, which includes lessons learned about American Idol and The Big Bang Theory, on the MediaPost TV Board.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2571271 2013-01-29T18:17:18-05:00 2013-03-31T05:12:01-04:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ The Following is unarguably the boldest new series of the broadcast season. In many ways it is also the most problematic, but everyone involved had to know that controversy and criticism would come with such extreme material. If this show had turned out to be just more TV schlock, then it would be easy to ignore, if not condemn as many critics have been happy to do. But the acting, production values and direction that are on proud display in this project demand respect, and with that comes a deeper consideration of the program at hand. Series lead Kevin Bacon as Ryan Hardy, a tormented former FBI agent called out of miserable retirement to help thwart the plans of an especially sinister serial killer he apprehended several years earlier, must already be considered a front-runner for every major television acting award.

Let's begin by addressing the elephant in the industry: Due to truly unfortunate timing, The Following has found itself at the center of the important debate about violence in the media that came to an immediate boil after the school shootings last month in Newtown, Conn. It doesn't necessarily deserve the distinction, at least not where gun violence is concerned. I only recently watched the second, third and fourth episodes that Fox provided for advance media consideration (and I saw the pilot, which I first watched last June, for a second time on a giant screen at Fox's gala premiere for the show at the New York Public Library), and with the gruesome details of each hour still fresh in my mind, I'm comfortable saying that there is much more high-action gunplay in average episodes of numerous popular crime dramas than I have seen in the first four installments of The Following combined. I'm certainly not an expert in such matters, but it would seem that if there is a connection between fictional and real-life gun violence it likely has something to do with gunfire itself.

All that said, the show ought to be a lightning rod for those who object to the escalation of brutal violence against women in contemporary entertainment. Yes, men are killed in The Following, but the number of butchered females far outdistances that of murdered males, and the often-sickening details surrounding the killings of the women will be a turn-off to anyone who has had his or her fill of such stuff.

Many things may impress me about The Following, which I have previously cited as the best new broadcast drama of the season. But with each passing episode, it's difficult to move beyond the unrelenting misery and sadism that informs virtually every minute of this show. I admire quality as much as the next critic, but by the end of Episode 4, the horror of it all was beginning to wear me down. At this point, an awful lot of innocent people have met terrible ends, while Ryan has been tormented and tortured to a greater degree than any other character I can think of from any other television series ever, including certain losers on Lost.

This column continues here.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2397188 2013-01-02T16:48:03-05:00 2013-03-04T05:12:01-05:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ Homeland, PBS' Downton Abbey, CBS' The Good Wife, HBO's Girls and AMC's awesome trifecta, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. My own top ten list features all of those. But there are numerous other series that deserve hindsight recognition as we say goodbye to 2012 and move into the New Year. They likely didn't turn up on many (if any) best-of lists, but they still count as some of television's most noteworthy shows. Here are ten such programs, followed by a few that almost made the list.

Tosh.0: (Comedy Central) Once again, Comedy Central's uncompromisingly crude Tosh.0 stood out as TV's Funniest Show. Even after 100 episodes, host and executive producer Daniel Tosh and his crew didn't lose any of their manic enthusiasm for cobbling together the most shocking and unreservedly vulgar videos available on the Web and packaging them with more skill and entertainment savvy than is evident in any of the many similar shows on other basic cable networks. As I noted last year, the most fascinating thing about the success of this fearlessly edgy show is its popularity with children. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but from what I've seen parents really enjoy watching it with their kids. That said I have trouble referring to Tosh as a family friendly program. I just can't bring myself to locate it in the same arena as Leave It to Beaver, The Brady Bunch, The Cosby Show and other legendary examples of fine family fare.

General Hospital: (ABC) Barely escaping ABC's ruthless demolition of its widely cherished daytime drama schedule, General Hospital -- a series that had long ago become painful to watch -- was excitingly reborn under the oversight of the talented executive producer Frank Valentini and head writer Ron Carlivati, the men who made One Life to Live so vital in its final years. GH was once again big fun for anyone who appreciated the stories it told during the last three decades of the previous millennium, fueled primarily by the returns of popular characters from the '80s and a shift away from the low-grade mob drama that had so grievously compromised the show. As an added bonus, a handful of relocated characters from One Life to Live were brought on board to keep storylines from that much-missed show going, as well. (Would the arrival in Port Charles of a character or two from All My Children be too much to ask?) GH will mark its 50th anniversary in April. How wonderful that it will do so in such fine form.

