2007 ACE Eddies Nominations

The American Cinema Editors have announced the nominees for their annual Eddie Awards, including, for the first time, a category for reality television programs. Winners will be announced at a nontelevised ceremony Feb. 16 at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.

The Eddies are interesting because they separate the one-hour television nominees into separate categories for commercial and non-commercial (i.e., pay cable) programming, which means that for once the broadcast networks don’t have to worry about being overshadowed by HBO and Showtime.

A complete list of television nominees can be found behind the cut…

Torchwood Producer to Helm LAW & ORDER: LONDON

Torchwood writer-producer Chris Chibnall has been tapped as showrunner for the U.K. version of Law & Order being produced for ITV. Chibnall, who will serve as executive producer of the new show, has also written for Doctor Who and Life on Mars, and was the co-creator of Born and Bred.

Law & Order: London will be produced in conjunction with Wolf Films and NBC Universal, and follows in the footsteps of French and Russian versions of the franchise’s Criminal Intent and SVU brands. Though based on scripts from the original U.S. series, the show will be retooled to reflect the ins and outs of the British legal system. ITV has ordered 13 episodes and it’s expected the series will eventually makes its way across the pond on one of NBC’s cable networks, such as USA or Bravo.

WGA Cancels Its Own Awards Show

There will be no WGA Awards show until the strike is resolved. So said a brief statement issued by the WGA West on Thursday, only hours after the WGA’s feature film award nominations were announced (the television nominations were previously announced in December). The winners of the WGA awards will be announced on February 4 as planned, but there will be no accompanying ceremony and fanfare unless, by some miracle, the strike has ended by then.

According to Variety, the WGA East has not yet decided whether it will proceed with its awards event, which has been set for the Hudson Theater at the Broadway Millenium Hotel in Gotham. “We are exploring our options and we will let you know when we have made a decision,” said WGA East rep Sherry Goldman.

PSYCH: Hop on the Pineapple Express

Not a drop of rain in sight!

Look, Psych isn’t going to change your life. Its mysteries aren’t any better than the ones on the grimy procedurals. There are no overarching swaths of character growth that reward obsessive viewing. It’s not populated by young people who look like they’ve been carved from marble. But you know what Psych does have going for it? It’s lots of fun–and who doesn’t like having fun?

Do you really need to know anything beyond a premise that has a loveable gadabout and verbal gymnast (James Roday) who worked 57 jobs (including selling concessions at six consecutive baseball All-Star games and driving the Weinermobile) before realizing that the observational skills drilled into him by a cop father (Corbin Bernsen) allow him to solve crime under the guise of being a psychic? Or that said fake psychic’s long-suffering best friend–speller extraordinaire and possessor of the SuperSniffer–is played by The West Wing‘s Dule Hill? Or that the intrigued police chief is none other than Young Mrs. Landingham (Kristen Nelson)?

Fine–try these on for size: they once solved a crime by pretending to channel a cat who got shotgun privileges in the tiny blue Toyota Yaris they drive. The show recently cast Tim Curry and Gina Gershon as Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul doubles. At the end of every first run of an episode, they show a “Psych-Out,” which usually involves the cast bursting into song. Characters sometimes wear Civil War-era uniforms or dinosaur heads. And they work a pineapple into every episode. Watching Psych is like eating a banana split–it might be empty calories, but it sure tastes good, and by Friday night you’ve earned a little treat. New episodes start Friday, January 11, on USA Network, which is showing a marathon of previous Season Two episodes all day in anticipation–bet I can find the pineapple before you do.

2007 DGA Television Nominees

The Directors Guild of America today announced its nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television for the year 2007. The winners will be named at the DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, Jan. 26, at the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. The list of nominees can be found under the cut…

CHUCK Tries Out Thursday Night

NBC will broadcast two of the remaining new episodes of Chuck on Thursday, Jan. 24, at 8 p.m. and again at 10 p.m. (ET). The Chuck episodes will be sandwiched around an episode of Celebrity Apprentice airing from 9-10 p.m. Ugh. See, this is why I have a TiVo.

CASHMERE MAFIA: No.

You know what I would like to see on my television? Smart, powerful women who own their own damn selves. Smart, powerful women who own their own damn selves and aren’t made the butt of jokes for doing it (Ugly Betty, I’m looking at you). Unlike the caricatures on the offensive, painful mess that is Cashmere Mafia, the smart, powerful women I know like themselves enough that they wouldn’t make excuses for some asshat who cheats on them by whimpering about how hard it must be to live with a smart, powerful woman. And they really, really wouldn’t preface those excuses by saying they’re not making excuses for men who are so useless they can’t stand to live with a smart, powerful woman (in fairness, that’s not the laziest part of the writing. The laziest part is a meet-cute where two people bonk heads while trying to pick something up off the floor. Aren’t you clever!).

