I am sitting in the International Ballroom in the Beverly Hilton Hotel during the twilight of the 2012 Summer TCA Press Tour, as HBO, like every other network and cable channel has done this week, previews its upcoming movies with a series of panels and Q&As. In a matter of minutes, Aaron Sorkin, Oscar-winning screenwriter and creator of critical whipping-boy The Newsroom, will take the stage to face a room full of the writers and tweeters who have led the witch hunt against his show. Sorkin has only granted a handful of interviews as the first half of the season has rolled out to an increasing chorus of boos from Internet Girls and Boys from around his beloathed Twittersphere. But today he's sitting down, cracking open a tiny bottle of Evian, and bringing on the firing squad. It's the can't-miss event of this year's TCAs, and I'm about to die of anticipation.
When the ship’s going down, any piece of flotsam can look like a life raft. So it was yesterday at NBC’s executive session at the Television Critics Association Press Tour, where, according to Alan Sepinwall, Peacock President Bob Greenblatt crowed about his network’s recent third-place finish in the much-desired 18-to-49-year-old demographic. But it doesn’t take overpaying for the Olympics to know that the bronze medal is hardly good enough. With that in mind, Greenblatt went on to describe his vision for NBC’s future, and it was wildly different from its recent past.
Andrew Ti, the beaten-down mind behind Yo, Is This Racist? brings his talents to the world of media to periodically search for the most racist character in TV and movies.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way. After executive producer Michael Patrick King's surly-ass and hilariously defensive performance at the TCA press tour, and overwhelming fan reaction from the readers of YITR? there really isn't any other choice but for me to proclaim everyone's favorite caricature Han Lee of 2 Broke Girls as the most racist character of the week. Which isn't to say there weren't contenders, including a particularly insane episode of the animated Napoleon Dynamite involving a Japanese exchange student, but the people and the news cycle have fairly loudly spoken.
Earlier this week AMC canceled a panel for The Killing at the Television Critics Association press tour. Ostensibly, the reason was “scheduling conflicts,” although everyone assumed the network feared a mob of rampaging critics, hurt and betrayed by The Killing’s non-ending, rising up as one autonomous being to wreak havoc in revenge. Looks like those critics might have just transferred their vitriol over to 2 Broke Girls?
Last week the latest TCA press tour got going, with presentations from Fox and NBC that both touched upon past screw-ups and successes and looked to the future, a theoretical wonderland of zeitgeist-capturing television. So what went down?