The Pitch: (AMC) Boldly following in the footsteps of surgically altered housewives, desperate singles and singers of questionable talent, the executives and employees at advertising agencies put their professional strengths and weaknesses on sometimes unforgiving display for all to see. The result was the smartest, and most surprisingly, emotional, new reality series of 2012. If nothing else, The Pitch went a long way toward explaining why the number of under-performing advertising campaigns in this world far exceeds that of the truly effective. It will return later this year as one element of AMC's upcoming Thursday night reality programming block.

Face Off: (Syfy) Syfy's grandly entertaining special-effects make-up show continued to earn its place among television's best reality competition series. Just as one need not be a fashionista to enjoy Lifetime's still vital Project Runway, one need not be a fervid fan of science fiction, fantasy and horror movies to appreciate the extreme creativity on display from talented artists seeking to raise their profiles in an exceedingly competitive business.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show: (Me-TV) Seventies sensation The Mary Tyler Moore Show makes my list because the wise programmers at Me-TV early in 2012 scheduled it at 8 p.m. Monday-Friday, prompting me to watch the entire series from beginning to end for the first time in decades and fall for it all over again (with a little help from my DVR, rather than my DVDs). Mary may feel a little dated around the edges, but it holds up spectacularly well as smart, sophisticated situation comedy, and its' amazing ensemble -- Mary Tyler Moore, Ed Asner, Valerie Harper, Gavin MacLeod, Ted Knight, Cloris Leachman, Georgia Engel and Betty White -- remains one of the very best in television history. (Ms. Moore was so right when she long ago introduced them at the end of the series' finale as "the best cast ever.") After a fresh look at the show, all I can say is the first five seasons, when Mary lived in her charming studio apartment, are far superior to the final two, when the poor woman was made to live in a bland one-bedroom in an ugly high-rise. It was also better when Rhoda, Phyllis, Bess and Lars were around. And while I'm at it, let me assert that "The Lars Affair" -- the episode at the start of the series' fourth season that introduced Betty White as Happy Homemaker Sue Ann Nivens -- is funnier than the episode often designated as this show's best, "Chuckles Bites the Dust."

Watch What Happens Live (Bravo) and Talking Dead: (AMC) Two very distinctive live half-hour television shows in 2012 became giant hits with their intended audiences: Bravo's Watch What Happens Live, telecast Sunday-Thursday at 11 p.m. most weeks of the year, and AMC's Talking Dead, a Sunday-night nerdgasm that follows each new installment of The Walking Dead. WWHL, which began life in 2009 as a once or twice a week program, evolved into a five night a week treat. Credit the network's programming guru, Andy Cohen, who proved himself perhaps the smartest executive working in television by casting himself as the host of a talk show that largely promotes his own work!

WWHL rocks when its guests are Bravolebrities, but it really cooks when famous folk from outside the network like Jane Fonda, Cloris Leachman and Meryl Streep join in the fun. It's further enhanced by questions from viewers submitted via phone, e-mail or other digital means during each telecast. Meanwhile, Talking Dead, hosted by the always affable Chris Hardwick, proved to be a scary-smart idea, in large part due to its simplicity: Guests talk about the episode that has just premiered and take questions from viewers via multiple media platforms. (I wonder ... would it make sense for ABC Family to run a show like this after new episodes of its endlessly twisty phenomenon Pretty Little Liars?) Talking Dead is so popular it will expand to one hour when it returns in February.

The Glee Project: (Oxygen) Oxygen's low-budget but high-spirited talent show continued to prove more heartfelt and generate greater emotional connectivity than the big-budget Fox series to which it is tied. (Winners from The Glee Project are awarded significant guest stints on Glee that sometimes develop into recurring roles.) Blake Jenner was a fine choice, but I would have liked to see Ryan Murphy and mentors Robert Ulrich, Zach Woodlee and Nikki Anders offer the grand prize to one of the three talented female finalists -- Ali Stroker, Aylin Bayramoglu or Lily Mae Harrington -- any one of whom could have brought something fresh to the increasingly stale mother-ship.

