TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2010
TELEVISION ABC’s going ‘Blue,’ because these
rookies could pull in a lot of green
THE TV COLUMN Lisa de Moraes
season, after only its third broadcast on the network. It’s referring, of course, to its rookie-cop drama “Rookie Blue,” though this may come as something of a surprise to those Reporters Who Cover Television who have been piling on since its premiere June 24. (“In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king” was the verdict from
Deadline.com.) On a rainy day, have fun comparing their lackluster write-ups on “Rookie Blue,” the opening of which attracted more than 7million people, with last summer’s “OMG can you believe how many people are watching USA’s new ‘Royal Pains’!” stories, about a show that attracted 5.6million in its debut. “Rookie,” shot entirely on location in
A
Toronto, is about five hot rookie cops who are “thrown into the world of big city policing” and are learning (cliche alert!) “that no amount of training can prepare them for this job — or life,” ABC says. It stars several faces familiar to U.S. viewers, including Missy Peregrym (“Reaper,” “Heroes”), Gregory Smith (“Everwood”) and Enuka Okuma (“24”). ABC picked up “Rookie” for a second season because: A) It is attracting about 2.4million 18-to-49-year-olds — the crack cocaine of Madison Avenue. B) “Rookie” costs about as much, per episode, as your average reality series because it’s a Canadian production; ABC has bought the U.S. broadcast rights.
C) Advertisers still prefer scripted shows over reality programs. D) In the teeth of ESPN’s big wet kiss
to NBA star LeBron James on Thursday, which suckered 10.8 million people into watching LeBron announce he was going to throw over loyal Clevelandians to “take my talents to South Beach” and play for the Miami Heat, “Rookie Blue” hung on to more than 6million fans. E) “Rookie” has story lines like this
week’s, in which hot rookie Andy, played by Peregrym, trades in her police uniform for something more risque when she goes undercover as a prostitute. Ka-ching!
Not so ‘Hot in Cleveland’
You know what’s the most amazing thing about TV Land’s first-ever scripted series, “Hot in Cleveland”? You think it can’t get any worse. And
BC announced Monday that it is picking up the summer’s “hottest new scripted series” for a second
TOM SHALES On TV
STEVE WILKIE/ABC
ON THE BEAT: Missy Peregrym stars as Andy on “Rookie Blue.”
then it does! Joe Jonas has been signed to guest-star on this sitcom, in which the enormously talented Wendie Malick gets punished for something really bad that she must have done in her youth. She’s playing a middle-age actress who attempts to fly from Los Angeles to Paris with her similarly aged gals Jane Leeves and Valerie Bertinelli, who is still of the “adorable” school of acting. Anyway, their flight gets rerouted to Cleveland, and they decide to stay because the town is “less shallow, youth-obsessed and weight-conscious than L.A.” — and they lease a home haunted by a crazy caretaker (Betty White). Joe Jonas — he’s the least-talented one with the most primped-over hair who was dating Demi Lovato when they had a duet in the Disney movie “Oceans” that they were plugging — is going to play Bertinelli’s son. Heaven help us.
Oprah biopic chatter
TV producer Larry Thompson has optioned Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized biography about Oprah Winfrey, and he is trying to sell it to a network. The easiest way to do that these days
is to “leak” it to the press, in the form of a news release, and let them jump all over it like white on rice — which he did, and they did, Monday afternoon. Thompson told some media outlets
that the movie will air in September 2011, which would coincide with Oprah’s sign off from her syndicated talk show. This, the media reported without question or qualification, even though the project hasn’t yet been sold to — you know — a network.
demoraesl@washpost.com
television and cable channels even as America continues to struggle its way out of a crippling recession brought on at least partly by the country’s mad spending bender, a reckless epidemic of consumer credit run amok. What to do? Spend more, the credit card ads imply; dig yourself even deeper into debt and don’t worry about it. After all, everybody does it. “It’s time to wind up the masquerade,” warns an old show tune. “Just make your mind up / the piper must be paid.” That was “The Party’s Over,” and it was about the end of a love affair, but so in a way is this; we’ve got to break up with a longtime lover who’s been draining us dry.
I
Like sugar and, oh, let’s say the most tabloidy and gossipy reality television programs, credit is, for millions, genuinely addictive. In a solid and sobering 2006 documentary called “Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders,” filmmaker James D. Scurlock compared credit to a habit-forming drug, even in the way it’s sneakily disseminated throughout the population. Kids in college often find solicitations in their mail inviting them to receive a free credit card and, perhaps, to pay a teasingly low interest rate for the first months or year in which they use the card. By the time they’re thinking about home and family, they’re totally hooked. In November, PBS’s “Frontline” offered
“The Card Game,” a kind of unofficial follow-up to Scurlock’s film and a hard-hitting cry of alarm. One of the tycoons who helped popularize Everybody Credit and came up with the notion of seducing consumers by making it cheap or, at first, even free (then raising the rates once the consumer had built up a substantial balance), defended it in the documentary as a clever and productive business practice. Shailesh Mehta, former CEO of the notorious Providian Bank, smiled with satisfaction, and no trace of guilt, as he talked about Providian’s inspired marketing: target low-income families (dubbed “the unbanked”) who could least afford luxuries and dangle delicious possibilities in front of them. Of course once they were mired in
debt, Providian lowered the boom with higher interest and a panoply of special charges. Some of those were outlawed by
t floors me that credit card companies are still running costly, lavishly produced commercials on network
KLMNO
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Credit where credit’s not due: An unending tale
MARLENA TELVICK
PAY NOW, PAY LATER: Credit card companies may have been reined in somewhat by recent legislation, but the lures they dangle are everywhere apparent.
the limited credit and mortgage reform that passed Congress earlier this year, but experts in the field pointed out that banks will have little trouble squeezing through loopholes or devising new unsavory practices just as profitable as the ones now forbidden. Reform came after years of frustration for consumer groups trying to curb the credit bender — and no wonder. Scurlock reported in “Maxed Out” that the largest single donor to congressional campaigns was MBNA, a gargantuan lender (since merged into even larger banks) with the most to lose if reform were ever put into law.
