The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #193
 

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The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #193

Carrie and AlI apologize because it's taken a long while to write a new blog post! I've just been so busy.

I'm going to take this time to complain about major changes they make in shows, especially when the shows are not doing well in the ratings or when they move to another network.  The most recent example is a show I used to enjoy, "Unforgettable." It used to be on CBS, but for the 4th season, it's now on A&E.  CBS never really treated theDallas Roberts as Elliot show well. They kept moving it around and bringing it back at odd times of the year. For instance, in the second season, it began in July, ran until September, and then didn't air again until April.  After finishing season 2 in May, they brought it back for season 3 in June! It was very confusing.

After the first season, they moved the three top characters (Carrie, Al, and Jo) from Queens homicide over to Major Crimes in Manhattan. That was quite a drastic change. Honestly, I didn't like it. Not that the other characters were all that interesting, but I thought the move was unrealistic, and I really didn't like the new characters very much. I liked Elliot, but not the other new people. Eventually, I did get used to them, too.

I really liked the 2nd and 3rd seasons, even though the show was uneven. Now it's on A&E for the 4th Jane Curtin as Jo(and probably last) season. They changed it again! Jo (Jane Curtin) is gone, and that has kind of ruined the show. She was one of the best parts of it because she was a very oddball character, but likable.  I've only watched the first episode of the new season, but it was really bad. First of all, they were all trying way too hard to make us like them.  Secondly, there was way too much "action" (meaning, violence, especially shootings that went on forever).  Both of these things were the fault of the writing. They brought in a new, younger, prettier ME to replace Jo, and a newSkeet in Jericho young guy joined their team.   My guess is that they could no longer afford most of the cast members, so that's why Jane is gone and we only get to see Dallas Roberts (Elliot) 2 times. I think it's pretty obvious, too, that they wanted to have some younger people on the show to appeal to that younger demographic that they're all craving.

I will admit that the second episode was better...so maybe it will continue to improve and get back to being more the interesting detective show that its fans know and love, and less like "Hawaii Five-0." It's a shame that Elliot left at the end.

The other thing I hated about the episode is that they brought in Skeet Ulrich (one of my favorite actors, from "Jericho" and "Law & Order: L.A.") as Carrie's ex-husband, Eddie. I guess they thought Skeet was too attractive, so they made him look ugly. They had him slick back his hair and he just looked horrible. His character, from what I gather, was supposed to be kind of a Skeet as Eddieslob. It didn't really work, though. I found him to be too distracting from the plot.

Also, it's weird that Skeet was even playing the role because at the end of season 3, her ex-husband shows up as played by Michael Dempsey (who played Alan-Michael for a while on "Guiding Light"). No wonder I didn't remember seeing Skeet before on the show!

But, anyway, I digress...they did this same thing to many other shows I liked that were just fine and didn't need so many changes. If they make changes, then they risk turning off the viewers that are already watching the show. Look at the Dana Delaney show, "Body of Proof" on ABC.  That one was great the first season, but in the second season they completely changed most of the cast. Worse, they got rid of her good looking detective buddyBody of Proof cast (killed him off).  Suddenly, the show was much more about Delaney's character solving crimes than about being an ME (which was completely unrealistic). It didn't last until a third season.

They've done this many years. I remember years ago, I loved the syndicated show "War of the Worlds" (1988).  They completely changed it in the sWar of the Worlds season 1 castecond season. I mean, it was like a completely different show. It was a much darker show, with more aliens. The main character, Harrison (Jared Martin) was almost gone and some other guy took over. Years later, I realized that the "some other guy" was Adrian Paul, who was fantastic as the "Highlander."  But he was not the guy I had loved in the first season, so I didn't like him.  Also, though, the show got very weird and dark.

Another good recent example is the show "Southland." Now, on NBC, that show was very good. It was like a modern day "Adam 12" in that it showed regular cops doing every day police War of the Worlds season 2 castwork.  Then it got canceled on NBC (even though it got good ratings - that was the year they made the brilliant decision to replace all of their 10 pm dramas with Jay Leno! So they canceled "ER", "Southland" and many other good shows), and they moved it to TNT. TNT ruined it by making it not only more of a soap opera, but by amping up the violence - the shootings and car chases. Something that was unique became like every other cop show out there.  It was no longer realistic. What a wastSouthland caste.

I know that TV producers and writers are under a lot of pressure when the ratings are down, but making drastic changes in the style of the show is always a bad idea. Making drastic cast changes can backfire big time, too. When will they learn?


Although it's been a busy few weeks, it's been fun. Yesterday I had a brief chat on TwiThaao Penghlistter with Thaoo Penghlis (known for "Days of Our Lives," "General Hospital" and the 1988 "Mission Impossible" series). He has a recipe book out ("Seducing Celebrities: One Meal at a Time") that I bought to review, so I told him I bought it and asked him about whether he had a recipe for making Greek olives because he mentioned at the beginning of the book that his grandfather made them, but I didn't see a recipe for them. He replied on Twitter that they were a family secret but thanked me, and when I mentioned that I enjoyed reading the part of the book where he meets his parents in Honolulu (where I love), he favorited my tweet. Also, he had mentioned a restaurant called Michael's, but I said I don't think it exists here any more. He replied about where it was located. So it was a nice little back-and-forth.  He's always been really good about interacting with his fans. Long before there was "social media", he used to have an active message board on his web site and did live chats. I speak to a lot of TV actors on the telephone, but it's still a treat to hear from them on social media, particularly my favorite soap stars!

Kristoff St. JohnSpeaking of soap stars, I also recently interviewed Kristoff St. John on the phone. That was awesome. I've been a fan of his for a long time. I will be transcribing that later today for our articles page. I have some other interviews to put up as well that are kind of late. It's so hard to keep up with everything.

Every weekend we put up our weekly Primetime News and Schedule pages. This week's page (which I'm putting up soon) is here and next week's will be here.

We have some contributors to our site that attend the San Diego Comic-Con every year to take photos.  We had never gotten around to applying for press passes before because they got into quite a few press events, anyway. This year we decided to apply. The deadline was this past week. I had to make sure that we had all of the information and emailed it in to SDCC.  Hopefully they'll be accepted and get invited to even more events, so they can take more photos!

It's two weeks until Christmas, so there are lots of holidays specials on TV. Which one is your favorite? It's hard to pick just one. I do love the "Charlie Brown Christmas." My favorite movies are "Miracle on 34th Street" and "Scrooge" (the musical).

Happy Holidays!

You can find my older blog posts at http://www.tvmegs.com

Chronicles - My personal blog, which is not about TV.

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Page updated 12/13/15


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