The Fourth Hour of Today (NBC) and Access Hollywood Live: (syndicated) I think it fair to say that daytime on the Big Three was in turmoil these last few years, with sweeping changes at every network that cumulatively siphoned much of the excitement from what had long been broadcast's most vibrant day-part. Now the dust is settling, for better (ABC's Good Morning America and General Hospital, CBS' The Talk) or worse (the first three hours of NBC's Today, ABC's The Chew). But two shows have consistently stood out amid the chaos: The sparkling fourth hour of Today, featuring daytime's most dynamic duo, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, and the syndicated Access Hollywood Live, hosted by daytime's most under-appreciated pairing, Billy Bush and Kit Hoover.

Dallas: (TNT) TNT this year revived one of the most popular television series in the history of the medium more than two decades after the end of its legendary thirteen season run. Restarting old franchises is nothing new, but taking the care to ensure that they live up to and honor their pasts is something that almost never happens. (Think of The CW's abysmal and mercifully short-lived Melrose Place or its abysmal and inexcusably long-lived 90210.) The new Dallas is a fine continuation of the original that offers something for veteran fans and new viewers alike. It is especially touching that Larry Hagman was able to return to the role of dastardly businessman J.R. Ewing before his death in November. The inevitable passing of J.R. next season and the character's funeral will resonate not only with Ewing family members and friends but with the tens of millions of television viewers who made Dallas a Friday night phenomenon in the late '70s and throughout the '80s.

Fashion Police: (E!) Speaking of Friday night, who could have imagined that a night once dominated by such scripted sensations as The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Dallas, The Dukes of Hazard, Falcon Crest, Miami Vice and The X-Files would now belong to Joan Rivers? The seemingly indefatigable comedienne and her Fashion Police co-stars Giuliana Rancic, George Kotsiopoulos and Kelly Osbourne manage every week to deliver the evening's most reliably entertaining hour of television. Rivers is developing a whole new generation of fans and rightly so. She has never been funnier.

Also worth mentioning: ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars and Bunheads, FX's Archer, Lifetime's Project Runway, MTV's Teen Wolf, BBC America's The Graham Norton Show and TV Land's Hot in Cleveland.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2188064 2012-11-27T18:50:28-05:00 2013-01-27T05:12:01-05:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ the disappointing state of primetime drama on the broadcast networks, asserting that the quality of dramatic series on basic and pay cable was making it increasingly difficult to be satisfied by traditional network fare. But here's a pro-broadcast caveat: At present, the quality of the remaining daytime dramas on ABC, NBC and CBS is better than it has been in a very long time.

The early years of this decade were not good for soap operas, with one executive bungle after another continuously compromising what not so long ago had been a robust and deeply enriching genre wholly unique to broadcast television. In recent months, however, something remarkable has arisen from the ashes of that widespread destruction. Soaps are kicking it again. At the center of this creative resurgence is a show that millions of long-time viewers had all but given up for dead, ABC's General Hospital, which during the last 10 years had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former grand self. Caught in a death grip by network executives, producers and writers who seemed to care not one whit about the show's long-term viability, and who collectively chose to make murderous criminals and their supporters the "heroes" of its storylines, General Hospital had become a revolting mess. But earlier this year those show-killers were removed and executive producer Frank Valentini and head writer Ron Carlivati were brought on board to save the show, after the serial on which they had been working -- the late and very much lamented One Life to Live -- was coldly cancelled.

Seven months later, General Hospital is more fun and exciting than it has been since its glory days in the '80s -- and that's thanks in large part to Valentini's smart decision to put less emphasis on the low-rent mob drama that had choked the life out of the show and bring back many much-missed characters from decades past. In a dizzying twist, he also brought over to General Hospital a handful of characters from One Life to Live. I'll confess this didn't strike me as a smart idea at the start, even though I had been a long-time One Life to Live watcher. But the results have been unexpectedly entertaining.

If I'm being honest, not all of the storylines on General Hospital in recent months have been satisfying. A few, in fact, have been perfectly dreadful. But the show has been remarkable in every other way, giving everyone in its marvelous cast great scenes to play and serving up on an almost daily basis something for viewers from any of the last five decades, not to mention displaced fans of One Life to Live. General Hospital will mark its 50th anniversary in April -- a milestone that it almost fell short of making. How wonderful that it is doing so as the best drama on daytime television.

