I Am A TV Junkie, A Blog For The Clicker Jockey

First Alec Baldwin, Now Neil Patrick Harris Flirts for the "New" Hollywood Reporter

I posted the Alec clip here.

And here's Neil.

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I know that you think he's raising those eyebrows at you, but actually he's looking right at me.

Hunting for Bear, Neil?

Lex Says Goodbye -- College Roommate Dave's Nephew Leaves Smallville

And now he can have hair. Man, I didn't have hair by choice for a little while and I have to tell you, you're always colder than everyone else and people take the choice as license to touch your head. I grew my hair back.

Last I asked Dave (his uncle) a few months back at Christmastime, Michael wasn't sure what he was gonna do, but with the departure of the Smallville creators announced the other day, I didn't think it would be long before we heard the announcement.

Natalie Finn at E! Online:

"It has been an honor and pleasure to work with Michael for the past six seasons," the CW and Smallville executive producers Darren Swimmer, Todd Slavkin, Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson said in a joint statement. "He is one of the best actors on television and has never failed to bring a new layer to the character of Lex Luthor in every episode. While Michael won't be a series regular and we won't have the pleasure of working with him on a weekly basis this fall, we like to think that we haven't seen the last of Lex Luthor. Stay tuned."

More after the jump.

Barbara Walters No Longer Understands What It Means To "Keep It To Yourself"

What the hell is going on with her? And why is she going to Oprah to talk about her affair with a married US Senator?

Does she think this makes her more relevant? Is she at the point where she is addicted to revealing personal information about herself in public forums? What's the deal?

And, this post at the New York Magazine Daily Intel blog lets us know that it wasn't even much of a secret at the time it was happening. In fact, it got in the way of Walters doing her job on the Today show at one point.

David Hume Kennerly, former White House photog, knew about the affair and used it against Walters in a master stroke of a move during his interview with Walters in the Fall of 1975:

"I waited until she finished the anticipated question and said, 'Well Barbara, I put those stories in the same category as those about you and Senator Ed Brooke, they are rumor and gossip.' The interview took an immediate turn in my favor."

Kennerly added that, the next day, NBC News anchor John Chancellor, Walters's former Today co-host, phoned him at the White House. "I thought he was going to give me a hard time, but instead he said, 'Kennerly, you're a hero at NBC.'"

So, let's see ... Walters wasn't really well liked at NBC and she didn't work out at ABC with Harry Reasoner and ... oh, I get it, people just don't like her.

And certainly Edward Brooke's wife must not have been pleased. And now, Brooke, who btw is still alive, isn't so thrilled that this is back in the news, either.

It's not like people didn't know about this. The only difference between the 1975 revelation and today's Baba Wawa news is that now the world knows. Because she's already shot the Oprah episode. It's all back in the news because she wants it there.

But why?

Why would you wanna tell people all over again that you had an affair with a married man?

Video -- What's on Felicity Huffman's DVR? How 'bout Tichina Arnold? Brooke Shields?

Or maybe you wanna know what Kyra Sedgwick likes.

Watch this Hollywood Reporter video.

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It's "Excerpts From Doctor Who" Night on SciFi

Hey, I wouldn't be calling it that if the butchers that live in the editing suites at SciFi had any idea of what they're doing to the Donna Noble story arc.

Let's see, maybe this week they'll just cut all references to volcanoes. That would be quite the trick considering the ep is called The Fires of Pompeii. But like I said last week, if you just consider these airings on SciFi to be the Cliffs Notes version you can have an okay time watching.

Alright, maybe last week was an aberration. Maybe the cuts will be a bit more artistic. And, maybe monkeys will start flying out of my butt.

And as much as I would love to be invited to the channel's Comic-Con party this year, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that you're seeing the show as the producers intended.

The thing is, RTD and crew have taken such care in Donna's story arc that it really pissses me when they, for example, cut most of the scene between Catherine Tate and Bernard Cribbins (grandfather) early in the episode. These are the moments that make you care about Donna and set you up for the rest of the series.

Video -- Coupling Fans, Watch Jack Davenport in Bed ...

... and smoking weed and watching his "wife" begin a three-way.

Okay, it's not Jack technically, it's his character in CBS' Swingtown, and I'm sure the weed isn't real and the wife has quotes around her, but here you are, so you might as well watch the clip, huh?

Plus, there's a chance that Swingtown can do for the 70s what Mad Men did for the 60s, which is not just fetishizing the look for the era, but getting people to talk about the decade from today's perspective. It's certainly more fun for me because I remember the 70s better than the 60s.

I would just love this show to be the surprise of the Summer. It's almost subversive for CBS to do something this progressive and I would like to encourage more of it.

No mention of whether Davenport's character will participate in a Lesbian Spank Inferno.

(Speaking of which, I still say that a bunch of smart Coupling loving lesbians should produce Lesbian Spank Inferno just as described on the show. Would be a blast! There is something called Lesbian Spank Inferno on YouTube, but there's ...

1. No film collective
2. No judging of films
3. And, finally, no spanking that I can see

There is, however, a couple of Swingtown clips on YouTube, and here's one I haven't posted yet. It''s the one referenced in the headline and it's after the jump.

And just for fun, let's watch that segment from the Inferno episode of Coupling, so that you people who are uninitiated can enjoy. It's the second clip.

Is it Telling That Ben Silverman's Initials are BS?

