C4
S
TELEVISION After Letterman is snubbed,
blackmailer gets an Emmy nod
THE TV COLUMN Lisa de Moraes
Letterman’s CBS late-night talk show was not nominated for best variety show for the first time in that show’s history, the former CBS News producer jailed for trying to blackmail Letterman snagged an Emmy — for work he did on the network’s “48 Hours Mystery.” Robert “Joe” Halderman’s is by far the most interesting nomination from among the crop of News and Documentary Emmy Award noms announced Thursday. Letterman, meanwhile, was snubbed the previous Thursday when the so-called Primetime Emmy Awards nominations were revealed for entertainment programs in prime-time and late-night TV. Halderman’s up for the job he did producing “American Girl, Italian Nightmare” on “48 Hours Mystery” about U.S. exchange student Amanda Knox, who was charged with murder in Italy. He’s one of four producers nominated for the story in the competition for best continuing coverage of a news story by a newsmag. Halderman, who was fired by CBS News, began serving his jail time in May after admitting in March he’d tried to squeeze $2 million out of Letterman in exchange for information he’d gathered about affairs Letterman had in the past with female show staffers, including Halderman’s former girlfriend. The News and Docu Emmys will be
T
awarded on Sept. 27 in New York City. It’s unclear whether, if Halderman wins, he’d be the first jailed national Emmy winner ever, but we think so. Word of his nomination comes exactly one week after Letterman’s “Late Show” was snubbed for the first time since it debuted in 1993. Where we come from, that’s called “ironic” because Letterman got record ratings, rave reviews and broke new TV-content ground with the Halderman story. About 6 million people were spellbound on Oct. 1, as Dave admitted on national TV he had shagged show interns/staffers over the years and a guy was trying to blackmail him over it; Halderman was arrested that same day.
Northern exposure Three days after ABC announced that
it’s picking up its Canadian-produced cop drama “Rookie Blues” for a second season because it attracts about 7
he Emmy Awards — now officially the best trophy franchise ever. One week after David
million viewers but only costs about as much as your average reality show, CW announced it had bought a scripted Canadian show about two 18-year-old childhood sweeties who run off and get married, to the consternation of their wacky, warring parents who “struggle to influence the newlyweds and control the extended family’s destiny.” “18 to Life,” originally developed last
year at Canadian Broadcasting Co. with ABC in mind for its U.S. broadcast home, stars Stacey Farber (“Degrassi: The Next Generation”) and Michael Seater (“Life With Derek”) as the newlyweds. CW, which notoriously wilts during summer months owing to its heavy rotation of serialized dramas, hopes “18 to Life” will attract people to their on-air promos for their new fall shows. Because a network can plaster its prime time in the summer with all the fall-series promos it wants, but if there’s no one there to see them, they’re kind of like that tree that falls in the forest when no one’s there to hear it — no noise. CW says it will air two episodes of “Life” on Tuesdays for six weeks.
Robert “Joe” Halderman
Death pays Looks as though Discovery
Channel’s Tuesday telecast of the death of Capt. Phil Harris on reality series “Deadliest Catch” will be this week’s most-watched program in the country among the viewers advertisers care about. Overall, this week’s episode
Capt. Phil Harris
attracted 8.5 million viewers, which is fewer people than watched this week’s MLB All-Star Game on Fox (12
million viewers), NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” (11 million), and ABC’s “The Bachelorette” (10 million). But the “Deadliest Catch” episode beat them all among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers who are Lolita to Madison Avenue’s Humbert Humbert. The episode averaged more than 5 million people in that age bracket; its closest competitor so far was the baseball game with 4.9 million. Looking out across the rest of the week, nothing looks to challenge “Catch,” though you should never count out a Lifetime flick about a hooker with a heart of gold, especially when she’s played by Jennifer “Love to My Friends” Hewitt. “The Client List” airs Saturday.
demoraesl@washpost.com
ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM TV columnist Lisa de Moraes takes your questions about the world of television at 1 p.m. at
washingtonpost.com/style.