Meanwhile, NBC's Days of Our Lives and CBS' The Bold and the Beautiful are looking pretty good, too. Read why here.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1930838 2012-10-01T19:12:18-04:00 2012-12-01T05:12:01-05:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ The New Normal, which after four episodes has distinguished itself as the best new sitcom of the fall season. As the characters assembled around a table for dinner and began exchanging their sometimes combustible views on election year issues, I suddenly started thinking about The Draft Dodger, an episode of the comedy classic All in the Family way back in 1976 that also featured a politically super-charged dinner scene that reflected conflicting attitudes of its era.

In the New Normal episode, titled Obama Mama, David (Justin Bartha) and Bryan (Andrew Rannells), the gay couple around whom the series revolves, invited Jane (Ellen Barkin), the very conservative grandmother of Goldie (Georgia King), the woman who is serving as their surrogate, to a dinner party. This happened after a testy exchange about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney prompted David to accuse Jane of being a racist and Jane to assert that for all their talk about diversity David and Bryan have no black friends.

"Just because I don't like a man who wants to take my hard earned money and dump it into a broken system, I'm a racist?" Jane asked. "Don't you think it's a little more racist to vote for a black man simply because he's black? What about you two? I don't imagine you're lighting candles on Kwanzaa! Couple of hypocrites, like every other liberal. You walk the walk but you can't talk the talk."

There has been a lot of talk lately about how a show as frank and controversial as All in the Family could never get on the air today. With dialogue as unapologetically realistic as this, I think New Normal creators Ryan Murphy and Ali Adler are out to prove people wrong.

Later in the episode, at the big dinner party, it wasn't long before liberals Bryan and David and conservative Jane were once again at each other. When another guest suggested that Jane must not think all Americans are entitled to affordable health care because she supports Romney, she replied, "If you can find affordable health care, more power to you. I just don't want the federal government making decisions that are my choice to make."

"Obama's plan may not have been perfect but at least he tried coming up with a fix," David offered.

"Yeah, by making me pay every time some illegal sprains his ankle jumping the border," Jane growled. "Your whole system is broke, and your Obama just wants to keep dumping more money into it. It's like giving penicillin to a Kardashian! Too little, too late."

Jane went on to defend the importance of personal responsibility, revealing that twenty five years earlier she stopped her own daughter from having an abortion when she was pregnant with Goldie by taking away her right to choose. It may have been the most impactful dialogue about abortion in a primetime comedy since Maude Findlay agonized over terminating her middle-age pregnancy in a 1972 episode of Maude, a spin-off from All in the Family.

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Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ Damages, the consistently chilling legal thriller starring Glenn Close as ruthless attorney Patty Hewes that began life in 2007 on FX, where it ran for three seasons before moving over to DirecTV for its final two.

I'll always think of Damages in the same company as the many other broadcast and basic cable series that made the first 10 years of this new millennium a remarkable time for advertiser-supported dramatic television. The other standouts during that time included NBC's The West Wing (which actually began in September 1999), ABC's Lost, CBS' The Good Wife, Fox's 24 and House, Friday Night Lights (which also migrated from its original home, on NBC, to DirecTV, where it ran for three seasons), FX's The Shield and Sons of Anarchy, AMC's Mad Men and Breaking Bad, TNT's The Closer and Syfy's Battlestar Galactica. Several have continued into the current decade, but many of them are gone, and others have end dates in sight. Regardless, they all blossomed during a time that ought to be remembered as one of the most extraordinary in television history. A few new gems (FX's Justified and AMC's The Walking Dead among them) have come along since then, yet I can't help but wonder: Will the decade we're in ultimately produce as much extraordinary drama as the one just passed, a ten-year period whose television output becomes even more humbling when one factors in such pay-cable accomplishments as Showtime's Dexter and HBO's The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Wire?

Damages did much to support my hindsight appreciation of TV drama in recent years. Powered by a narrative dynamic that often played with chronological exposition, it was an uncommonly complex and challenging show. There is no underestimating its impact, alone or in tandem with other sophisticated scripted fare. In fact, I cannot recall another development that did more to establish the aughts as a new golden age of television drama than the decision by an actress of Glenn Close's stature to star in a weekly dramatic series.

Close's move to series television in 2007 signaled more than a pop-cultural shift in smart entertainment away from the multiplex and onto smaller screens. It was also a key factor in the mid-decade popularity of mature women in leading series roles.

