On the heels of the arrival of a new head of trauma comes word that another fresh face will soon be scrubbing in at Seattle Grace. Jessica Capshaw ("The L Word," "The Practice") will play Dr. Arizona Robbins, a pediatrician who’s called in to consult on a case and winds up butting heads with Bailey. I hear that Capshaw has signed on for at least three episodes, though that could lead to more, and that she will make her first appearance midway through the season.
Capshaw is the latest actress to sign on for a high-profile Grey’s guest stint. Both "Battlestar Gallactica’s" Mary McDonnell and "Alias’" Melissa George begin their runs in the Nov. 13 episode as a cardiac surgeon with Asperger’s syndrome and a bisexual intern, respectively.
What do you make of this latest casting news? And more importantly, which lusty Seattle Gracer should Dr. Robbins hook up with?? Weigh in below.
Tina Fey may not want to continue playing Sarah Palinafter next week, but her dead-on impressions of the Alaskan governor on "Saturday Night Live" led "30 Rock" to series-high ratings.
The Season 3 premiere of the ratings-starved NBC comedy attracted 8.5 million million viewers and a 4.1 ratings in adults 18-49 -- a 21% increase in the demo from last year's second-season opener -- according to Nielsen. The episode, "Do-Over," also retained an impressive 87% of the 18-to-49-year-olds who watched the show's lead-in, "The Office."
Last season, the show averaged 6.2 million viewers. In September, "30 Rock" won the top Emmy prizes for comedy series, lead actor (Alec Baldwin) and lead actress (Fey).
Was there anybody in the hospital that Hunt (Kevin McKidd), a.k.a. the cocky new head of trauma, DIDN’T tick off in last night’s episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”?! I mean, besides Anatomy Jane.
First, the guy goes and stabs a bunch of poor pigs, all as a teaching exercise for the residents and interns during a mandatory skills lab. That sent a horrified Izzie, who refused to participate, into an ideological tizzy and prompted her to label him a “murdering, sadistic bastard.” Then he had the audacity to kick Derek and Mark out of the ER after they’d been paged for help with a head injury and burn victim. He’d prefer the residents learn how to treat trauma victims without the help of any attendings save himself, thank you very much. And finally, there was the former military doc’s bumpy reunion with Cristina. Just a few weeks ago, he was heroically removing an icicle from her chest and wrapping her up in a steamy kiss. This time around, he couldn’t even seem to remember her name. Not OK. So not OK.
And yet, you couldn’t really hate Seattle Grace’s newest addition. Or at least I couldn’t. Yes, the guinea pigs were disturbing. (Enough so that ABC felt the need to remind us not once, but twice, during the episode that no animals were harmed during filming.) But "Grey’s" needs a fresh antagonist, and Hunt is emerging as a potentially complex one. How awesome was it when Derek and Mark went to yell at him for encouraging Alex to glue together that patient’s scalp wound -- and, instead of getting defensive, he earnestly asked what else he could’ve done. “This is day 1 for me,” the latest scrubs stud told them. ‘So if you think there’s a better way, then tell me and I’ll listen.”
Or how about when Cristina called him on the name thing and he wound up getting all emotional and explaining that yes, he had remembered, but that was Before. As in before his last tour in Iraq, when his surgical unit got caught in an ambush and he was the only one of 20 who made it out alive. Yikes. Let’s see: Emotionally wounded, whip-smart, kinda jerky but not just for the sake of being jerky, and scruffy-hot -- check, check, check and check. There’s no way Cristina’s not falling for this guy.
Speaking of falling, Izzie and Alex could be doing that too. Though he, at least, clearly has no idea how to go about the whole thing, what with asking Izzie if she’s “all in” or if he should go on sleeping with Michelle somebody. (Class-y.) But at least he admitted he was clueless, and at least he seems willing to learn. That’s progress. And what to make of Callica, the episode’s other newbie couple? I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it’s probably not the best of signs when Callie spends most of the episode hooking up in the on-call room not with Erica, but with Mark.
What did you think of the episode? Are you feeling Hunt or do you wish he’d be sent back to the war zone? Where do you think all this Meredith’s mom’s diaries stuff is going? And finally, how odd/cool was Mer’s removable organ doll, Anatomy Jane??