As I noted when the ghastly The Devil Wears Prada came out, I am sick nigh unto death of pop culture that teaches us that ambitious women must be punished–and, specifically, that they must be punished by men who are right to be affronted by female ambition. To any smart, powerful woman looking to own her own damn self, I say to you now: if Some Guy is uncomfortable with how much money you make or how fast you’ve moved up in the company or how well you juggle your kids or how sharp people think you are? Then he’s not good enough for you. There are worse things than being alone, and one of those worse things is being with someone who doesn’t want you to own your own bad self. The fact that Miranda Otto and Lucy Liu try to tell you otherwise while having the shiniest hair and the highest heels in the world doesn’t make them right–it just makes them empty. Don’t listen to them, don’t internalize them, and, most important, don’t watch their unbelievably stupid TV show. Own. Your. Damn. Self.

Or, as Tracy Jordan would put it more succinctly, “Stop eating people’s old french fries, Cashmere Mafia women. Have some self-respect. Don’t you know you can fly?”

Guide to January Series Premieres

Despite the lingering writers strike, the television future is not entirely bleak. In addition to the impending return of shows like Lost and Jericho, we’ve got a slate of new mid-season series premieres to warm the cockles of our hearts. Here’s a handy guide to what’s coming up this month.

CASHMERE MAFIA (ABC)
Premieres: Sunday, Jan. 6, at 10 PM
Time slot: Wednesdays at 10 PM
Description: Producer Darren Star (Sex And The City) brings us another show about four high-powered, catty women who sip trendy drinks and gab about their sexual misadventures. Not to be confused with Sex and the City originator Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle, premiering next month on NBC.
Cast: Bonnie Somerville, Frances O’Connor, Lucy Liu, Miranda Otto, Peter Hermann, Julian Ovenden

TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (FOX)
Premieres: Sunday, Jan. 13, at 8 PM
Time slot: Mondays at 9 PM
Description: With the help of an otherworldly protector (played by Firefly‘s Summer Glau), Sarah Connor starts fighting back against the Terminators that will stop at nothing to eliminate her son, the future leader of the resistance.
Cast: Lena Headey, Richard T. Jones, Summer Glau, Thomas Dekker

BREAKING BAD (AMC)
Premieres: Sunday, Jan. 20, at 10 PM
Time slot: Sundays at 10 PM
Description: From the mind of Vince Gilligan (The X-Files) comes this show about a high school chemistry teacher (played by Malcolm and the Middle‘s Bryan Cranston) sleepwalking through life until a terminal diagnosis wakes him up and inspires him to use his chemistry skills in pursuit of the American Dream.
Cast: Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, Betsy Brant, Bryan Cranston, Dean Norris, R.J. Mitte

IN TREATMENT (HBO)
Premieres: Monday, Jan. 28, at 9:30 PM
Time slot: Weeknights at 9:30 PM
Description: Based on the critically acclaimed Israeli series, this five-night-a-week serial tracks the weekly sessions between a psychotherapist named Paul (Gabriel Byrne) and his patients. Each night will be devoted to a specific patient – Laura (Melissa George) on Mondays, an anesthesiologist who is infatuated with the older, married Paul; Alex (Blair Underwood) on Tuesdays, a fighter pilot who’s still haunted by a botched raid he was involved in years before; Sophie (Australian newcomer Mia Wasikowska) on Wednesdays, a gymnast with Olympic dreams; and a married couple (Embeth Davidtz and Josh Charles) in counseling on Thursdays; with Fridays focusing on Byrne visiting his own therapist (Dianne Wiest), a former supervisor and mentor.
Cast: Blair Underwood, Dianne Wiest, Embeth Davidtz, Gabriel Byrne, Josh Charles, Melissa George, Mia Wasikowska

ELI STONE (ABC)
Premieres: Thursday, Jan. 31 at 10 PM
Time slot: Thursdays at 10 PM
Description: Are attorney Eli Stone’s bizarre visions a sign that the universe is guiding him to a higher purpose or just a symptom of an aneurysm like the one that plagued his tortured father? From exec producers Ken Olin, Marc Guggenheim and Greg Berlanti.
Cast: James Saito, Jonny Lee Miller, Laura Benanti, Loretta Devine, Matt Letscher, Natasha Henstridge, Sam Jaeger, Victor Garber

