Farrah Fawcett leaves a legacy

The slightly soft-porn Wella Balsam ads notwithstanding, the infamous appearance on "Late Show With David Letterman" aside, it is impossible to overstate Farrah Fawcett's cultural influence.

With her practice-makes-perfect, blue-eyed smile and doomed marriage to "The Six Million Dollar Man" Lee Majors, she was Princess Di before there was a Princess Di, a photogenic icon who just seemed nice.

With her determination to show that she could play against image and defy expectations ("The Burning Bed," "Extremities"), she was a role model for every actor who has been typecast, every star whose talent has been questioned.

Yes, by giving millions of American females an alternative to the very severe Dorothy Hamill bob, she single-handedly established the blow-dryer and curling-iron industries and created the whole career-path-through-hairstyle phenomenon.

But, more important, she made the whole guns and gams template not only acceptable on TV, but de rigueur. In just a single season as the "pretty one" on "Charlie's Angels," Fawcett helped turn the show into an iconic hit and she paved the way for all the delicate lovelies now doing the Kevlar crouch on shows such as "CSI" and "Fringe." Before Jill Munroe and company, there was only "Police Woman's" Pepper Anderson, who was a much tougher cookie.

It is striking that we lost both Fawcett and writer Marilyn French within weeks; they represented such polar opposites of a larger story.

As a woman of a certain age (who never could make my hair do that flip-back thing,) I watched the mythology of Fawcett unspool alongside the cresting, then waning, American women's movement, not quite understanding what I was seeing until many years had passed.

'Make It or Break It': Gymnastics show finds nice balance

Blessedly, there's no singing in the ABC Family show, just lots of gymnastics and Life Lessons to Be Learned.

I know a new family-friendly show is doing its job if my kids beg me to play the pilot when their friends are over. So ABC Family, if the numbers for Monday's premiere of “Make It or Break It” are not sky high, well, half the kids in my neighborhood have seen it already. Sorry.

The good news is, they really liked it, and so did I.

"Make It or Break It" is a series about gymnasts, and what a relief that is. A combination of beauty and strength, gymnastics is one of the few sports that requires its athletes to compete as a team but also against each other, which makes it a perfect venue for all that teen angst.

More important, it is a blessedly silent break from all that singing -- Fox's satirical "Glee" better end the run of music-based kids shows or I will go smack out of my mind.

Beyond that, "Make It or Break It" is, in some ways, maddeningly familiar: scruffy but cool new kid disrupts streamlined cliquish girl world. In this case, that world revolves around the Rock, where a trio of stars is about to be ranked for state finals. There's top-ranked Payson (Ayla Kell), who's driven but still nice; pretty and romantically distracted Kaylee (Josie Loren) and spoiled rich girl Lauren (Cassie Scerbo), whose father just happens to be the primary financial support of the Rock.

Enter Emily (Chelsea Hobbs), a gangly talent discovered, Lauren notes snootily, on "a playground." She's here on scholarship because, as her clothing makes instantly clear, she's, well, poor. At least in comparison to her McMansioned peers. Emily has a single mother who's a bit of a hottie, can't keep her calendar straight and serves dinner out of cans. There's also a brother in a wheelchair. So, clearly, Emily has been forced to Grow Up Too Soon.

Read more 'Make It or Break It': Gymnastics show finds nice balance

--MARY McNAMARA, Television Critic 

[UPDATED] New Jersey 'Real Housewife' Danielle Staub on crime and Botox on 'Today'

   

What do you do if you have a reality star with a newly revealed scandalous past on your show? Well, if you’re “Today,” you laughingly mention those pesky little issues like kidnapping and extortion and then get her to share beauty tips!

Real Housewife of New Jersey Danielle Staub joined the folks at “Today” this morning, marking, one imagines, the first time a former-stripper-charged-with-kidnapping-and-extortion-turned-hateful-reality-star has co-hosted this, or any, morning show.  It was all part of “Housewife” week, and it provided an excellent teaser for the finale of the Jersey branch of Bravo’s "Real Housewives" franchise, which airs tonight (NBC being the parent company of Bravo and all). 

