Well, the news (and non-news!) from Comic-Con just keeps rolling in. One of our favorite tidbits so far comes from the Lost: One Year Later panel, which had creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse claiming that they could shut up viewers who suspected they were making up the show as the went along with the “smoking gun” — a deleted scene from the Season 1 finale that would prove they had their mythology in order years before reality split and everybody went to heaven. Of course, the whole presentation (which even involved Stormtroopers because, you know, it was Comic-Con) was a joke, which Nerd Bastards reports was recently shot by Lost director Jack Bender on the Disney backlot. But it was a well-executed one, with Lindelof and Cuse proving they have a good sense of humor about their haters. Watch the three-minute video and learn the Man in Black’s name after the jump.
If you happened to be paying attention to Twitter around 11pm Sunday night, then it won’t be a surprise to you that viewers were tremendously frustrated with the way the first season of AMC’s The Killing ended. Although initially among the most promising new series of the year, it’s been trying audiences’ patience with its sloppy story line and poor character development for several episodes. In fact, when Nina Shen Rastogi at Slate graphed critics’ assessments as the season progressed, she discovered a pronounced downward trend. The Killing‘s precipitous plummet got us thinking about other shows that started out great but eventually lost steam. Our list of ten TV series that went bad is after the jump.
Today at Flavorpill, we got a first look at Sacha Baron Cohen in The Dictator, his upcoming Larry Charles comedy which we didn’t realize is based on a romance novel by Saddam Hussein. We were excited to hear that Disney has signed on Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof to write and produce a mysterious science fiction project called 1952, but we wanted some more details about the film. We watched John Carpenter’s video introduction to They Live, which is playing tonight at a special screening at the Alamo Drafthouse. We wondered if you get in more trouble at school for your penis prank when the results show up on Google Earth for the next two years. We traveled back in time to Brooklyn in the summer of 1974 thanks to this living wall outside of the National Gallery in London that was inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s A Wheatfield, With Cypresses. We searched for clues about the upcoming season of Breaking Bad in this newly-released promo poster. And finally, we laughed out loud as Sean Penn channeled his Fast Times character Jeff Spicoli in this clip from the 2011 Guys Choice Awards.
This week, the long-running WB-turned-CW drama Smallville airs its two-hour series finale. No doubt the most anticipated moment of the episode will be the return of Michael Rosenbaum reprising his role as Lex Luthor. The actor, who left the series in 2008, finally decided to come back due to the intense outcry of fans, who lobbied long and hard for the bald villain to bid adieu before Clark Kent flew off the airwaves forever. There are a variety of reasons why actors return to shows they had departed, including wrapping up storylines and honoring the series that launched them into stardom. Here is a look back on other actors who came back for the swan songs of their respective series. (Needless to say, there are spoilers ahead.)
Steve Carell is officially gone from The Office and, between that and this whole royal wedding thing, it feels like the world has sobbed itself dry. In fact, we just tried to cry as an experiment and couldn’t because there are no tears left. None at all. But do we blame the people? No, not really. Michael Scott’s goodbye on The Office was heart-wrenching, and it was hard to see our beloved Dunder Mifflinites go through that painful farewell, especially since every moment was underscored with the uncertainty of how the show itself will cope in future seasons. Will it sink or swim? It’s hard to say, but The Office is hardly the first show to part with a leading man or lady. After the jump, we calculate the odds with a look back at how some of the biggest shows fared after cutting main characters loose.
It’s been a rough few weeks for fans of quality TV. When AMC and Matthew Weiner finally worked out a deal to keep Mad Men going, we learned that Weiner is planning to end the show after only three more seasons. And now, because of Alec Baldwin’s big mouth (which, lest we forget, has gotten him in trouble before), we’re not sure whether or not 30 Rock will stop production next year. Instead of going into premature mourning, we’ve decided that this may well be for the best. Although many great TV series keep going for years after they’ve lost their magic, some wise showrunners make the noble decision to forsake a reliable paycheck and quit while they’re ahead. We look at ten shows that did just that after the jump.
