Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are my new television heroes.

Tonight’s 90 minute finale of the co-produced BBC/HBO series Extras provided some of the funniest and most poignant moments in television for this or any year. And forgive me for speaking in hyperbole, because I’m likely to continue doing so.

The “Extra Special Series Finale” in many ways is a complement to The Office’s Christmas special, which satisfyingly wrapped up that series for an audience begging for some closure. Extras needed a bit of closure itself, with lead character Andy Millman (Gervais) seemingly resigned to his middling celebrity, and all its trappings, at the end of season two.

The finale picks up the plot a year later, with Millman about to wrap the third series of the show-within-a-show When the Whistle Blows. In season one, Millman was an earnest character who was surrounded with flighty friends and a bumbling agent (Merchant) who couldn’t get him any prestigious work. In season two, Millman’s star rose and he became far less sympathetic as the fame went straight to his head.

And the special finds Millman at his most loathsome, resenting his undignified fame and his representation to the point that he can no longer connect on a personal level with anyone else. When he quits his sitcom in a huff and fires Darren, his agent, he must decide whether he wants fame or prestige. He chooses the former and finds himself on a celebrity version of Big Brother, where he finds he’s the most famous and desperate among a decidedly desperate, D-list lot.

While filming the show, Millman has a revelation about his fame, which I won’t spoil here, but it’s an incredibly harrowing moment and a brilliant commentary on the state and nature of celebrity.

Gervais and Merchant don’t expose themselves as wonderful screenwriters here — that much has already been known — but it was truly surprising to see the degree to which the Extras finale revealed them as auteurs. The pair have written and directed every episode of the series, and it’s always looked great on screen (the format of the show allows for a much broader cinematic palette than did the faux-documentary style of The Office), but this extended episode is splendidly directed, with longer takes and a wider range of angles than the series had attempted before. This looks like the kind of Hollywood movie that the Millman character would have ascribed to be part of.

So what’s next for Merchant and Gervais? Extras has helped answer a lot of questions about the pair being one hit wonders, especially Stateside. It will be interesting to see where they go from here, especially with Gervais’s stock being on the rise individually.

Will they do another series, or “next stop Hollywood”?

Odds and Ends: Are You Havin’ a Laugh?

A few bits of news and notes from around the airwaves:

First, it looks like late night TV could be making a comeback some time in early January, with Letterman, Leno, Conan and Craig Ferguson falling under the pressure of declining ratings. Some or all of these hosts are WGA members, so they may be facing a hellstorm if they cross the line. This also begs the question of what the makeup of these shows will be without a full writing staff (Brace yourselves for three full segments with Heath Ledger!). Also, no word on any potential returns for The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, which are a great deal more writer-intensive than the network talkers.

The series finale of Extras, airing on HBO Sunday, is getting glowing reviews. I may have to catch up on the second season over the weekend.

And the nominess for the Golden Globe Awards were announced yesterday. Seriously, Californication?

Also I’d like to thank Google for the fact that Mentos and Manatees is the number one hit for the search “American Gladiators preview,” which has brought a great deal of unsuspecting traffic. Now I feel strangely obligated to watch the thing.

>>Latenight tries to stage comeback [Variety]
>>Extra Who Found Fame Has Now Found The Exit [The New York Times]
>>HFPA — Nominations and Winners [Hollywood Foreign Press Association]

30 Rock: Season Two, Episode 9, “Ludachristmas”

So it’s come to this (almost): the penultimate, or possibly last, episode of 30 Rock for the season (There are rumors of a tenth episode to air in January, but little information is available). If it’s the last one, they’ve gone out on a high note. I mean, look at Donaghy in that sweater. They didn’t even have to write jokes for this episode.

Continuing with season two’s great string of guest stars, we get a reprise of Elaine Stritch’s role as Jack’s mother, and Andy Richter as Liz Lemon’s brother, forever stuck in 1985 thanks to an unfortunate skiing accident. In fact, we saw the whole Lemon crew this week, visiting from whatever jerkwater midwestern burg they hail from. Donaghy, predictably, had never interacted with such earnest, genuine people, and was (almost) immediately taken with them.

But of course, on 30 Rock, nothing is ever quite as it seems, and the Lemons were exposed as a real family, warts and all. Ending the episode with a tender moment between Donaghy and his mother would be a nice capper to the season should it end here. Hopefully, though, it won’t. The end of 30 Rock will mark the point where television withdrawal will finally set in.

Lastly, hats off to the line, “It wouldn’t be a Lemon party without old Dick!” which surely flew right over the heads of 95 per cent of the viewership. Moments like that are what makes the show so great, like a filthy Christmas miracle.

Saturday Night Live Classic: Steve Martin’s Holiday Wish

Sparing us another excruciating episode of Scrubs, NBC tonight treated us to a rerun of its Saturday Night Live Christmas special, complete with timely Martha Stewart jokes, hosted by alums Tina Fey (yay!) and Jimmy Fallon (boo!).