“You kind of light the place up,” said an admiring Hoda Kotb, apparently referring to recent episodes in which it was revealed that Staub has a past that would make Jacqueline Susann sit up and take notice. Under the name Beverly Merrill, she figures heavily in the book “Cop Without a Badge,” written by a con man turned FBI informant who was Merrill/Staub’s first husband. According to the book, when he first met her, she was on probation for charges that had included kidnapping, extortion and drug possession.

The book, which is 20 years old and hardly a bestseller, somehow made it into the hands of Dina Manzo on “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” where it has dominated the story line for the second half of the season, with Staub spending much more time cursing Dina than actually addressing the charges.

It was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, she explained to her one friend, Jacqueline Laurita. She had gone to visit her boyfriend and walked in just as the FBI was busting him for drug dealing, kidnapping and torture. (Her boyfriend lived in a big house, she later said rather hilariously, she couldn’t know what was going on in all the rooms.) “But did he do the things they said he did?” Jacqueline asked. “I’m really not going to answer that,” Staub replied, her tone quickly switching from strained girlfriend confidential to courtroom pragmatism.

So when it was announced last week that she would be co-hosting the fourth hour of “Today,” many were a bit shocked. But leave it to “Today” to keep things in perspective. Kotb presented the book to Staub on a silver platter. After listing the charges, with a winning smile and a tiny laugh, she finally, as if it were really just matter of passing curiousity, asked if Staub had been, you know, convicted of any of the crimes.

Well, yes and no.  Staub answered by giving a big “shout out” to the district attorney who gave her a plea bargain that resulted in probation rather than jail time. “So this was wrong place wrong time,” Kotb said sympathetically, as if such a thing could happen to anyone, before showing the mug shot from the book with a reassuring “This doesn’t look like you.”

Then she got down to business. “I’m just going to ask you what people are going to ask you,” she said. “You can ask me anything, honey,” said Staub. “They ask, ‘Has she done anything to enhance herself with plastic surgery and stuff?' ”

Really, someone should take this moment and put it in a time capsule somewhere. No questions about Staub’s alleged stripper past and drug use, the subsequent less-than-flattering publicity or even how the book made its way onto the show. Nope, moving right on to the things that matter — how the woman manages to look "so good." Even Staub seemed taken aback.

She rallied however, denying any surgery beyond breast enhancement and Botox, and then walking a fascinated Kotb through her beauty regimen. She’s a size 0, in case anyone was wondering, and she eats whatever she wants, including lots of sugar, and exercises only three times a week. There was some minor discussion about Staub’s role on the show — she believes she has been portrayed pretty much as herself — and the real-life relationship among the women. “Acquaintances” is the word Staub used.

By the time Kathy Bates appeared to tout her upcoming film “Cheri,” the sight of that great talent being "interviewed" by Staub was simply too much and I had to leave the room.

— Mary McNamara

[Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post stated that the finale of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” aired on Monday night. It airs tonight.]

Credit: Bravo

Review: 'Wedding Day' on TNT

Unlike other couples-based reality shows, 'Wedding' takes holy matrimony seriously, food for thought in this time of marital upheaval.

TNT's “Wedding Day,” which premieres tonight, is a show aimed straight for the heart strings by way of the tear ducts, but it may stir up as much anger as joy.

Following the blueprint of the failed “Extreme Makeover: Wedding Edition,” the producers of "Wedding Day" select a deserving couple who cannot afford their dream wedding and, with the help of devoted family and friends, give it to them. (Or as close to it as those sponsors donating goods and services will allow.)

If there is a certain product-placement quease-factor -- the shots of Chandon, the rehearsal dinner speech by a sponsor's rep -- "Wedding Day" is still a welcome antidote to shows like “The Bachelor/Bachelorette,” "Hitched or Ditched" and "Bridezillas” in which heterosexual marriage is used as either a game-show prize or backdrop for peevishly bad behavior.