On an average Wednesday night, the same networks get an audience of 30.3 million people between 8 and 8:30 p.m., according to Nielsen Media Research.
The commercial, which ran nationally on CBS, Fox, NBC, Univision, BET, MSNBC and TV One, drew an audience that was more than half the size as the one that tuned into the final debate between Obama and Sen. John McCain on Oct. 15. That forum attracted 56.5 million viewers.
The infomercial was especially popular among African American viewers, attracting 15.2% of that demographic. Overall, 11.6% of television viewers watched the ad.
Obama’s commercial fared better than the series of 15 paid telecasts presidential candidate Ross Perot aired in 1992. An average of 11.6 million viewers watched those, just about 5% of the national audience. Perot’s final simulcast on election day that year drew 26 million viewers, or about 17% of all households.
Tonight, the NBC comedy begins its third season -– do-or-die time for the critically beloved but ratings-starved series. After three seasons and an Emmy for best comedy, poor ratings performance killed Fox’s media darling, “Arrested Development.” There was the short-lived “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” and “Undeclared.” And patience wears even thinner these days: This week, CBS newcomer “The Ex-List,” the most promising of the fall comedies, according to critics, was yanked from the schedule after just four episodes and diminishing returns.
The good news is "30 Rock" is better than ever. Tina Fey’s recent “Saturday Night Live”-boosting Sarah Palin impressions do not seem to have depleted her creative juices. She’s got a whole lot more where that came from.
When last we left off, comedy writer Liz (Fey) was getting over Floyd and trying desperately to adopt a baby. This season, she charges ahead toward motherhood, first tripping over the adoption agency’s evaluator, Bev (tonight’s guest star Megan Mullally).
Liz's NBC boss Jack (Alec Baldwin), meanwhile, successfully failed his way out of Washington and returns with guns blazing, ready to take down Devon (Will Arnett), his closeted professional rival, and Kathy (Marceline Hugot), Devon’s wife and the CEO’s strange, mostly mute daughter. Devon forces him to start in the mailroom, but Jack gets a leg up -– literally -– when Kathy takes an unexpected liking to him.
Plenty of laughs ensue.
This is not the hyped-but-lukewarm season opener of last year, which was overly reliant on the power of guest star Jerry Seinfeld in a rare, unfunny cameo for the comic. Rather, the episode is a celebration of Liz’s topsy-turvy world and the kooks who populate it.
That said, the episode doesn’t exactly welcome the uninitiated. (At least “Arrested Development” opened every week with a short spiel about the family Bluth.) First-timers should know that the conflict between Jack, Devon and Kathy is more or less resolved within the half-hour. And, even if you’re not dialed in, it’s easy enough to get the idea: Kenneth is the adorable and slow NBC page, Tracy is the star of Liz’s show and outrageously misbehaved, and Jenna is the sidelined, attention-craving co-star. Etc.
But loyal fans can take comfort in knowing that Fey hasn’t blown up the show in the name of ratings –- I've never quite forgiven ABC for morphing the deliciously layered “Alias” into a spy-game-of-the-week procedural -- though higher ones would be nice.
How bad are things for ABC's whimsical second-year drama "Pushing Daisies?" Well, on Wednesday night, it got trounced in the ratings -- by Sen. Barack Obama's infomercial.
ABC, of course, chose not to run the political ad, evidently in hopes of giving "Daisies" room to grow by putting it opposite weak competition.
Whoops.
During its first half-hour, "Daisies" did manage to round up 6.8 million total viewers, according to early data from Nielsen Media Research. The only problem is that "Barack Obama: American Stories," the heartstring-tugging half-hour spot paid for by Sen. Obama's presidential campaign, delivered a much better number on each of the networks that did air it, including CBS (8.6 million), Fox (7.9 million) and NBC (9.8 million). (The Obama spot ran on seven networks; on the three English-language broadcasters plus Univision it delivered 30.1 million viewers.) The Obama spot also pulled better numbers than "Daisies" in the crucial adults aged 18 to 49 demographic.