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Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a spin-off from the network's Toddlers & Tiaras centered on one of that show's more memorable pageant princesses -- has since it appeared out of the heat and humidity three weeks ago become one of the most talked about series on television. No surprise there -- it's a perfect train-wreck diversion at the end of a punishing summer of record-breaking heat, roaring wildfires and increasingly nasty political confrontations. What's more, even with its pig pooping, mud flopping and armpit farting, it may be one of the most culturally significant entertainment programs of our tumultuous times, if only because it's about how certain people get by without mounds of money.

I may be exaggerating a bit, but there are things about Boo Boo that are worth calling attention to. It's just too easy to dismiss this series because it showcases a lifestyle that makes millions of people uneasy or to accuse it of advancing certain regional stereotypes. Unless one happens to live that lifestyle, which many people might locate under the general heading of "redneck," the everyday antics of 6-year-old Southern beauty pageant fixture Alana Thompson and her family and friends in McIntyre, Ga. (population approximately 700) can appear utterly foreign.

But there is something of value beyond that first blush: Alana's mother, June Shannon, and her father, Mike "Sugar Bear" Thompson, an unmarried couple, are clearly devoted to Alana and her three half-sisters (from other fathers) and are doing the best they are equipped to do (within the limited parameters of their own life experiences) to provide them with a loving home life and to teach them right from wrong. They may eat too much junk food and use atrocious grammar, but the four girls are not spoiled, they are made to take responsibility for their actions (June even takes away their pet pig when they fail to take proper care of it), and they are constantly engaged in family activities, whether it's a day at the local spa for mom and the girls (yes, there is a spa in McIntyre) or an afternoon at the local Redneck Games, happily described by June as "similar to the Olympics, but with a lot of missing teeth and a lot of butt cracks showin'."

Boo Boo ostensibly revolves around the perilously precocious Alana, but whether by design or default mama June steals the show, and while many viewers will likely recoil at her outlandish quirks, it's worth nothing that she seems to sincerely like herself exactly as she is. Yes, she ought to drop some weight for health reasons, but it is nevertheless somewhat refreshing to watch someone so perfectly at peace with herself go about her business.

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Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ Katie, the nationally syndicated live daily talk show starring Katie Couric. This program is hugely important to ABC, the daytime identity of which remains in dire need of exciting new blood after the departures of syndication superstars Regis Philbin and Oprah Winfrey; the cancellations of long-running soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live; the lukewarm response to The Chew, the bland cooking show that replaced AMC, and the embarrassing failure of The Revolution, the ill-formed show that replaced the vital and popular OLTL.

Can Katie save the day, or is ABC's daytime lineup -- once the most robust at any network -- doomed to a future of mediocrity? I have no doubt that Couric and her co-executive producer, former NBC Universal chairman and Today executive producer Jeff Zucker, will deliver a lively hour of daily afternoon television, or that the two are up to the task, given their past experiences. The questions are, can Katie draw a large female audience to ABC in mid-afternoon, and will the demographic and economic profile of that audience be satisfying enough to make the show a true success?

Interestingly, some of the strongest support for Katie could be the lead-in provided by General Hospital, the show ABC once hoped to kill off to make room for Couric, but which will now move ahead one hour to become its all-important lead-in. (The afternoon lineup that ABC hoped most of its stations would eventually have in place when it started making a royal mess of things was The Chew, The Revolution and Katie.) GH has some renewed traction right now, thanks largely to the talents of new executive producer Frank Valentini, who was skillfully making One Life to Live more entertaining and higher-rated than it had been in years when ABC decided to end it.

General Hospital has always been very popular with women, perhaps less so during the last decade when it became unrelentingly dark and misogynistic, but not to the extent that the damage cannot be undone, as Valentini is currently proving. So if the creative team at GH can effectively shift focus away from the male mobsters that have long dominated the show and onto the many adult women on its canvas, and tell stories centered on romance and family rather than madness and mob hits, it might just draw in more of the very viewers who are predisposed to stick around for Couric. (If younger GH viewers stick around as well, that's even better.)

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Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ Twilight series, there didn't seem to be a single movie event here that made a significant impact with the crowd of approximately 125,000 genre fans that had gathered in the city's historic Gaslamp district for this annual outsized onslaught of panels, premieres and other media events devoted to television series, movies, comic books, video games, Internet content and licensed characters of all kinds.

