Changing Channels

My buddy Dave Waldon, RIP

I know this blog over the past month has read a bit too much like the obituary ads. Nonetheless, I can't let the passing of my pal Dave Waldon go unmarked. A freelance entertainment writer in Los Angeles, Dave was as smart and as funny in writing about Hollywood as anybody I know. (Check out his book Snakes on a Plane: Guide to the Internet Ssssssensation or his amazingly eclectic blog, which he called 3Finger for reasons which apparently ranked above my security clearance.) A kind of walking, talking version of IMDB, he could spout names of old movies, TV shows and their casts like a volcano -- writing a story beside Dave in a press room, you never had to look anything up.

We shared some of the same oddball passions -- for the nutty B-movie princess Elvira, for instance, or our China Beach idol Dana Delany. (In the case of Delany, her attorney probably would have called it "obsession.") And one of the wonderful things about Dave was that he remembered his friends' passions even when he didn'tshare them. I once mentioned casually to him that I was a great admirer of Rosanna Arquette's portrayal of a suburban princess slumming on the wild side side of high school in the John Sayles film Baby It's You. A couple of years later, he tracked me down at crowded, chaotic ABC meet-and-greet party during the TV critics' gathering in Los Angeles to alertme that Arquette was sitting alone in a corner and would probably be happy to talk to me. As always, he was right.

In fact, the only time that Dave was ever wrong in my presence came at another of those network parties, this one sponsored by the Sci Fi Channel. This one was a barbecue on the vast back lawn of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pasadena. Dave casually began talking to a pretty and talented actress -- to protect the guilty, I'm not naming any names, but you'd know her. Soon the conversation was anything but casual; they leaned toward one another, tuning out the rest of the party, and talked intensely for more than two hours. When she finally got up to go, she wrote her phone number on a scrap of paper and handed it to him.

"Wow, you guys really hit it off," I observed. Dave'seyes widened in surprise. "What do you mean?" he asked. "It was just party BS." I couldn't believe it. "Man, she gave you her PHONE NUMBER!" I exclaimed. "Does she have to come to your apartment and kick in your door?" But he never did call her. Dave never understood what a really interesting guy he was to talk to. I did, and I'm going to miss him a bunch.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one who misses Dave. Here's what Anne Bannon, who writes about family-friendly TV, had to say.

Who let the dogs out?

Here's a review of Fox's new cop drama K-Ville, which is so awful that I've expected it to be the first show canceled this fall. But I could be wrong -- another crummy Fox show that debuted Friday, the pseudoreality Nashville, which drew a paltry 2.7 million viewers and was beaten by such dreary fare as a rerun of America's Funniest Home Videos. Worse yet, it squandered nearly half the audience from its lead-in, Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? That's the kind of thing that sends chills through the hearts of network programmers. Another outing like that one and Nashville could be gone by this time next week.

The fall TV preview is here!

It won't be in the Miami Herald until Sunday, but anybody whose life is so empty that they're reading this blog on a Saturday deserves a break. So our fall TV preview is already up and online, and you don't even have to shell out a buck to buy the paper. And anyway, thanks to our techie elves, the online version is a lot cooler anyway -- the reviews of the show have been packaged with videos from the networks in this amazing interactive preview site. (The Cliffs Notes version: The best new shows are Cane and Pushing Daisies. And that photo on the left is of Blake Lively from the delicious teen melodrama Gossip Girl.) There are also stories about broadcast television's new love affair with the geek, the big changes on Law & Order and some other shows, the woman cable TV fears most, and war fever at PBS. Just don't blame me for Cavemen or K-Ville.

Godzilla vs. Megalon, Osama vs. W, and now Stossel vs. Hansen

The entertainment divisions of ABC and NBC have been in an official state of war ever since NBC unceremoniously dumped head programmer Kevin Reilly earlier this summer. Reilly and ABC programming chief Steve McPherson are old college buddies, and McPherson has been scathing in his denunciations of new NBC boss Ben Silverman -- not just for replacing Reilly, but also for hiring Isaiah Washington, fired from ABC's Grey's Anatomy for homosexual slurs against another member of the cast. "When someone stabs your best friend in the back, you don't buy it," McPherson said during the critics' press tour in Los Angeles last month.

Now the war is spreading to new theaters of combat -- the news divisions. ABC's 20/20 is working on a story about the pedophile vigilanteism of the To Catch A Predator segments on NBC's Dateline. An ABC unit is in Texas right now, reporting on a To Catch A Predator segment last year that ended with the suicide of one of the men lured into a sting operation. Coming soon: Meredith Viera and Diane Sawyer pull each other's hair out, eventually followed by McPherson and 20/20's John Stossel in a tag-team Ultimate Fighting match against Silverman and To Catch A Predator's Chris Hansen, with the winners eating the livers of the losers.