Read the entire review of "Wedding Day."

-- Mary McNamara

Photo: TNT

Reviews: 'Nurse Jackie' and 'Weeds'

Edie Falco is a highly competent but drug-using ER nurse on a new Showtime series. 'Weeds' presents an increasingly dark situation. 

“Nurse Jackie,” the much-buzzed-about half-hour medical comedy starring Edie Falco, premieres Monday, following, in what has become a Showtime launch tradition, the season premiere of the perennially great “Weeds.”

Pot mom meet Oxy-mom. Just ask multiple-personality mom (“United States of Tara”) to slide a little closer to I-married-a-serial-killer mom (“Dexter”) and all those overdressed bear-me-a-son-or-you're-dead moms ("The Tudors”). But watch out for depressive-sex-addict dad (“Californication”); he's all hands.

Seriously, Showtime, is there something you need to share with the group?

Read more Reviews: 'Nurse Jackie' and 'Weeds'

Critic's Notebook: Susan Boyle, easy fame and mental health

News flash from across the pond: Becoming an overnight sensation can be hazardous to your health.

You would think the legacy of Princess Di would have left a more permanent imprint about the hazards of celebrity, but no. First 10-year-old Hollie Steele was flash-fried by the spotlight, then Susan Boyle, whose brush with fame literally put her in the hospital (or “in hospital” as the English inexplicably put it).

Both were competitors in “Britain’s Got Talent,” a nationally televised talent show designed to pluck virtuosos out of obscurity and launch them into the stratosphere of fame and fortune. Just as if that were a good thing. It was the template for “American Idol,” except participants are not limited to singers and Simon Cowell, a judge on both shows, is much, much nicer. (Does he just hate Americans, do you think?)

For those who live under an actual rock, Susan Boyle is the Scottish woman who showed up at auditions this spring in black stockings, white shoes and very unfortunate hair only to blow everyone away with her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream.” She quickly became the most-watched clip on YouTube and instant pet subject of every media bloviator in the world. Boyle met the Queen and Oprah and soon found herself dogged by paparazzi and deconstructed daily by bloggers, which is as clear a definition of fame in 2009 as you’re going to get.

So in a way, it’s not terribly shocking that, after coming in a surprising second during the show’s final round, Boyle apparently collapsed from nerves and exhaustion. It takes most stars years to get to the hospitalized-for-exhaustion-stage, but that’s how crazy this Internet age can be. Even the prime minister quickly got on the horn to express his dismay.

Meanwhile, spurred on by Boyle’s out-of-nowhere fame, “Britain’s Got Talent” had served up an even more unlikely nascent star: Little Hollie Steele, an ivory-skinned pixie who came out in a tutu, warbled here way through “I Could Have Danced All Night” and made her eyes very wide when she told the camera all she wanted was to be famous.

Really, Hollie? Have you never heard of Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears? Have you never heard of Susan Boyle?

As luck would have it, Hollie burst into hysterical tears during the semi-finals when she, being, you know, 10, forgot the lyrics to “Edelweiss.” In one of the more cynical decisions on record, the producers of “Britain’s Got Talent” decided not to cut to a commercial when Hollie broke down, instead chronicling every squirm-inducing moment as she hid her face in her hands, reached for her mother and then began crying afresh when she was told she couldn’t start over.

So what’s the takeaway? I mean besides the final collapse of the myth of British stoicism. How about the myth of the overnight success?

The entertainment business is built on it -- the idea of the young girl discovered at a lunch counter or a singer found on the street corner. It’s the American Dream, Concentrate — one minute waiting tables, the next minute accepting the Oscar. Except, of course, it seldom happens that way.