Instead, television ruled inside the convention center and out, so much so that a casual observer might have mistaken this multimedia extravaganza for a massive TV convention. For example, in the past buildings in the area were typically draped with eye-catching campaigns for big-budget movie releases, but this year striking images for NBC's new fall science-fiction adventure series Revolution and Syfy's upcoming scripted television drama and massively multi-player online gaming hybrid Defiance covered the two high-rise hotels that bracket the convention center, the Hilton and the Marriott, respectively.

Directly across the street from the entrance to the center, in a prime location that almost all convention goers must pass through every time they walk to or from it, NBC had a large display for Revolution and an even bigger attraction promoting its returning horror series Grimm. At the center of the Grimm attraction was the trailer that is home to one of the characters on the series. Throughout the Con there was always a line of fans waiting to walk through it and have something creepy done to them while inside. (A sign outside invited visitors "Grimm Your Skin" while inside the trailer.)

In back of the convention center, anchored at one of the expansive docks in the San Diego harbor, was the TV Guide Magazine yacht, which at any given moment Thursday, Friday and Saturday was bustling with visiting stars from current and upcoming television series. This was only the second year for this unique TV Guide effort, but it was clear that television personalities required very little coaxing to take a break from the bustle of panels, press conferences and other promotional demands and instead relax in what was commonly described as a floating lounge.

This column continues over at MediaPost.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1664502 2012-07-12T17:32:12-04:00 2012-09-11T05:12:10-04:00

Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/
As always, the shows and actors named here represent one man's opinion. If you think there are any glaring omissions, please make them known in the comments section.

Outstanding Drama Series: AMC's Breaking Bad, PBS' Downton Abbey, CBS's The Good Wife, Showtime's Homeland, FX's Justified, AMC's Mad Men.

Also worth consideration: HBO's Boardwalk Empire, HBO's Game of Thrones, FX's Sons of Anarchy, TNT's Southland.

My personal choice in this category would be Breaking Bad, a series as dark and unsparing as any ever produced for American television and an extraordinary showcase for some of the finest acting in the medium. But a fifth consecutive win for Mad Men would be perfectly fine, as well. Many critics thought Men slipped a bit in its fifth season; my only complaint was that we didn't get enough of the former Betty Draper, one of the most consistently fascinating characters on television, and also one of the truest.

One might say that Downton Abbey deserves the top honor because it was a genuine phenomenon that brought millions of viewers to PBS and introduced a new generation of young people to period drama. (One might also assert that Abbey is a miniseries rather than an ongoing series, and thus does not belong in this category, but such decisions are out of our hands.) Many people will complain about my decision to exclude Game of Thrones from my primary contenders, but that's only because season two wasn't as focused as season one. Similarly, it can be argued that Sons of Anarchy had its strongest season yet and may be more deserving of a nomination than Justified, but I just can't bring myself to make that switch. I'll be good with their decision if Academy members do.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series: Steve Buscemi, HBO's Boardwalk Empire; Bryan Cranston, AMC's Breaking Bad; Kelsey Grammer, Starz' Boss; Jon Hamm, AMC's Mad Men; Damian Lewis, Showtime's Homeland; Timothy Olyphant, FX's Justified.

Also worth consideration: Michael C. Hall, Showtime's Dexter; Dustin Hoffman, HBO's Luck; Charlie Hunnam, FX's Sons of Anarchy; Hugh Laurie, Fox's House; Matt Smith, BBC America's Doctor Who.

Bryan Cranston already has three Emmys for his fascinating portrayal of terminally ill chemistry teacher turned drug lord Walter White. There is no reason to believe he won't collect a fourth this year, unless the Academy chooses to honor Kelsey Grammer for taking on a pay-cable role that is so all-consuming it actually overrides memories of his iconic portrayal of the pompous Dr. Frasier Crane on two classic broadcast comedies.

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series: Glenn Close, DirecTV's Damages; Claire Danes, Showtime's Homeland; Julianna Margulies, CBS's The Good Wife; Elisabeth Moss, AMC's Mad Men; Katey Sagal, FX's Sons of Anarchy; Kyra Sedgwick, TNT's The Closer.

Also worth consideration: Kathy Bates, NBC's Harry's Law; Michelle Dockery, PBS' Downton Abbey; Mireille Enos, AMC's Mad Men; Emmy Rossum, Showtime's Shameless.