Dirty old men need jobs, too

I've just been watching the pilot of Showtime's new comedy Californication, starring David Duchovny as a writer who moves from New York to Los Angeles and goes into a hilariously dissolute downward spiral of sex, drugs, booze and more sex. (The show debuts Monday at 10:30 p.m.; you'll be able to read a review here on Sunday.) And it reminded me of something Duchovny said last month during the TV critics' press tour. A critic, noting that Duchovny's character unwittingly goes to bed with a 16-year-old, asked how it felt "to be playing the first male lead in TV series history who has sex with a minor." Duchovny thought about a moment, then replied: "I gotta update my resume."

Hollywood in one simple lesson

People often ask me what it's like covering television. The answer is, like this...

At a panel for ABC's Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice, a critic asked cast member Tim Daly -- who last season starred in The Nine, a serialized drama quickly yanked by ABC -- if it was deflating to work on a show built around a mystery that's never resolved. "Is it frustrating to do that kind of series and then realize there's never going to be a payoff?" the critic asked.

Daly, looking thoughtful, began to reply. "Well, first of all --" and then suddenly he stopped, eyes staring off into the distance. After a lonnnnnnnnnng pause, he continued: "I'm trying to think of a way to congratulate myself on my Emmy nomination."

Funny, sounds like my boss

Chi McBride, one of the stars of the new ABC comedy Reaper, was asked what it's like working for Executive Producer Barry Sonnenfeld. Explained McBride: "Barry's the kind of guy that would say, 'You know, some people see the glass half empty. Some see it half full. I see half a glass of poison.'"

Sabre-tooth tigers? No, just critics

When it comes to picking the most despised pilot of the upcoming fall broadcast season among critics, it's no contest: everybody hates ABC's Cavemen, which expands those Geico commercials into a half-hour sitcom. (Personally, I think Fox's belligerant cop drama K-Ville is worse, but I'm in the distinct minority.) So when the producers of Cavemen showed up on the press tour, it was a little bit like a parade of baby seals entering a Canadian village: The clubs were swinging from all directions. Here's my story.

Stop the presses! Confirm or deny! Get me rewrite!

You probably think television critics lie around all day eating chocolates and watching TV. Well, yeah, but we're also trained journalism professionals. We get our teeth into the story. We can scream confirm or deny! just as good as Woodward, Bernstein or Carl Kolchak.

Don't believe me? Listen to the coverup we sniffed out and busted Wednesday. ABC programming boss Stephen McPherson had the misfortune to be on the morning panel after a night with no catered dinner (that's what it means when they say a reporter is hungry, right?, and he paid the price. It started with a critic confronting McPherson with a rumor she'd heard that an announcement will be made Thursday at a San Diego comic book convention ("Comic-Con," we call it in our secret hip newshound lingo) about a cast change on Lost. "They do have some announcements," McPherson admitted nervously.

"Well, can you tell us?" the critic demanded. "No," McPherson said, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead.

"I don't think my editor is going to be very happy," another critic interjected. Threats are never pretty, but sometimes they're the only way.

Shouted a third, brandishing a copy of the First Amendment like a crucifix to a vampire as McPherson cowered back from the podium: "What's the point of having 150 reporters with access to millions of readers sitting here?"

McPherson, whimpering, tried another tack. "Okay, I'll give you the announcement," he said. "I cast Don Imus on Lost." Ha! Like we don't have a million years of collective experience at shrugging off sarcasm from editors. "Are we not important enough for you?" a critic thundered. "Or do you just not want to talk to us?"

The tearful McPherson cracked. "Harold Perrineau is returning to the show," he screamed as a phalanx of ABC publicists threw their bodies into the line of fire, protecting him from the baleful glances we fired his way. It was too late; American journalism had once again afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted. We had our story. Man, if we'd been on Watergate, it would have been over by the first weekend.

PS: Here's a picture of Harold Perrineau, being escorted to his press conference by a crack squadron of TV critics. In case you've forgotten who he is.

PPS: Hey, all you geeks who paid $200 to get into Comic-Con for an exclusive news break on your favorite show, nyah-nyah-nyah.

Be afraid, 'Desperate Housewives' fans, be very afraid

Dana Delany and Nathan Fillion are joining the cast of Desperate Housewives this season, which pretty much dooms it. Delany is a terrific actress -- she won two Emmys for China Beach -- but her last three series (Pasadena, Presidio Med and Kidnapped) have lasted a total of something like 15 episodes, less than a full season. Fillion, meanwhile, has joined two series that promptly died (Two Guys, A Girl And A Pizza Place and Buffy The Vampire Slayer) and starred in two more that didn't make it through a full season (Firefly and Drive). About the only hope for Desperate Housewives is that the ancient Nielsen curses on Delany and Fillion will cancel each other out.