You’re Out? You’re Off the Air: Networks Swinging the Big Gay Axe

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NBC’s “The New Normal,” a gaycentric series the network chose not to renew.

Although most people associate the month of May with the Kentucky Derby, Memorial Day weekend traffic or beautiful spring bouquets for Mom, television has only one thing on its mind: Out with the old and in with the new. Manhattan is awash with TV folks in town for the upfronts, the annual ritual in which the networks present their fall schedules to advertisers in hopes of wooing big bucks. It is too early to tell which network will be the big winner, but this year there is a clear loser: gay characters.

via Derek Hartley: May-day! TV’s Big Gay Bloodbath. Huffington Post

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Will Horton (Chandler Massey) and Sonny Kiriakis (Freddie Smith) on “Days of our Lives,” one of the few gay couples on American television.

Sadly, Hartley tells it for the truth, but I’m not sure he actually goes far enough in his hue and cry against the broadcast networks.

Last year there was a lot of positive buzz about the numbers of gay characters on the networks. The sum total of gay characters was about 6% of all characters — lame — but it was the highest percentage ever. After wiping us off the map for all intents and purposes in primetime, in daytime it’s not much better. There seems only to be  Sonny and Will’s  front burner storyline on “Days of our Lives,” amongst the sordid lives being lived on the few remaining televised soaps. Other than that, gay characters on traditional American television are few and far between. (Eden Reigel’s Bianca stands alone — as a proud but lonely lesbian in the gay landscape of Pine Valley on the Web reboot of “All My Children.” It will be nice if that changes.)

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Van Hansis, Kit Williamson and John Halbach star in the superlative Web series “EastSiders,” created by Williamson and now available on logotv.com.

Moving away from traditional TV to find entertainment, I would encourage you to check out these great Web series: EastSiders, The Outs, Husbands, and others. If you go to Logo to check out EastSiders (highly recommended), explore some of their other Web only offerings, such as Hunting Season.

The Persistent Cult of Arrested Development

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The Persistent Cult of Arrested Development — Vulture.

Jessica Walter in a classic Lucille Bluth moment on Arrested Development. “The drive-by outburst wasn’t an ad lib. “The wink was mine. Whore was not. That was our genius writers,” Walter said in an article on classic Lucille GIFs by Vulture’s Denise Martin.

Here comes “Arrested Development” again. A lot of people could care less, I assume, but there are some that feel like Will Leitch who wrote this excellent in-depth article on Vulture.

The resurrection is the direct result of the happy-go-tireless advocacy of a small but rabid group of superfans who have become, over the seven years since the show went off the air, a kind of cult—the best kind of cult. Amazingly, ­executives have actually listened to us, even thinking it was good business sense to do so. 

Netflix is releasing the entire new season (the first since 2006) of 15 episodes on May 26 for streaming. A whole lot of TV nerds (me, included, I suppose!) will be giddily streaming away watching one of the oddest, smartest and most demented TV series ever created. The new series will be dissected in minute detail by Bluthites, so there’s no reason for me to think of anything pithy to say about it all in advance.

Looking back, I’m not sure that there was a more sublimely ridiculous TV moment than this one, rendered in kinetic typography:

‘The New Normal’ Star Justin Bartha Talks About The Show’s Cancellation

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“The NBC executives get a lot of critique from the press but they should be applauded for putting us on the air in the first place, because we still have a long way to go with equality in this country and around the world.”

via ‘The New Normal’ Star Justin Bartha Talks About The Show’s Cancellation.

I’ll agree with that. Good show. Good actor. Sad it’s gone. I certainly wish NBC had more balls.

Cyd Zeigler: Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo Were Not Cut for LGBT Activism

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Members of the media have long been the biggest deterrent to gay athletes coming out. Attitudes in the NFL shifted years ago, and even where they haven’t, players will accept a productive gay teammate whether they realize it or not.

Yet the mainstream media continues to pound the drum of NFL intolerance. A common theme I heard from “experts” in the last two weeks mentioned how Jason Collins’ coming out was lovely, but we all know how hard it really will be for an out NFL player in the locker room. On this issue, the mainstream media has showed a dereliction of duty for a decade. This is simply the latest example.

Yes, Cyd. Absolutely right.

via Cyd Zeigler: Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo Were Not Cut for LGBT Activism.

The New Normal — Done With TV

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Last week, leading up to the upfronts — that’s the time when the networks pat themselves on their backs and announce their new series — news about television was all about what shows had gotten the axe.

Last season I watched a half dozen or so shows on the networks. Here’s what I enjoyed, in rank order:

the-new-normal-utah-new-home__oPt1. The New Normal
Ryan Murphy’s smartly written comedy about a gay couple who want to start a family. This show got some unfavorable reviews from gay outlets, but I found it simply lovely. Truth be told, this surprised me because I find Murphy’s Glee the most inconsistent show on TV. However, this one was a love note to the celebration of difference. Andrew Rannells and Justin Bartha were wonderful. NeNe Leakes was hilarious and I found the whole thing refreshing. I particularly liked the way Ellen Barkin’s strident conservative grandmother was allowed to change and still hold to her own truth. It was smart. Very smart. No, it was not everyone’s gay experience — we’re not all wealthy Californians with a perfect house and perfect teeth — and maybe you couldn’t quite relate to it, but hey, at least it WAS a gay experience on network television.