Behind virtually every new star who bursts onto the scene out of “nowhere” there’s an actor or writer or singer or dancer who has been working his or her butt off for years. Going to auditions, taking classes, submitting drafts, doing the summer rep, taking the tiniest gigs, all to hone his or her craft and, just as important, prepare for the life of a performer.

All of which is tedious to watch or even contemplate, which is how the “overnight” myth got started and why shows like “Britain’s Got Talent” or “American Idol” or even “Survivor” and “The Hills” are so popular. How much more fun to bypass the dreary business of preparing for your profession, leapfrogging to fame courtesy of the television audience.

Sounds great except it takes preparation to be famous too. Preparation and often an entire staff: the bodyguard, the publicist, the driver, the lawyer — those in the public eye often require a literal wall of trained professionals. More than that, they have to acquire the ability to distance themselves from their media persona, to be able to hear their name screamed over and over and still remain calm, to survive the onslaught of praise and criticism.

It isn’t easy, and many people fail. People who have been in the business for years still find themselves screaming at photographers or getting sucked into some Internet feud.

So what chance does some poor woman from a Scottish town that is still described as a series of villages have? Or a 10-year-old girl who admits she has a heavy accent when she talks but when she sings she “sounds very posh?”

At least with “American Idol,” all the participants know what they’re getting into — the term “idol” is all about the fame. Talent, well, talent is different. Talent is something you have; fame, as Susan and Hollie now know, is something you try to survive. And it helps if you have a little time to get used to it.

-- Mary McNamara

Review: 'Into the Storm'

It's difficult to imagine a braver or more ambitious project than “Into the Storm,” which premieres on HBO Sunday night. To tell the story of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the years of World War II and the months that followed is enough to freeze a screenwriter's heart. Add to that the task of living up to its predecessor, “The Gathering Storm,” which starred Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave and -- well, you see where the bravery comes in.

While "The Gathering Storm" portrayed Churchill struggling to stay solvent, influential and married, "Into the Storm" shows him at the height of his powers. It's hard to beat Finney, but Brendan Gleeson (last seen as one of "In Bruges' " lovable hit men) does his level best, setting his jaw in that signature grimace of confidence, making sweeping decisions without pause and delivering speech after speech designed to keep spines straight and hearts bold all over the little island he loved so well.

While Gleeson pours himself into that iconic voice (at times a bit unintelligible to the American ear), the strength of his Churchill radiates from the eyes, which in private moments shine darkly with sorrow, doubt and occasionally fear. The same man who promptly rejects the suggestion that Britain negotiate with Mussolini and Hitler with the words "nations that go down fighting, rise up again; those that surrender tamely are finished," holds in his mind not the pillars of power but the image of a man who once wished him luck.

Read more: Review: 'Into the Storm'

-- Mary McNamara

Photo credit: Susan Allnutt / HBO

Review: 'Maneater'

Watching the first half hour or so of "Maneater," a thinking woman may find herself grinding her teeth so angrily that, should she be of a certain age and dental history, she may need a new crown or two.

The Lifetime miniseries, the first half of which premieres Saturday and all of which is based on Gigi Levangie Grazer's book of the same name, follows the gold-digging adventures of Clarissa (Sarah Chalke) and her entourage of similarly acquisitively romantic pals. There's Gravy (Judy Greer) who's entering Year 10 of an affair with a married (though generous) man; Polo (Noureen DeWulf) who is a hypochondriac and unapologetically shallow; and Jennifer (Marla Sokoloff), the sweet-faced rich girl who has the hots for her handyman.

It's not just that the bubble-rific economics make "Maneater" feel incredibly pre-deluge, or that hating rich women has become such a bore. It's the idea of mantrap-scheming as narrative vehicle that makes a girl feel so blue. Ah, the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.

Clarissa, we are told, by her inevitable voice-over, owns L.A. -- and watching her swing into some local hot spot with a few winks and waves is supposed to prove this. But alas, she's over 30; the time when she will have to cede her tiara to some winsome young reality star looms. Also, her daddy is about to stop her allowance. So she decides to get married. That she has no groom, or even a steady since the dashing and dastardly Simon (Paul Leyden) ditched her, is not an issue. Armed with only an iPhone and credit cards, she plans her wedding to the unsuspecting Aaron (Philip Winchester), the latest scion turned producer to roll into town.