Above is a monologue which I loved years ago, but completely forgot existed. I share it with you now. SNL has had a long tradition of great holiday moments, from Eddie Murphy’s Gumby Christmas special, to holiday greetings from Tonto, Tarzan and Frankenstein, to Alec Baldwin’s sack of Schwetty Balls. Granted, you have to wade through a whole mess of Mary Katherine Gallagher bits to get to them.

This is one of the best.

>>‘A Holiday Wish’, by Steve Martin [LiveVideo.com]

ESPN’s “Comprehensive” Mitchell Report Coverage

Like many sports fans, I’ve been glued to the TV today watching former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s press conference about steroid use in baseball and the subsequent five hours of ESPN coverage. And by “glued to the TV” I mean “dozing off periodically and listening for names.”

The report has named around 50 current and former Major League players as steroid users, including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Andy Petitte and Miguel Tejada. The report includes, as an appendix, copies of checks signed by a number of major leaguers who procured anabolic steroids, testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH) from a variety of sources, including a former New York Mets clubhouse assistant who is currently under indictment for his role in a steroid distribution ring.

ESPN has gone into full on overkill mode as the revelations have come out, going commercial-free for nearly an hour during Mitchell’s press conference, and airing a special five-hour SportsCenter, anchored by Bob Ley, Karl Ravech, Buster Olney, John Kruk, Steve Phillips and others. ESPN is also airing complete press conferences by baseball commissioner Bud Selig and representatives from the Major League Baseball Players Association.

The coverage is, to say the least, excessive, considering that no one at ESPN (or anywhere else in the media for that matter) has completely read the report. Ley has repeatedly been reading excerpts from the report over the air, as he has been reading it himself.

Additionally, ESPN has only paid lip service in terms of its impartiality to the fact that one of its own personalities, Baseball Tonight correspondent Fernando Vina, has been named in the report. No comment from Vina has been forthcoming, and, while ESPN has repeatedly discussed numerous players named in the report, especially Clemens (whose revelation of steroid use is the subject of a great deal of schadenfreude from a wide swath of baseball fandom), Vina’s name was only brought up briefly, immediately after Mitchell’s press conference ended. It will be interesting to see if Vina suffers any repercussions from this, especially given ESPN’s strong editorial stance against steroid users.

On a personal note, I lament the revelation of the (previously) open secret of childhood favorite Lenny Dykstra’s (pictured above) drug use. You could’ve done it all without the juice, Nails.

Updated: ESPN is reporting Clemens’s denial. That ought to keep them on the air an extra hour.

>> Mitchell Report [MLB]
>> Live Blogging the George Mitchell Presser [Deadspin]

Project Runway: Season 4, Episode 5, “What’s the Skinny?”

The major pratfall of reality television is that, as time goes by, season to season, new contestants emulate old ones. Characters fall into categories, and casting directors select accordingly. This may help explain the popularity of the form, but it also leads to a certain degree of one-dimensionality.

Project Runway has been one dimensional from the start, owing to its selection of contestants from a very narrow profession. How many different kinds of low-level fashion professionals can you find?

This season, the show’s fourth, has (by PR’s standards) had a more diverse group of players, like Chris, the Broadway costume designer, and Elisa, the New Age-y marionette maker. This has led, at least early on, to some pretty campy fare. Elisa insists on imbuing every piece of fabric with either bodily fluids or grass stains, to keep her garments “closer to nature.” Chris, predictably, has been criticized for being too “costume” in his designs, like his bizarre bright blue and red-ribboned affair this week. The more eccentric the characters, the better the entertainment value, but this also leads to some awful clothing. Not that the more acclaimed designers don’t create their share of terrible designs as well.

And the awful and bizarre are what keep the fashion laypeople of America hooked (myself included). There’s more joy to be had in cheering on the failure of a hated contestant that rooting for a beloved character’s masterwork. There’s also a certain sadness when when a genuine, likeable designer gets booted (like Steve this week, who was given the insurmountable task of repurposing a plus-sized wedding dress, an assignment at which he failed with gusto).

It’s the sour grapes that make Project Runway profitable, but it’s also what makes it less human. All things being equal, the likeable bad designer will be dismissed before the unlikeable one. But we continue to watch all the same, to see what that unlikeable character will do next. Which is what makes reality television completely unlike reality. In real life, we can’t just approach the people we don’t like as voyeurs. We have to stay away completely, or, worse, live among them.

Alex Trebek’s Heart Attack: The Day After

I just wanted to use my little corner of the interwebiverse to wish a speedy recovery to Alex Trebek, who is recovering in a Los Angeles hospital after having had a mild heart attack Monday night.

Being a trivia nerd, Jeopardy! has consistently been one of my favorite shows to watch since I was about ten years old. And I couldn’t imagine it being hosted by anyone but Sudbury, Ontario’s finest. Come back soon.