1. Bill Murray will play FDR in an adaptation of the BBC radio play Hyde Park On the Hudson, which recounts the story of the president’s love affair with his distant cousin, Margaret Stuckley; the film will be directed by Morning Glory’s Roger Michell. [via Vulture]
2. Charlie Sheen and Snoop Dogg have reportedly laid down a track together. Maybe this means that Snoop will be coming along on Sheen’s live tour? [via Perez Hilton]
3. Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones will play Heather Locklear’s “younger hunky husband” in a new CBS comedy about life in Hollywood called The Assistants. [via Deadline]
4. Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak has reached an agreement with HarperCollins to publish Bumble-Ardy, the first book that he has both illustrated and written since 1981. If the title sounds familiar, it might be because it’s based on an animated segment for Sesame Street that aired in the early 1970s. [via UnBeige]
5. MTV has released the first official trailer for their Teen Wolf, and it’s just as angst and drama filled as you might have feared. [via io9]
We weren’t sure what to expect on Sunday’s Big Love finale. With only 70 minutes to tie up one of TV’s most tangled plot webs, the show was going to need a Joseph Smith-worthy miracle to finish up without seeming incomplete. And, thankfully, one of our favorite series actually pulled it off — but not without pulling the trigger on a few of its central characters. Now, it goes without saying that we should be happy to see TV’s villains die. But it struck us, watching this demise, that sometimes we enjoy seeing characters we were probably supposed to be rooting for meet their maker. After the jump, we round up seven TV deaths we shouldn’t have enjoyed but secretly loved. Spoilers abound throughout the post, but don’t scroll past page one if you don’t want to know which Big Love characters return to Heavenly Father.
Full disclosure: Matthew Perry was always our favorite Friend. So it was with unbridled enthusiasm that we tuned in to last night’s premiere of his new ABC series Mr. Sunshine, and y’know what? It’s pretty good. It has a bit of that fumbling-for-our-comic-voice thing that plagues just about every situation comedy pilot (including the aforementioned Friends— ever watch their first episode? Not promising!), but the writing is snappy, it’s an ideal vehicle for Perry’s dry wit, and it sports our new favorite TV theme song (watch the episode here). Best of all, the supporting cast includes Jorge Garcia (Hurley from Lost) and Allison Janney (C.J. from The West Wing) — so it’s a show full of people we’re glad to see back on TV.
And that got us thinking about other actors we miss from TV shows past. Some TV folks graduate to movies (George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Jim Carrey) while others bounce from one series to the next (Edie Falco, David Duchovny, Kelsey Grammer, Betty White, Peter Krause). But some kind of disappear from sight — either by choice (Jerry Seinfeld), by making poor choices (most of his co-stars), or by never flipping from recognizable character actor to name brand. Whatever the reasons may be, we’ve compiled a list of ten of our favorite TV actors who are overdue for a comeback vehicle.
Editor’s note: Each Friday, our internet-savvy friends over at BuzzFeed curate a post for us that’s filled with links to some of their favorite items on the web that week. Enjoy!
We’re only one week into 2011, and it’s obvious that the 2012 apocalypse theories are coming true: Reports of mass animal die-offs have been flooding our system, so we corralled them all together in one handy birdfishcrabpocalypse viral topic page. (Note: Penguins seem to be oblivious to the impending doom.) As if things couldn’t get any stranger, the winning Mega Millions Lottery Numbers bore striking similarities to the string of numerals Lost character Hurley was so obsessed with. And then it got really bad: all of the Chilis were closed. But let’s not kid around here. What you really want to know about is Ted Williams. Some have called his character into question after viewing over two decades worth of Ted’s mugshots, but seeing him reunited with his mother after 20 years, most of us couldn’t help but get teary-eyed. With all of this craziness bubbling up after only a week into the new year, it would be easy to forget the best video from the final days of 2010, but if you haven’t seen Charlotte, the cutest baby ever to hate everything, then you’re missing out.