Read more: Review: 'Maneater'

-- Mary McNamara

Photo credit: Lifetime Television

Review: 'Hitched or Ditched'

Twenty years ago, the premise, not to mention the title, of the CW's new reality series “Hitched or Ditched” would have made perfect sense as a romantic comedy, possibly starring Julia Roberts. Due to circumstances outside their control, a longtime couple is given a week to plan and execute a free and fabulous "dream wedding" with the final outcome -- will both say "I do"? -- an open question until the wedding official leads them through the actual vows.

Instead, Ms. Roberts is nowhere to be seen, and "Hitched or Ditched" takes us one step closer to whatever the lasting legacy of reality television will be. A populist revolution in which the lives of people who are not cops or docs or lawyers finally shoulder their way into network prime time? A country in which every citizen has one or another personal crisis or milestone televised?

Who knows. But for all it's squirm-inducing premise, "Hitched or Ditched" offers a surprisingly clear and contained window not only on a certain segment of modern romance, but the pressures that surround it. And because we get a new couple each week, the segments move right along, mercifully devoid of the drawn-out and manipulative "tensions" that plague so many television shows, both

Read more.

Review: 'Mental'

"Mental" is mental, and not in a good way.

Never mind the turned-around "e" in the title (coy typography that makes it literally impossible to write the name of the show correctly), or that we already have a show called " The Mentalist," or that the pilot opens with the lead character, a newly appointed head of psychiatric services, proving how unconventional he is by stripping in a crowded waiting room in order to communicate with a schizophrenic seeing snake people.

All of these inanities we could live with if the show turned out to have even a small understanding of the difference between edgy and derivative or unorthodox and ridiculous, which, alas, it does not.

Read more.

Review: 'Glee' on Fox

The musical set at a high school has its dark side, but these students with a song in their hearts are fun to watch

The only real problem with "Glee," Fox's new musical comedy, which premieres tonight, is that viewers will have to wait four whole months for the next episode.

That's a long time but wait we will because wait we must: "Glee" is the first show in a long time that's just plain full-throttle, no guilty-pleasure-rationalizations-necessary fun.

Heaven knows why it took a network so long to cash in on the "High School Musical"-generated frenzy. Nickelodeon took its shot earlier this year with "Spectacular!" and "Glee" unabashedly holds the best of both shows up to the dark mirror that is the mind of creator Ryan Murphy ("Nip/Tuck," "Popular")..

His McKinley High is real high school, a place where moments of shining exultation are surrounded by pits of despair, tripwires of petty rivalries and pathetic hierarchies -- a place that leaves such a permanent imprint on the collective psyche that "high school" has become an adjective and its own genre.

Read the entire "Glee" review and watch video

-- Mary McNamara

Photo: Fox

Review: '24'

As Season 7 comes to an end, here are 10 ways we loved the year.

I sing to you of "24," Fox's gloriously preposterous television show, which comes crashing to its Season 7 close tonight, proving that love means never having to say you're sorry, even for a life devoted to torture.
Never mind that the whole all-in-a-single-day conceit is old and unnecessary or that the dialogue consistently makes "Scooby-Doo" look like Tennessee Williams. Forget all the ridiculous inconsistencies.

Put aside even the absurd image of a ruthless dictator with a doomsday weapon whose only goal is to take over some crap country called Sangala. (No sacks of gold bullion? No nuclear weapons? No "I'll take all the red states and 10 lifetime passes to DisneyWorld"? My God, man, what kind of tyrant are you?) Put all these niggling matters out of your mind because "24" is terrific television, this was a great season, and here are 10 reasons why.

Read more of the '24' review

-- Mary McNamara

Photo: Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer on "24."