DAMON WAYANS JR., ELIZA COUPE, ADAM PALLY, CASEY WILSON, ELISHA CUTHBERT, ZACHARY KNIGHTON2. Happy Endings
The quirky, oddball non-linear new take on Friends full of fast dialogue and underplayed pop culture references to keep you on your toes. The show grew over its time on the air, but it never gelled the way I think it should have. I think Adam Pally was poised on the brink of being a breakout star, but no one seemed to know how to write for his character, which is a shame because I think there was a lot there to be mined. There’s talk that this may end up on some cable network or another. I hope so. It deserves a second time around. Zero bad apples in this gang of six.

New-Girl-Jess3. New Girl
Three guys and a girl share a loft apartment. Zany antics, deftly drawn characters and a healthy dose of heart. And this is on Fox? Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson have really shined this season. Max Greenfield is insanely funny and a fearless performer. The show is smart, has grounded itself in a unique worldview and is starting to emerge as more than “just a sitcom.” It’s a delight AND one of the few sitcoms that understands how to maximize its (terrific) guest stars. Two words: Julius Pepperwood.

Smash season 24. Smash
NBC’s paean to Broadway. Shot in New York and chock-a-block with actual theatre performers. Theresa Rebeck created the show, adapting Garson Kanin’s novel. A writer, Rebeck was also the showrunner and by all accounts the first season was a train wreck backstage and the novel show became nearly unwatchable at the end of season one. Brought back for a second season with a seasoned showrunner who severely retooled it, the storylines got tighter and more interesting to watch, but the network buried it and ratings fell through the floor. A shame, really, because there was some great stuff going on here. Andy Mientus, Jeremy Jordan and Megan Hilty showed great range, Christian Borle made the jump from stage acting to screen acting look utterly effortless and Debra Messing showed a fantastic grounded, dramatic side that we never got to see on Will & Grace.

images5. Whitney
An odd little nut of a show featuring interesting comedic performances from some not-so-stereotypical performers. Comedienne Whitney Cummings had her hand in two shows that debuted in 2011: her self-titled one and the CBS diner sitcom 2 Broke Girls. Whitney was a lovely little show with interesting performers while 2 Broke Girls was one extended dick joke. Guess which one is still on the air? Chris D’Elia and Rhea Seehorn were refreshing additions to the landscape.

AUBREY ANDERSON-EMMONS, RICO RODRIGUEZ, ED O'NEILL, SOFIA VERGARA, NOLAN GOULD, TY BURRELL, JULIE BOWEN, SARAH HYLAND, ARIEL WINTER, ERIC STONESTREET, JESSE TYLER FERGUSON6. Modern Family
Because it’s consistently funny when you least expect it to be. There’s a lot of talk about the over-the-top performers on this show — like Eric Stonestreet and Ty Burrell — but the real heart of this show is Ed O’Neill who delivers a consistent, grounded, underplayed performance week after week. He’s not recognized for this anti-Al Bundy turn, but he should. Critics who know better should realize that he’s the glue that’s holding the whole damn thing together. Every time I think that MF is close to jumping the shark, it pulls itself back from the edge. Also, as the children have grown, all of them have gotten better and better, particularly Nolan Gould, who plays Luke Dunphy.

Cougar TownAnd not on the network any longer:
Cougar Town
Courteney Cox leads Bill Lawrence’s band of wine-swilling crazies through an odd Florida town. Axed as an underperformer after two seasons on ABC, it’s found new life on TBS with two 13-episode seasons — one just concluded and one upcoming. If you understand Penny Can, Dime Eyes and Big Carl, you’re onto the shenanigans in the cul de sac. It’s devilishly clever in a truly oddball sort of way. It’s to group-of-friends comedies what Scrubs was to hospital comedies. Makes sense, because they were created by the same warped mind.

Last week, the networks axed numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5. So, I’m done with TV now. The cable company gets a call on Monday and the hundreds of channels with nothing on them but five-year-old reruns of Paula Deen deep-frying bacon-wrapped lard balls in butter and Housewives of (fill in a place) and Kardashians and hoarders and Honey Boo Boo and rednecks in swamps can all go away and I’ll save thousands of dollars over the next year and it will make me ecstatic not to have to pay that money to hellish Comcast!

Besides, most of the stuff that I watch comes from abroad. I watch A LOT of stuff from the U.K. on the computer. I watch a number of excellent independent Web series and even the back-from-the-dead All My Children. With the possible exception of losing out on new episodes of The Big Bang Theory and NCIS (because sometimes you just don’t want to have to think), why do I need cable if I have Hulu and Netflix and Amazon and YouTube and enough minor technical knowledge to sneak behind the occasional poorly built firewall?