KLMNO
TV NEWS ONLINE From TV’s top shows to industry buzz, get the latest television news in the TV Column blog at
washingtonpost.com/tvcolumn.
TV PREVIEW What’s new in ‘D.C. Cupcakes’? Too, too little. by Hank Stuever In the decade since “Sex and the City”
elevated boutique cupcakes to the sta- tus of fetish object (as it also did for overpriced pink cocktails and strappy Jimmy Choos), the cupcake has become the preferred treat of an increasingly childish culture. We are all now just waiting to be allowed past the red- velvet rope.
Who can quibble with the intoxicat- ing allure of the $2.75 Georgetown Cup- cake? Who can articulate a discomfort with the subliminally retro Betty Crock- er ideals about femininity (the gyno/ Easy-Bake Oven connection!) or ponder the limited entrepreneurial choices for women, even in 2010, when your mouth is full of chocolate ganache? The message is clear: There is no problem or anxiety today that cannot be seemingly soothed by joining an hour- long line to buy a trendy cupcake. It is rich in almost every sense of the word. But really: TV shows, too? “D.C. Cup-
cakes,” which premieres Friday night on TLC, joins a growing number of manic- bakery shows (some with dwarves, some without) and follows the day-to- day operations of Georgetown Cupcake, the always-busy bakery at 33rd and M streets NW that opened in February 2008. The series, which will run for six episodes, features proprietors and sis- ters Sophie LaMontagne, 33, and Kath- erine Kallinis, 31, who’ve seen their shop grow from a pipe dream to a mini- empire that makes 5,000 or so cupcakes a day. The sisters, originally from Toronto,
repeatedly remind us in “D.C. Cup- cakes” of all they have sacrificed for baked goods: For Sophie, a Princeton grad, it was working in the finance world. For Katherine, it was a gig doing PR for Gucci. “We ditched our corporate jobs,” Sophie says, “and followed our dreams to make the world’s best cup- cakes.” (And again: We gave all that up. And again: We followed our dreams.) “D.C. Cupcakes” has no problem mak- ing it all look terribly exhausting, be- cause it is. Decked out in pink aprons (which match the pink boxes in which customers spirit away the precious, pre- cious cupcakes), the sisters direct the chaos at the display cases, where em- ployees deal with the masses, and back in the kitchen, where their irritable head baker, Andres Melendez, tries to keep up with demand. Melendez serves as a sort of masculine counterbalance to the femininity of Georgetown Cupcake, and he is quick to show his displeasure when things get frantic.
Ovens simmer and cocoa powder streaks faces, but “D.C. Cupcakes” is marred by the cardinal sin of reality TV: Its subjects are all too aware of the con-
FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010
INTERACTIVE TV LISTINGS Keep track of your favorite television shows and movies with our interactive TV listings at
washingtonpost.com/tv.
TLC
FETISH OBJECTS: Sisters Katherine Kallinis, left, and Sophie LaMontagne, proprietors of Georgetown Cupcake, work on an order.