Fairness -- and our fondness for the good folk in ABC's PR department, who have to spin this stuff -- compel us to point out that "Daisies" did hit its highest ratings this season.
And yet ... we'll try to avoid the groaner puns on its title, but clearly this show is in deep trouble. ABC executives are puzzled "Daisies" isn't doing better, especially given its warm critical reception last year. But they have to make a decision soon -- probably before the show returns to the lineup Nov. 19, after two weeks of preemptions because of "Dancing with the Stars" results and the CMA awards show.
Star Kristen Chenoweth told the National Ledger that production on the episodes ordered wraps Nov. 12. ABC would likely need to order more installments by then to avoid a production shutdown.
Otherwise, "Pushing Daisies" will be ... well, you know.
Sen. Barack Obama’s 30-minute political infomercial was watched by 21.7% of households in the top 56 local markets, Nielsen Media Research reported today.
That’s a little more than half the audience that tuned into the final debate between Obama and Sen. John McCain earlier this month.
Obama’s ad, which ran live on CBS, NBC, FOX, UNIVISION, MSNBC, and NY1, drew substantially more viewers than the series of 15 paid telecasts presidential candidate Ross Perot ran in 1992. An average of 11.6 million viewers watched those, just about 5% of the national audience. However, Perot's final simulcast on election day drew 26 million viewers, or about 17% of all households.
The city with the highest tune-in for Obama’s commercial was Baltimore, where 31.3% of households watched. Philadelphia was the second largest, with 29%, likely because many viewers were waiting for the conclusion of the final World Series game. In Los Angeles, 21.3% of households tuned into Obama’s ad.
With its plaintive, Ken Burnsian soundtrack, real-life stories of economic hardship and greatest hits compilation of soaring rhetoric, Barack Obama’s 30-minute campaign-o-mercial, which ran on CBS, NBC, MSNBC and Fox last night, was confident, competent and moving, a piece of political television so aware of its own mission and the demands of the medium it could have easily been titled “As You Like It.”
Here was Obama speaking, from an Oval Office-esque setting, precisely as voters of every stripe have been pleading with the candidates to speak—without rancor, without opponent bashing, in comprehensible, if not overly concise, terms about the major issues facing Americans today: Rising prices, declining property values, a fraying healthcare system, the energy crisis, the war in Iraq.
Here were a wide variety of people who support him—Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson—the family who loves him, the American people to whom he has listened. It was a multimillion dollar closing pitch to undecided voters, a third act monologue designed to pull all the narrative threads of his campaign together.
Six days out and Obama wanted to remind everyone that he is on the side of the middle class—let big business look out for itself because, historically, it always does anyway. Six days out and he clearly intends to end the same way he began, with a widely watched call for Change.
People will no doubt compare this bit of campaign history to “An Inconvenient Truth” (if only because its director Davis Guggenheim worked on this too), or Ross Perot’s forgettable infomercials or even Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats, if they, as Obama’s running mate erroneously suggested, had indeed been televised. This was Obama’s final call-back for the Ultimate Audition, his last solo before the phone lines are opened for the crucial vote.
Yet for some reason, I kept thinking of “Mad Men,” particularly of that scene at the end of Season One when advertising maven Don Draper stood in the darkened room and so evocatively sold the new circular slide projector as the carousel because it returns us to a place where we know we are loved. For all the emphasis on change, these 30 minutes were infused with nostalgia—that heartstring-plucking guitar, those black and white images of '40s and '50s America, the homage to the traditional family, the apparent non-existence of pressing social issues—no abortion, no gay rights, not even childcare was mentioned.
It was as if Obama were consciously offering a soothing counterbalance to the seismic shift that his mere presence, much less his success and possible victory, in this presidential election indicates. Throughout this campaign he has offered an oasis of calm, an unflappable demeanor that occasionally drives even his most rabid supporters mad. But it is his game plan and he is sticking to it. Don’t be frightened, he seems to say, by the fact that my name, my face will interrupt the homogeneous lineage of the presidency. I come from a place of hope, not anger. I share your value of the past, of the children skipping rope in the suburbs, of the fathers returning home covered with oil from a day in the factory, even if I do not necessarily share those memories.