If debt and credit worries give you insomnia, meanwhile, and you find yourself in the bizarre bazaar of all-night programming — and all those hard-sell all-night commercials — you may have noticed that ads for even riskier and costlier consumer credit are proliferating. You, too, can get fast relief via quickie loans of $1,500 or more — at astronomical interest rates. Or why not raid dear little granny’s jewelry box for old gold pieces she might not notice are missing? Plop them into a little envelope, send them in, and get new cash for old gold. Television’s escapist programming
naturally continues to endorse living beyond one’s means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess. The tremendous and expanding gap between the very rich and the poor is ignored, while lavish lifestyles are portrayed — as always in escapist pop lit —as desirably glamorous, spiritually fulfilling and a happy capitalist’s just deserts.
And here come those funny, funny Vikings (or whatever they’re supposed to
be) asking “What’s in your wallet?” (a smutty reference to the prophylactics that some guys tote around in their billfolds?) and urging you to spend like there’s no tomorrow, even though tomorrow is here — it’s been here for months — and has put the kibosh on many a sybaritic field day. During World War II, Eddie Cantor promoted fiscal responsibility in one of his song hits. Since unnecessary spending breeds inflation, he trilled, “we’re staying home tonight, my baby and me, having a patriotic time.” It seems unlikely we’ll see such a campaign today. The perils of credit and debt, especially perilous in the computer age, have long been acknowledged in pop culture, but very infrequently by TV. A daring exception to the rule was an episode of ABC’s ambitious but low-rated legal drama “Judd for the Defense,” which aired from 1967-69. In an episode called “Epitaph on a Computer Card,” William Daniels brilliantly portrayed a heavily indebted businessman whose unsuccessful attempts to correct a computer mistake on a credit-card bill eventually drive him mad, or at least to what used to be called a “nervous breakdown.” In the intervening 30-plus years,
network TV has very rarely approached the subject, sadly understandable when one considers who pays the bills and buys the advertising on all those shows —all those shows that tell us everything is just peachy and there’s little need to worry, and why wait until tomorrow for what you deserve today?
shalest@washpost.com
ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM Tom Shales talks television and culture at noon at
washingtonpost.com/style.
HIGHLIGHTS “PBS NewsHour” (WETA at 7
p.m.) airs reports from Haiti this week, and Tuesday evening Ray Suarez talks with Haitian President René Préval about rebuilding there after the tragic earthquake. Fox takes advantage of its broadcast of the MLB All-Star Game (at 8) as one of its network stars — Amber Riley, who plays Mercedes on “Glee” — sings the national anthem. The evil “A” can’t even let the teens have a normal high school dance, as some secrets are spilled that threaten to ruin homecoming on “Pretty Little Liars” (ABC Family at 8). The trainer travels to
Michigan on “Losing It With Jillian” (NBC at 8) when a couple, stressed from losing their business, don’t have the motivation to commit to a healthy lifestyle.
On the second-season premiere of “White Collar” (USA at 9), a bank robber tries to get the best of Neal and Peter, as the men scramble to stay ahead of the criminal. Kathy Griffin comes to
Washington on “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List” (Bravo at 10), and Hank Stuever previews the comedian’s visit on Page C1. » PREMIERE WATCH: “Covert
Affairs” (USA at 10): The drama series — described as an “Alias” lite, with similar secret agent
BROADCAST CHANNELS
story lines but no Jennifer Garner — kicks off Tuesday night with Piper Perabo (“Coyote Ugly”) starring as Annie Walker, a young CIA trainee who is called up to the big leagues. » FINALE WATCH: “The Hills”
(MTV at 10): Over the past four years, it’s been difficult to differentiate between what happened on the MTV reality series and what the celebrity magazines chronicled during the on- and off-screen adventures of Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt, Audrina Patridge, Whitney Port and the gang. Nonetheless, the show wraps up for good Tuesday night, and while the main cast has gone off to bigger and better things (book deals, spinoff shows, tabloid covers) Kristin Cavallari holds down the fort in the series finale. However, former star Conrad does stop by the reunion show, “The Hills: A Hollywood Ending,” at 11 p.m. Tommy keeps insisting he’s
going to stop drinking on “Rescue Me” (FX at 10). “Late Show With David
Letterman” (CBS at 11:35) features actress Kristin Chenoweth and musical guest M.I.A. Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt is a guest on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” (NBC at 11:35), along with actor Jay Baruchel.
— Emily Yahr
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GOODBYE: Clockwise from top: Audrina Patridge, Heidi Montag, Whitney Port and Lauren Conrad wrap up MTV’s “The Hills.”
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