This is one of those circumstances in which no discussion is necessary. Every one of these women was simply extraordinary, including those who didn't make my primary list, but Claire Danes will be nominated and she will win. (P.S. I believe Danes' primary competitor next year in this category will be Chloe Sevigny of DirecTV's profoundly engrossing drama about a transgender killer for hire, Hit & Miss.)

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Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/
The network at the forefront of what could become just such a shift for soaps is Nick at Nite, which two weeks ago premiered a one-hour weeknight serial titled Hollywood Heights. Based on a Mexican telenovela titled Alcanzar una Estrella, Heights will play out until sometime in October with a total of eighty episodes.

Now, eighty episodes is a long way from the approximately 250 per year that are produced for network soaps, but it's a good deal more than the episode order for the dominant teen- and young-adult targeted primetime serials that are hot at the moment, including ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars and The Secret Life of the American Teenager and MTV's monstrously good Teen Wolf (which in its second season has become the most entertaining drama with werewolves on television). Amazingly, despite the demands of so much larger an episode order, Heights is as well-produced and professionally packaged as those shows. The credit for this efficient excellence goes to executive producer Jill Farren Phelps, a broadcast soap veteran whose most recent credit is a ten-year run on General Hospital, and head writer Josh Griffith, an alumnus of the late and lamented One Life to Live. They are both doing terrific work here as they blaze what may be a new trail of daily soap storytelling in the creatively fertile world of basic cable.

To date, Heights has revolved around a pretty young high school student with a crush on a successful rock star. It is no secret to anyone familiar with Alcanzar una Estrella that over time she will break into the music business herself and become involved in a rocky romance with the current object of her affections. That's about as basic and sturdy a foundation for a soap opera as any other: girl likes boy she thinks she can't have, boy takes an interest in girl, girl and boy become a star-crossed couple, romance and heartbreak ensue. During the glory days of afternoon soaps -- that would be the late '70s and the '80s -- that simple narrative structure was a proven formula for unprecedented success, no matter how outrageous or outlandish the over-arching plot lines. A good love story laced with occasional pleasing pay-offs was all it took to keep millions of viewers enthralled -- that and a back drop of multi-generational family drama, something that has been all but eradicated from network soap operas, but which has been carefully constructed in Hollywood Heights. This might be a series which focuses on the trials, tribulations and triumphs of kids and young adults, but their parents and other grown-ups are very much a part of the action.

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Ed Martin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/ Dallas on June 13 just might be the most exciting television event of the year.

That may sound like an exaggeration, but consider the context: The original Dallas, which ran on CBS from 1978-1991, remains one of the most popular and powerful television series of all time. In terms of overall impact, not to mention audience size, there hasn't really been a series like it since. Subsequent television sensations such as Seinfeld, Friends, The West Wing, The Sopranos and Lost may have been pop culture phenomena of the highest order, but they didn't permeate the zeitgeist in the way that Dallas did during the '80s -- and on Friday nights, no less! Everybody watched this show -- or knew someone who did. The resolution of the legendary "Who Shot J.R." cliffhanger, on November 21, 1980, remains the second-highest-rated episode of a television series in history, topped only by the series finale of M*A*S*H on February 28, 1983.

Given the outsized success CBS enjoyed for so long with this formidable franchise, which included two reunion movies in the '90s, one might think it would be the natural home for the new Dallas, which is not a remake or a reboot but an actual continuation of the original show, picking up the lives of the oil-rich Ewings in the present day. But as much fun as it might have been to once again have it back on Friday on the only broadcast network that currently knows how to attract an audience on that night, Dallas will instead be on TNT on Wednesdays as a mid-week treat. (How interesting that it could only come back on basic cable. And yet how fitting, given the proud state of basic cable these days.)

I can't say that I had been pining for the Ewings during the last twenty years or that I missed the ongoing war for Ewing Oil all that much. But five minutes into the first episode I was happily hooked all over again. That has a lot to do with the very smart decision to use Jerrold Immel's iconic theme song -- one of the most distinctive in television history -- and an opening credit sequence that excitingly evokes the original. (I can't help but think that the broadcast programming executives who have insisted on compromising TV theme songs and opening credit sequences during the last 20 years have done much to erode the emotional connection network programs used to establish with their viewers.)

This column continues over at MediaPost.]]>