ventions, pantomiming reality in the service of reality. The sisters and their employees aren’t much better at pre- tending and narrating than those poor dullards seen shopping for real estate on HGTV. Everything they say sounds like the second or third time they’ve said it, obeying cues from the pro- ducers. It would be less boring to just stare at actual cupcakes for a half hour. For some reason (some reason in ad- dition to the needs of narrative), the sis- ters’ Greek mother is a fixture of the shop, although everyone agrees that “Mommy,” as she is called by the em- ployees, isn’t good at baking or mixing. She’s more of a mascot; the recipes are based on treats that the sisters’ grand- mother used to make. These are all details I would note if I were writing a gender studies thesis about the success of Georgetown Cup- cake — hapless mother forgets which batch is in which oven; daughters con- jure up the spirit of the grandmother through the secret of using apple cider vinegar in the red-velvet mix; the sym- bolic freight of our national cupcake craze, seen not only as a sweet treat but as something that women (customers, the sisters, Mommy) both make and worship and thus devote their lives to. (We gave it all up for cupcakes.) Not for nothing is cupcake consump- tion somehow equated with remaining thin, which you might have noticed if you’ve ever waited in Georgetown Cup- cake’s line: Who are all these lithe beau- ties queued up all day long, allowing themselves the dainty indulgence? There are plenty of research studies on the subject of women and chocolate cravings, the results of which verge on obvious truths but also on condescen- sion. (Oh, woman. She’s cuckoo for co- coa puffs.) This line of questioning — sturdy, cul-
tural curiosity that explores who we are via what we eat and buy — routinely eludes the cutesiness of reality TV. Here, cupcakes are only great. Food is sport, feminized (unless it’s a show where a tubby man tries to eat a bucket of 50 hot wings in 30 minutes). On a show such as “D.C. Cupcakes,” there is only the sugar rush, with no chance to explore how so- ciety’s cravings can tell us about class, gender, economics, status. Friday’s episode finds LaMontagne and Kallinis and their staff scrambling as Valentine’s Day approaches and the store gets ready to sell four times its usual daily output — especially mass quantities of the ever-popular red-vel- vet cupcake. Outside, amid the drifts of Snowpocalypse ’10, a crowd stretches down the block. “Are you all in line for cupcakes?” a
baffled man asks the faithful, giving them the mocking skepticism normally reserved for sci-fi geeks in line for a se- quel. “Are they really that good? That’s really worth waiting in line for? It’s Val- entine’s Day, shouldn’t you be doing something else?” Remember cupcakes before all this?
They were just cupcakes — Mom’s equi- table solution to a classroom birthday party, leaving a sheen of shortening on the roof of your mouth. There, back then, the mania for getting and savoring one’s cupcake was understood: If there were 29 children in the class, there would be 30 cupcakes in that Tupper- ware tray (one for teacher). You’d gobble it up and that was that. No religion, no fantasy, no dreams. Those were cup- cakes. These are something else.
stueverh@washpost.com
D.C. Cupcakes (30 minutes) debuts at 10 p.m. Friday on TLC.
BROADCAST CHANNELS
4.1 WRC (NBC) 5.1 WTTG (Fox) 7.1 WJLA (ABC)
7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 News
Access
Seinfeld Wheel
9.1 WUSA (CBS) News 14.1 WFDC (UNI) Mi Pecado
26.4 WETA (PBS) PBS NewsHour 30.1 WNVC (MHz) Al Jazeera Journal
66.1 WPXW (ION) Without a Trace PHILIPPE BOSSE/NBC
GENIUSES AT WORK: “The Jensen Project,” with Justin Kelly, left, Kellie Martin and Brady Smith, airs on NBC at 8 p.m.
HIGHLIGHTS Summer concert series
performances come from all different genres; at 7 a.m., Enrique Iglesias performs on “Today” (NBC), Sting stops by “The Early Show” (CBS), and the cast of Broadway’s “American Idiot” sings on “Good Morning America” (ABC). “News Plus With Mark
Segraves” (WDCW at 7:30) hosts Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), on Friday morning, along with D.C. mayoral candidate Vincent Gray; later, movie critic Willie Waffle interviews Julianne Moore about her new film.
NBC airs original, two-hour
movie “The Jensen Project” (at 8 p.m.), about a secret group of geniuses who devote their lives to creating super-cool technology, presumably to save the world someday. However, everything starts to fall apart when some evil enemies decide to steal all of their technological secrets. Alex causes all kinds of trouble on “Wizards of Waverly Place” (Disney at 8:30), as she admits that Justin has a clone walking around a college campus — one that she created herself with a magic spell. Ignoring the advice that the groom shouldn’t see the dress before the wedding, a woman brings her fiance along with her mother to the shop on “Say Yes
to the Dress” (TLC at 9). “D.C. Cupcakes” (TLC at 10), a six-episode series that follows sisters and Georgetown Cupcake owners Sophie and Katherine as they run their business, is previewed on Page C4 by Hank Stuever. A local bar is demolished on
“Haven” (Syfy at 10), and Audrey works with Nathan to figure out if anything supernatural was involved in the mess. On a new episode of “Dual
Survival” (Discovery at 10), Cody and Dave give lessons in what to do if you’re ever lost in the Louisiana bayou and surrounded by swamps, alligators, and lots of poisonous snakes. Two San Diego cooks, Steve
Pickett and Kari Rich, face off on “Chefs vs. City” (Food Network at 10) as they compete in challenges all around the city, including the San Diego Zoo. The SRU team has to figure out a quick plan on “Flashpoint” (CBS at 10) when a woman with a baby is held captive by a criminal in her car. “The Tonight Show With Jay
Leno” (NBC at 11:35) has talk-show host Craig Kilborn, actor Stephen Moyer and a performance by the Swell Season. Actress Ellen Page is a guest
on “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” (CBS at 12:35), along with musical guest Julie Gribble. —Emily Yahr
A&E
ABC Family AMC
Animal Planet BET
Bravo CNN T e First 48 Funniest Home Videos
106 & Park: Top 10 Real Housewives of NJ
Cartoon Network Total Drama Batman John King, USA
Comcast SportsNet Washington Post Live Comedy Central Daily Show Discovery Disney E!
Nature’s Deadliest ESPN ESPN2
Food Network Fox News FX
Hallmark HBO
HGTV
History Lifetime MASN
MSNBC MTV
Nickelodeon Spike Style Syfy TBS TCM TLC TNT
Travel TruTV
TV Land TV One
USA Network VH1
WGN Colbert T e Offi ce House
Jeopardy! Wife Swap Ent. Ton.
48 Hours Mystery Hasta que el Dinero
State Circle Inside Wash. Wash. Wash.
France News NHK
32.2 WHUT (PBS) Travelscope Travels-Edge Exchange 50.1 WDCW (CW) Two-Men
Two-Men Contrary Smallville Without a Trace Criminal Minds Whale Wars Funniest Home Videos
(5:00) Movie: Fallen Movie: Ghost Ship (2002) Whale Wars
Movie: ATL (2006) Real Housewives of NJ
Movie: T e Jensen Project (2010) Bones
9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 Dateline NBC News
Primetime: What Would You 20/20 Medium
Soy Tu Dueña
20.1 WDCA (MNTV) House-Payne House-Payne WWE Friday Night SmackDown! 22.1 WMPT (PBS) Business
Masterpiece Mystery! Inside Wash. Antiques Roadshow
Supernatural Without a Trace
CABLE CHANNELS Criminal Minds
Funniest Home Videos Whale Wars Real Housewives of NJ Larry King Live
NBA Summer League Basketball Tosh.0
Pig Bomb Wizards-Place Hannah Mon. Suite-Deck Wizards Flashpoint
News News News News
Premios Juventud. . . Acceso Noticias Antique Show Need to Know
Movie: Varg Veum: T e Woman in the Fridge (2008) Jubilee
Without a Trace Criminal Minds Funniest Home Videos RT
Tavis Smiley Travels-Edge Charlie Rose Friends
Friends
Jay Leno Simpsons Nightline Late Show Noticiero
T e Offi ce Name Is Earl Raymond Raymond Need to Know
Antiques
Charlie Rose Asia News
Family Guy Family Guy Without a Trace
T e Glades T e 700 Club
Movie: Ghost Ship (2002) River Monsters: Unhooked Trey Songz
Real Housewives of NJ
Anderson Cooper 360 Sports
Redskins Presents Presents
E! News T e Daily 10 Take Miami Take Miami Jerseylicious Golf: British Open, Best of the Second Round Soccer: Manchester United vs. Celtic Food Network Challenge FOX Report
Chopped T e O’Reilly Factor
(6:30) Movie: Beowulf (2007) Touched by an Angel
House Hunt. Modern Marvels Reba
House Hunt. Touched by an Angel
Movie: Behind Enemy Lines (2001) Outdoor
Reba
Hardball Chris Matthews T e Hills: Ending
Nat’l Geographic Nat Geo Amazing! NewsChannel 8 Washington News Big Time
Supernanny Haven
Seinfeld
Say Yes Bones
Sanford Big Time
Modern Marvels Reba
Hannity Man, Woman, Wild
Presents Presents Presents Dual Survival
Whale Wars T e Mo’Nique Show
Ben 10 Ult. Generator Star Wars Star Wars King of Hill Moral Orel Metal Campbell Brown
Bethenny Getting Married? Aqua Teen
Sports
Simmons Pig Bomb
Post Live Simmons
Phineas, Ferb Phineas, Ferb Wizards-Place Wizards-Place Suite-Deck Wizards-Place T e Soup T e Soup Chelsea Baseball Tonight
E! News
Boxing: Friday Night Fights Diners
Diners
SportsCenter Golf
Chefs vs. City Greta Van Susteren Curb-Block Reba
MLB Baseball: Toronto Blue Jays at Baltimore Orioles Countdown True Life
Dog Whisperer
Movie: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) Movie: T e King and Queen of Moonlight Bay (2003) Movie: Funny People (2009) Sarah-House Gangland
Color Splash: Movie: Spring Breakdown (2009)
Rachel Maddow Show True Life
Sea Turtle Odyssey
Os Xtra Lockup
Sports Talk Forecast Washington ABC News News Big Time T e Troop Hates Chris Lopez
Eureka
Good Eats Rachael T e O’Reilly Factor Rescue Me
Golden Girls Golden Girls Hung
House Hunt. House Hunt. Gangland
Design Star Gangland
Will & Grace Will & Grace
Take Me Out ESPNEWS Lockup
Movie: Freedom Writers (2007) Truth-Bermuda Triangle
Lopez Dog Whisperer
Golf Weekly Politics With Mark Plotkin Glenn Martin Hates Chris Hates Chris
Knockout Knockout Knockout Knockout Knockout Knockout Knockout Knockout Knockout Knockout Movie: Just a Walk in the Park (2002) Eureka
Weddings Gone Wild Haven
Seinfeld Say Yes Movie: Shrek the T ird (2007) Say Yes Say Yes Say Yes
Man v. Food Cops
Man v. Food Cops Sanford
Living Single Eve NCIS
Behind the Music Funniest Home Videos
Movie: Collateral (2004) Man v. Food Most Shocking
Man v. Food Martin
Law & Order: SVU Behind the Music
(6:45) Movie: Jeopardy Movie: Freaks (1932) (9:15) Movie: Circus of Horrors (1960) Say Yes
Ghost Adventures Top 20 Most Shocking
Tracy Morgan All of Us Law & Order: SVU T.O. Show
Cupcakes
Jerseylicious Eureka
(9:55) Movie: Shrek the T ird (2007) DC Cupcakes
Ghost Adventures Forensic
Diff Wrld Law & Order: SVU Ochocinco: T e Ultimate Catch Movie: Sideways (2004) Forensic
Movie: Berserk (1967) Say Yes
Say Yes
Movie: Collateral (2004) Most Haunted Forensic
Diff Wrld Martin Forensic
Cosby Show Cosby Show Raymond Raymond Raymond Raymond Roseanne Roseanne Martin
Martin
Welcome Home Roscoe London
Funny Videos Scrubs
Feel Noise Scrubs
LEGEND: Bold indicates new or live programs High Definition Movie Ratings (from TMS) Excellent Good Fair Poor No stars: not rated MLB Baseball
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116