Very telling, imho. Oh, shit, there goes my job at NBC. Oh well, the Gladiators are gonna have to oil up without me this season.

(Just kidding, but that's a job that NBC should put on its auction site. I betcha they'd make a lot of money selling the opportunity to oil up the former Colt model that appears on the show [pictured]. Gladiators comes back at the end of the month, btw.)

Anyhow, our online pal Daisy Whitney from TV Week covered Ben's keynote interview at the TV Week Upfront Summit in NYC.

Here's some of Daisy's piece:

In 15 years, broadcast television will only be useful for high-profile live events like the Super Bowl, awards shows and programs like “American Idol,” Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, said during a keynote interview at the TelevisionWeek Upfront Summit in New York.

Other shows will have to live on multiple platforms to survive.

“[Broadcast] will also be where we launch our episodic storytelling vehicles, but they will be living and breathing everywhere,” he said.

NBC plans to experiment with driving viewers to the Web from TV with its new fall show “Kath and Kim.” NBC will offer continued scenes online after each episode airs, Mr. Silverman said.

“Around our new offerings there will literally be shows that end on air and the last scene will continue online,” he said.

(snip)

When asked about the reputation he has developed in his short time on the job as an entertainment chief who works closely with marketers, he said that’s due to the new generation of showrunners who are “friends” of advertisers.

That includes Tim Kring and Tina Fey, who head up popular NBC shows “Heroes” and “30 Rock,” respectively, Mr. Silverman said.

“Tina Fey loves American Express. They have been inside '30 Rock,' in the show. They have supported her through the Tribeca Film Festival,” he said. “Tim Kring enjoys his relationships with Nissan. He felt Nissan helped empower the growth of that show.”

My considered comments after the jump. And, btw, they are the same comments that I left after Daisy's piece at TV Week, just so you don't have to read them twice.

Sumner Redstone: A Lover, Not a (Mixed Martial Arts) Fighter

And you know he's telling the truth when you look at his photo (right). Honestly, he might break a hip being "a lover" too, but we won't get into that right now.

Mr. Redstone (who's name was stamped on my paycheck long long ago when I worked for National Amusements Sunrise Mutliplex Cinemas in Valley Stream, NY) has a problem with CBS Chief Les Moonves' (Les is also from Valley Stream) embrace of mixed martial arts, scheduling a series of contests on CBS Saturdays this Summer.

Because it's a bloody business, I guess. Thing is, that's what the kids wanna see. They love these guys. Take it from a guy who was writing for martial arts and boxing magazine in the 80s (yes, that would be me) I have never seen this level of interest in a combat sport, especially among those in the target demographic.

Here's a for instance for ya, Oscar De La Hoya, a boxer and a very famous one at that, will be fighting on HBO this weekend less than 25 miles from my home (the Home Depot Center in Carson) and I had not seen a lick of promotion about it until he was on the KTLA Morning News this AM.

Yet, there are about six different TV channels with at least a weeklyMixed Martial Arts (MMA) show on, and it's about to be seven when CBS debuts their series this summer. And, almost half the cars I see on the roads in So Cal driven by guys of a certain marketable age have some sort of MMA bumper sticker of product label on their cars.

But Sumner Redstone doesn't particularly like the sport. Of course, Sumner Redstone is 85 years old and CBS really shouldn't really be interested in what people Redstone's age should like, should they. At least not if they're looking to make some money on a Saturday night.

His comments after the jump.

Before You Watch Law & Order's Robin Williams Ep, Read This

From the brilliant NY Times emerging media blogger and NYTM contributor Virginia Heffernan. You know, just for some perspective on the Milgram experiment.

Her post also includes lots of links to supporting material on the web, more than I've excerpted here:

Take this maxim: People Will Always Torture One Another When Instructed To. That’s the lesson of the Milgram obedience experiment.

That has been an article of faith with me until now. But I just watched parts of the Milgram obedience experiment on YouTube — and, well, it doesn’t prove what people say it proves. (And what a 2006 documentary said it proved, namely — as a talking head put it — was that “you could staff a death camp from the middle-class in New Haven.”)

First off, I’m surprised at how old, male and “Honeymooners”-ish the Milgram participants are. (The ad, which offered to pay participants $4 an hour, said, “We will pay five hundred New Haven men to help us complete a scientific study of memory.”)

The men — including the experimenters, the subjects and the paid assistants who pose as subjects — all look to be white and between 40 and 60. The year is 1961. I reflexively pictured them to be younger, mixed gender and better heeled, because I was thinking of people who volunteer for academic experiments now, and the ones I’ve known have been students. But to call these guys “the middle class of New Haven” seems myopic.

Second, I imagined the subjects — the ones ordered to administer electric shocks to actors they believe are average Joes like themselves — as sadistically gleeful or at least expressionless and coldblooded.

In fact, in the video I watched, the man pressing the button is outraged and winces with remorse at what he’s doing to “this gentleman.” He never dehumanizes the other guy; he never takes pleasure in hurting him. In fact, he keeps standing up in furious protest.

And, btw, NYTM = New York Times Magazine. Read her there.

Video -- Alec Baldwin Shamelessly Flirts With YOU For the Hollywood Reporter

Just watch this seven seconds of video. Okay, maybe he's not flirting with you, but he is definitely flirting with me.

You trollop, you harlot, you ... aw, who am I kidding, I love the Alec Baldwin. I own his SNL Best Of ... DVD.

Someone give me that flirty li'l double take at the end on an endless loop, please?

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