THE WIRE: No One Wins–One Side Just Loses More Slowly

HBO starts showing the final season of The Wire this Sunday (January 6), and I can’t decide whether I should be encouraging you to watch it. On one hand, you should totally watch it. It’s possibly–probably–the best show on television over the last three or four years. It features richer characters, more cleverly plotted stories, and more dedication to telling human truths than, well, just about anything. With “short” 13-episode seasons, the writers are able to commit to details in Episode 1 that invariably pay off in Episode 13–no show rewards remembering what’s come before more than does The Wire. And what writers we’re talking about here–David Simon (the brilliant Homicide: Life on the Street), Ed Burns (The Corner, with Simon), even George Pelecanos. That doesn’t even touch on the terrific performances, from everyone from established (even British!) actors to former felons.

On the other hand, I can understand resistance. This show is hard. It can be difficult to watch. And I’m not even talking about how often someone gets shot in the head (or other sensitive parts of the anatomy)–The Wire is ultimately about how institutions crush the American Dream, and that is hard to watch. It’s the dark mirror image of The West Wing–where Sam Seaborn might have argued that education is the silver bullet, The Wire shows what education is like just a few miles down the road from the White House. Why go to school when none of the things they teach there helps prepare you for life as a corner boy? One of the reasons The West Wing was such a high point for so many of us was because it showed us our government as we wanted it to be–The Wire will show you government as it is, and you’re not gonna be happy.

Ultimately, however, those problems are real, and the ways the individuals crushed by institutions just create more problems for those institutions means that former cop/new teacher Prez is right: no one wins; one side just loses more slowly. The Wire is a scream demanding that the fight itself change, and the fact that it’s hard to hear that is what makes the show so, so worth your time in the end. All four previous seasons are available on DVD–while the networks are trying to sell you fluffy reality shows about matchmaking farmers, check out the west side of Baltimore instead.

2008: The Year of Casual Sexism?

New Year’s Eve always depresses me, as I feel compelled to look back over the lost year that was and contemplate everything I didn’t accomplish (it probably doesn’t help that I’m doing this while slouching on the sofa in my pajamas instead of partying with the glitterati). On the other hand, the next day cheers me up, as I can consider the fresh new year and all the ways I won’t screw it up (January 4: have already screwed up fresh new year).

It’s been quite disappointing, then, to be confronted in the fresh new year with multiple blithe instances of casual sexism in my TV viewing:

—The Amazing Race: while struggling through a task that requires stringing a wedding garland, Big Strong Boyfriend chastises his partner for not being better at handling the flowers, what with her being a girl and all. This was very educational, as I had been unaware that possessing a vagina imbued one with magical abilities to make flower garlands. (I’d be more impressed that Snotty Girlfriend was able to come back with asking why Big Strong Boyfriend couldn’t row a boat better on a previous leg, what with being a boy and all, but her habit of calling other female racers bitches means she doesn’t have much wiggle room here.)

–ABC promos during college bowl games: I’d feel sorry for the announcers–I’m dismissive of Dance Wars: Hoohah versus Whatsit, too, and it can’t be fun to try to dredge up fake enthusiasm for such blatantly contrived garbage–if they hadn’t decided to solidify their manly, football-based credentials by linking their disdain so closely to the idea that only stupid chicks–and Other Persons of More Effeminate Natures, If You Get My Drift–were the target audience for the dance show. One can only hope they accomplished their goal of protecting the bowl audiences from getting their testosterone covered in sequins.

–MSNBC’s bizarre insistence on calling Senator Clinton by her first name. This may well be happening on the other 24-hour news channels, too, but the repeated use of “Hillary” to describe a major presidential candidate while still calling the candidates with dangly genitalia by their last names is dismissive, infantilizing, and insulting, and it just plain needs to stop. The woman has a last name–in fact, she has two. Pick one and use it, but stop calling her by her first name unless you intend to start talking about how Mike and Mitt are duking it out. Studies have shown that the tendency to refer to female athletes by their first names while persisting in using surnames for male athletes reinforces the privilege accorded to the “dominant” group–it’s hard not to think of that being an even more appalling state when dealing with reporting on American democracy. At least Keith Olbermann had the grace to notice this discrepancy on a graphic in his own show and seem upset by it.

Here’s hoping the year improves–and that the premieres of Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle don’t make matters worse. I can’t say I’m optimistic.