“All of us have a story,” Obama tells us in a clip from an earlier speech, of parents or grandparents who came from another place but wanted America’s freedom for their children, of parents or grandparents who did not have a college degree or their own home but hoped for these for their children. All of us, in other words, are connected by blood to someone who was once a stranger in this land or the first of a family or group to break through society’s preconceptions.
From the moment he appeared on the national stage in 2004, Barack Obama has been fixated on the future, on changing the future, on creating a government that is, in his mind and the minds of his supporters, better prepared for and more answerable to the future. Change. It's a fun word to chant, and a catchy word for a placard. But change, no matter how necessary or beneficial, is always frightening and rarely easy.
So as much as it was a summation, a return to early exhortations to remember that "United" is part of our country’s legal name, Obama’s info-drama gave Americans 30 minutes of the present to honor the past. And then, of course, connect it to his version of the future.
Just as Gaius Charles' Brian "Smash" Williams was getting out of town, viewers were reminded that Scott Porter's Jason Street was still in Dillon. Not that anyone forgot, as nary an episode goes by without a character in Dillon mentioning the name Jason Street.
The fallen legend, met with a tragic end in the series premiere, went from the town favorite to the town martyr. And despite his sometimes hair-brained schemes, and underlying anger, he can still win a favor just by flashing a smile, or tapping into the glorified nostalgia that Dillon holds for football.
But if Street were looking for a purpose after suffering a spinal injury, he's found one in Erin (Tamara Jolaine). The mother of his son (cliffhanger answered, and there's photographic evidence up above), Street viewed the birth as a miracle, as the doctors told him it wasn't possible. Now if only Erin would corporate.
If "Friday Night Lights" spent its first four episodes dealing with football and community concerns, what with the whole JumboTron saga and Smash's college tryout, Episode 5 goes straight to the heart. And when Street pleads to Erin to move in with him -- if their names are together on a birth certificate, it's only logical they're together on a lease, he argues -- it's a giant bundle of warm, desperate puppy love. One almost feels awkward just watching it, and Street's roommate Herc (Kevin Rankin) is helpless to stop him.
A brief diversion to praise Herc: For those who missed Street, who didn't miss Herc just as much, if not more? At first, Herc seemed a bad influence, dragging Street into some hardcore games of wheelchair rugby. But really, he's done something Street -- and many in Dillon -- have failed to do, and that's learn to laugh of the absurdity that's around them. When Street is frantically trying to clean the apartment for the arrival of the baby, Herc is right behind him, picking up everything Street is throwing aside. And how does he let Street know he's gone too far? By yelling this:"You do not have to hide porn from a baby!"
In structure, this cycle of "America's Next Top Model" is nearly identical to each of those that have preceded it, yet, against all odds, this has been one of the stronger seasons in recent history. I pondered what made this so during the remaining models' trip to Amsterdam:
Elina. She's so irritating, which makes her so necessary to the season. Unlike the Top Models in previous history who ran on ignorant, refer-to-yourself-in-the-third-person delusion (Jade Cole or Dominique Reighard, anyone?), Elina Ivanova is not confident as a model but utterly confident in her own smarts and sophistication, even if she's not really that intelligent. In lieu of the red-light district challenge, she sassily voiced her pro-prostitution stance, but when Samantha tried to argue the other side, Elina simply shut down. I totally called, too, that she would be even more irritating once she reached European soil.
Was there anybody in the hospital that Hunt (Kevin McKidd), a.k.a. the cocky new head of trauma, DIDN’T tick off in last night’s episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”?! I mean, besides Anatomy Jane.
With its plaintive, Ken Burnsian soundtrack, real-life stories of economic hardship and greatest hits compilation of soaring rhetoric, Barack Obama’s 30-minute campaign-o-mercial, which ran on CBS, NBC, MSNBC and Fox last night, was confident, competent and moving, a piece of political television so aware of its own mission and the demands of the medium it could have easily been titled “As You Like It.” 
In structure, this cycle of "America's Next Top Model" is nearly identical to each of those that have preceded it, yet, against all odds, this has been one of the stronger seasons in recent history. I pondered what made this so during the remaining models' trip to Amsterdam: