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Must-Tweet TV: The Twitter Reality Shows We'd Actually Watch
So apparently, the news that Twitter has signed up with a production company to make a competitive television show is not true. In truth, Twitter has made agreements with a whole bunch of production companies, and not just one, and there are probably more shows in the works that they don't even know about yet. While the stalker-sounding "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities" format could be a winner, we came up with a few more Twitter-based game shows that we think would do gangbusters.
TAGS: game shows, Twitter
Perhaps I'm being hasty, but the online teaser videos that Pretty Boring Station has been rolling out to promote its multi-part special Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, premiering this Wednesday at 8 PM, bodes pretty well. Of course, as you'll learn from this informative video hosted by my favorite little comedy magpie Amy Sedaris, the internet is a lot quicker and dirtier than conventional media, so it may well be that these hip little clips end up being vastly more entertaining than the TV shows proper. 
You know an underground trend has reached critical mass when the dude who brought us The OC starts adopting it. Hence, we give you the news that OC and Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz will be dunking his toe into the webisode waters with a new venture titled Rockville, CA. The slew of four-minute shows mines Schwartz's own painfully hipster-y past as a club-hopping indie rock enthusiast who used to frequent the venues of Echo Park (that's in Los Angeles for all you non-hipsters!) in search of the soundtracks to his youth culture-savvy shows. Or something.
In the wee hours of this morning, the first in a series of webisodes introducing Jimmy Fallon as the host of The Late Show premiered. And from what I can tell, it's exactly what you'd expect. In the super-short debut clip I watched (so that you don't have to) Fallon didn't really do much in the way of offering a true taste of what the show will be like. He was too busy waxing poetic about all the great late night hosts that preceded him on the hallowed sound stage of Studio 6B and teaching people how the internet is interactive and twitching like he likes to do. Oh, and proclaiming that The Roots is the best band in the history of the world. So ... too early to tell is my point. Not offensively odious, not astoundingly brilliant. Fascinating, I know.Meanwhile, if you want to brave it yourself (it is only a minute and thirty-six seconds), tell me what you think. Is it a disgrace to the venerable institution of late-night TV? Just so-so? Or does it make you psyched for when the real show makes its debut?
Not to be crass or anything but I think I speak for legions when I ask: just whose you-know-what is Denise Richards you-know-whating these days? That's got to be the only logical explanation for how in the name of all that's slutty her poo-smelling reality show It's Complicated got renewed for another mind-numbing season. Let's review the highlights of the first scintillating season, shall we? In one episode, Denise decides to breed her potbellied pig. In another, she calls a reporter the c-word in the course of addressing tabloid rumors from about a year ago that people have since stopped caring about (and ceased to care about before they even knew about them). And let's not forget the heartwarming episode where she gets her poor sap of a dad a spray tan and man-scape and drags him to some red carpet affair. And the one where she tries to stop swearing! I mean the action is just non-stop here, folks!
Of course, one always says that, and it's almost never true. But in the aftermath of the compromised, comparatively short, intermittently surprising 2008 Oscar telecast, there were a few things floating about the internet that I thought might be of interest.
1. Miley Cyrus didn't trip on her heels! And Colin Farrell wasn't drunk (or if he was, it wasn't why he slipped on the way to the podium), and John Travolta wasn't pulled downward by the weight of his own irrelevance. All of them slipped on some kind of silicon spray used by stagehands. I'm just going to pretend they use Pam, because that's funnier.
2. Did you notice that Brad Renfro wasn't in the "In Memoriam" montage last night? I confess that I totally didn't, because I was waiting for whatever beautiful shot of Heath Ledger they picked from Brokeback Mountain. Anyway, apparently Renfro was left out on purpose. Cold.
3. You know the conventional wisdom that David Letterman has never hosted the Oscars since that one time, in 1995, because he stank up the joint -- conventional wisdom, by the way, that I never credited because I thought he was hilarious? According to Nikki Finke, it's not true: she says the AMPAS asks him back every year but he always says no. Aw, Dave.
4. Finally: you've read all the red-carpet commentary from people who actually know about fashion. Now, read BestWeekEver.tv's Red Carpet Recap Written By A Straight Dude.
1. Miley Cyrus didn't trip on her heels! And Colin Farrell wasn't drunk (or if he was, it wasn't why he slipped on the way to the podium), and John Travolta wasn't pulled downward by the weight of his own irrelevance. All of them slipped on some kind of silicon spray used by stagehands. I'm just going to pretend they use Pam, because that's funnier.
2. Did you notice that Brad Renfro wasn't in the "In Memoriam" montage last night? I confess that I totally didn't, because I was waiting for whatever beautiful shot of Heath Ledger they picked from Brokeback Mountain. Anyway, apparently Renfro was left out on purpose. Cold.
3. You know the conventional wisdom that David Letterman has never hosted the Oscars since that one time, in 1995, because he stank up the joint -- conventional wisdom, by the way, that I never credited because I thought he was hilarious? According to Nikki Finke, it's not true: she says the AMPAS asks him back every year but he always says no. Aw, Dave.
4. Finally: you've read all the red-carpet commentary from people who actually know about fashion. Now, read BestWeekEver.tv's Red Carpet Recap Written By A Straight Dude.
If you live outside New York (or just don't read New York magazine), you probably haven't been following the ongoing analysis of Jay Leno's Tonight Show performance during the WGA strike. First, Sam Anderson wrote (essentially) that his monologues weren't much affected by the loss of his writers because they weren't so hot to begin with. Then the Vulture blog did a detailed breakdown of Leno's last scab monologue. Finally, there was a brief post-mortem this morning on the first monologue involving the Guild. Thank God so many dedicated New York-ers are watching this -- for science -- because I certainly couldn't do it.
TAGS: jay leno, the tonight show
Happy Valentine's Day! How are you going to celebrate? Dinner? Dancing? Throwing a Molotov cocktail through the windows of as many Hallmark stores as you can find? Many performers around the world will be participating in productions The Vagina Monologues as part of V-Day, playwright Eve Ensler's ongoing project to end violence against women and girls. But only one of them interrupted millions of Americans' pleasant mornings by totally saying the C-word (yes, that one) on Today this morning. Way to go, Jane Fonda! (I assume it goes without saying that the clip may not be safe for work...depending on where you work.) Also, if any Today producers are reading this: there's no such thing as a "playwrite."
A nation was enthralled last week by the scrap that spanned A Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Late Night With Conan O'Brien (culminating on O'Brien's show, here). And with a dearth of new material as the WGA strike winds down, Late Night has posted some great behind-the-scenes outtakes. I have to say, I loved the brawl; my favourite thing is when Colbert or O'Brien gets to do a field piece and goof off because they're both so hammy. Stewart is always kind of too cool for school, but he did his best with this thing. (Link via EW Popwatch.)
Sarah and I have a complex relationship with old Dr. P. Because we enjoy judging strangers, we like it when he rakes his guests over the coals. We are less fond of his Christian-y insistence on trying to save every marriage (y'all, some people just need to get divorced), and his hoary generalizations about what men and women are like. Over the years, too, the show has gotten a lot less must-see; there's the whole "Dr. Phil Now" thing he does where he responds to the news, and the Dr. Phil house, and other gimmicky shit. Also, the increasing participation of Mrs. Phil is not something I signed off on. And this latest business with Britney hasn't covered him with glory.
TAGS: dr. phil
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