And that’s my new normal.

Besides, NBC, any network that pays Matt Lauer millions of dollars to stay ON television certainly does not want me watching.

Kickstarter Responds to Zach Braff Critics

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Kickstarter Responds to Critics of Zach Braffs Campaign.| Mashable

Kickstarter has been criticized on and off in recent months for allowing celebrities to use the crowdfunding service to raise money — most recently Zach Braff, who raised more than $2 million on Kickstarter for a follow-up to his movie Garden State. Now, Kickstarter has decided to break its silence and address the issue.

This crap annoys me. It’s a kind of reverse snobbery that gets right up under my fingernails. Why should Zach Braff be barred from crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter? Because he’s well-known? Because he was once on a quirky TV comedy? Because he may have contacts that may get him access to other funds?

I’m calling bullshit on it all.

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Behind the camera, filmmaker and actor Zach Braff. Image: Kickstarter and Zach Braff via Mashable.

Look, who’s going to be the arbiter of who is too famous or too wealthy or too connected to participate on your crowdfunding site? The arguments don’t hold water. If the idea is for the artist to have more control, how does the notoriety (or lack thereof) of the artist in question matter? If Zach Braff doesn’t want to make a movie with studio funds — and studio strings — why is he any damn different from Joe Smith from Flushing, Queens?

One of the Kickstarter guys said earlier that he hoped that [insert name of someone famous here that I’ve forgotten already] wouldn’t run their crowdfunding project on Kickstarter because it might scare off the person looking for $500 to fund her lithography project.

Guess what? That’s Kickstarter’s problem. It’s called marketing. You have to tell people how to raise $500 and tell people how to raise $50 million. OR cap the amount of money you’re going to allow people to solicit. Other than that, shut up already about your enterprise being TOO successful.

PS – The link above also contains a jump to an excellent video with Braff explaining his take on crowdsourcing, social media and interacting with fans.

Boehner Accidentally Explains Why His Deficit Position Is Phony

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Boehner Accidentally Explains Why His Deficit Position Is Phony – Bloomberg.

Yesterday, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, House Speaker John Boehner warned that the U.S. government must balance its budget. After all, he said:

“We have spent more than what we have brought into this government for 55 of the last 60 years. There’s no business in America that could survive like this. No household in America that could do this. And this government can’t do this.”

It’s hard to think of better evidence for the sustainability of budget deficits than the fact that we have run them for 55 of the last 60 years. 

This is a brilliant piece by Josh Barro on Bloomberg. His best example is the use of Wal-Mart and its extravagant debt and why the company can continue to grow its debt while growing its bottom line.

It’s the same argument that Warren Buffett has repeatedly used when talking about the national debt: debt analysis is a ratio. The ratio of debt to income was enormously out-of-kilter during World War II. It’s not that way now. In spite of the fact that the Federal debt is larger than it’s ever been, so is the “earning power” of the government.

Save this link and shove it under the nose of the next person who bitches about how large the deficit is and how we’re killing our grandchildren’s futures.

Why Rachel Maddow Is Right To Be Outraged

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Why Rachel Maddow Is Right To Be Outraged.

Excellent piece by Saeed Jones on BuzzFeed. If you’re not familiar, the great Maddow went over the top on the air (and rightly so) criticizing Politifact for refusing to actually say that Martina Navratilova was correct — even after they checked the facts and found out she was correct — and called her response “half true.”

No one does righteous indignation as good as Maddow. This is probably because it is the province of the uber-smart and witty, which absolutely describes Maddow to a tee.

But Jones is no slouch, it seems, in that department. Here’s how he sums up:

And I have this unfortunate habit of needing to write essays when I’m angry. I sit at my computer, grating my teeth, hearing Zora Neale Hurston say over and over again, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

Supposedly objective dismissal of inconvenient facts as “half truths” or dramatics is more than galling; it’s oppressive. The questions, “Why does this matter?” and, “Why are you so angry?” are conjoined twins, both hissing that we don’t even have a right to our own outrage.

Carnival’s Latest Cruise Ship Snafu

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Couple Missing From Carnival Cruise Ship — Daily Intelligencer.

Rescuers are searching the waters off the coast of Forster, Australia for 30-year-old Paul Rossington and 26-year-old Kristen Schroder. (Surveillance camera footage shows the pair falling from their Carnival deck on Wednesday night.) 

Remember when Regis and Kathy Lee were shilling for the Carnival “fun ships?”

Listen, if you get on one of these poop cruise extravaganzas today, well, you get what you pay for!

And you know what? Back in the day, they weren’t all that fun either.

Here’s a true story for you. My partner and I had only been dating a few months when we went on a Carnival Caribbean cruise with another couple. One night, some binge-drinking “WOO!” girl was in the ship’s piano bar. She leans over to the piano player and says “HEY! I’ll show you my tits (TEEEEE-uts) if you play ‘The Stars Fell on Alabama!” Lee whacks me on the arm and says, “We’re leaving.” That’s the moment I knew we were destined for each other!