Also, please, no more “Alex Trebek’s heart is in jeopardy jokes.” They demean us all.

>>Alex Trebek has heart attack [CNN]

Last Call With Carson Daly: PAs Neglect to Screen Studio Audience for WGA Cards; All Hell Breaks Loose

Carson Daly, human puppet, made big news last week by announcing his Last Call would be the first late night talker to resume production in the wake of the writers’ strike. Naturally, Daly took considerable flack for this, even though most of America simply yawned politely.

The show went back into production for two shows before its winter break, beginning with last night’s, which was repeatedly interrupted by a group of striking writers who showed up to heckle. Via Defamer:

During an interview with former NFL great Jerry Rice, a writer pretending to be an audience member heckled Daly, claiming he “needed a writer” to ask better questions. Production assistants and NBC security swooped upon the scribe and escorted him, without resistance, from the building.

Rice, who had appeared on the program to shill for Dancing With the Stars, a show on which he was a cast member several seasons ago, was asked to repeat the interview from the beginning, only to have the taping interrupted again. At that time, all writers were asked to leave the audience, and they did so without complaint. Presumably, after the two false starts, a third taping of the interview went to air.

A strange show of force by the writers, and one which was apparently effective for publicity’s sake. Considering that Last Call is the least watched of all of NBC’s late night programs, and that only two shows were being taped before a holiday break, it seems to me that NBC was putting Daly’s show back into production as a sort of test, to see if it would be possible to make their late night slate work under these circumstances. Further, since Daly himself is not a guild member (unlike his NBC late night fellows Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno), this was really the only show that NBC had the ability to rush back.

But what was the point? I can’t really imagine a new episode of Last Call would get a much higher rating than a rerun. What happens when you multiply by zero?

>>Striking Writers Disrupt Carson Daly Taping, Ruining His Talk Show Christmas [Defamer]

American Gladiators: Preview and Speculation

Of all the programming replacements scheduled in the wake of the WGA strike, American Gladiators intrigues me the most. As lazy as reality programming often comes across, Gladiators just seems especially lazy. It’s a remake that it seems like no one was clamoring for, yet it’s being billed as some large spectacle.

The show’s logo and font closely resembles that of NBC’s football coverage, and that, of course, is no accident. Sport on television is profitable because of its size and spectacle, football being the largest and most spectacular. So NBC here is trying to rebrand American Gladiators, that old late night, schlocky, syndicated gem, as a real sport. If you’ll recall, NBC has dipped its toe into the pond of pseudo-sports before, with its co-ownership (with the WWF’s Vince McMahon) of the quickly-defunct XFL, a bizarre hybrid of American football and professional wrestling. So, I guess it should be no surprise that NBC has tapped former WWF star Hulk Hogan to host the new Gladiators. NBC figures to have more success this time around, since the strike has left behind an listless audience the likes of which the XFL never had in its only season on the air.

So, can this new incarnation of Gladiators really create a hybrid sport/reality program of value? It will, like its predecessor, place a capital on individual achievement against powerful enemies. That alone should be enough to cultivate some decent sized audience. Plus, the format of the show lends itself to be interpreted as some cross-section of sports and war. Put all this together, and in the current American marketplace, this show could be a huge ratings winner. Just don’t get the idea that this is a sport. NBC should have learned its lesson about trying to create one.

>>R. Goldman and S. Papon, “There are Many Paths to Heaven,” Nike Culture London: Sage Publications, 1998.
>>American Gladiators [NBC]

The Wire’s Online “Prequels”

HBO has announced that it will release a series of short films, or
“prequels,” which detail the back story of some of the characters for their series The Wire, which enters its final season in January. The short films will be available for free online at both Amazon.com and HBO.com, and through HBO On Demand for HBO subscribers.

Two points of interest here. First, it’s interesting to see a pay television service provide free content in the same way that some broadcast networks, like NBC, have turned to their own online services to control the flow of their content. While NBC’s online programming is advertiser-supported, HBO’s Wire prequels will not be, which points to HBO using the content as a publicity agent, an advertisement for its pay service, all while providing additional material for its hardcore fans. It’s hard to argue with this as a marketing strategy.

On the other hand, as this is a marketing phenomenon, I’m curious, in light of the WGA strike, as to if or how much the writers were paid to create this content. The expectation of writers to create online content like this for little or no pay has been a major sticking point in the labor dispute. Writers for NBC’s The Office complained about this in a video piece produced from the picket line in the early days of the strike:

This all points to the changing nature of the business complex of entertainment. As the WGA has been quick to point out, as adjustments have been made in the production of content in the new media age, so much changes be made to its economic infrastructure. The old business models are outdated and unusable. The audience has largely thus far been a beneficiary of the increased amount of available entertainment content, but the hidden consequences are just beginning to be felt.

>>HBO’s ‘Wire’ plugs in VOD vignettes [Hollywood Reporter]
>>The Office is Closed [YouTube]