Dumb and Dumber To s Badness Could Give You an Ulcer. By David Edelstein

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1 Dumb and Dumber To s Badness Could Give You an Ulcer By David Edelstein Before I go into the grinding awfulness of Dumb and Dumber To, let s get one damn thing straight: The original Dumb and Dumber is a clasick. Along with the relatively highbrow Stepbrothers, it s the ne plus ultra of moron slapstick, the film against which all cretinous child-men assaults on taste must be measured. The spiky, manic, abrasive Jim Carrey was exquisitely offset by the big, schlubby, amiable Jeff Daniels, and if a few of the gags went thunk (who bats 1,000?), there was a lot more art in their construction than the movie s slapdash frames suggested. The Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, turned doofusness into a state of grace. And now they ve turned it back into a state of gracelessness. Wanna read the most annoying sound in the world? AAAEEEEEAAAEIIIIGGHHHHHEEEAAEHH. It s not that they didn t try. This isn t some cynical piece of garbage like Another 48 Hrs. Carrey and Daniels are in there working hard and almost getting their tricky rhythms back. On paper, the premise sounds more than serviceable. Harry (Daniels), who desperately needs a kidney transplant, discovers a 23-year-old postcard from an old flame telling him she s pregnant with his baby. Said flame, Fraida Felcher (Kathleen Turner), tells Harry and Lloyd (Carrey) that she gave the baby up for adoption but has a recent photo; it shows a young woman, Penny (Rachel Melvin), who makes Lloyd s eyeballs smoke. Lloyd convinces Harry to hit the road in search of Penny ostensibly to ask her to donate a kidney, but more because Lloyd sees a babe who might finally displace Dumb and Dumber s Mary Swanson. But someone else is after Penny: a killer (Rob Riggle) in league with her adopted mom (Laurie Holden), who s slowly poisoning Penny s adopted professor father (Steve Tom), who gives Harry and Lloyd a package for her that might be worth billions of dollars... The script could have used another draft or two. Harry and Lloyd s level of dumb and dumbness keeps shifting; sometimes they sound like sophisticates camping it up unfunnily. The old gags aren t repeated, but the Farrellys constantly invoke them, using their first film as an ongoing reference point. Blind Billy in 4C is all grown up and still loves birds with disastrous consequences. We get the second-most-annoying sound in the world. (What s annoying is how long it takes to get to the punch line.) Lame malapropisms abound: She s the fruit of his loom. Lloyd fantasizes fighting off bad guys to save Penny, but it s a pale echo of Lauren Holly s bare bum and a throbbing heart pulled out of a ninja warrior and daintily dropped into a doggie bag. Harry puts peanut butter on his dick. Penny turns out to have inherited the Dumb gene and wants to work in a leprechaun colony. Okay, that one s not bad (especially when Lloyd says you have to go to Ireland, not Africa, for that), but I reckon four out of every five jokes played to silence at the preview screening. If Dumb and Dumber To were a live comedian, he d have said, Is this an audience or an oil painting? He d have left the stage in tears. He d have gone to work in a leprechaun colony. The Farrellys have evidently unlearned what little they knew about staging and composition. (Please understand: I revere Dumb and Dumber, There s Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, and parts of their other movies, but stylists they re never been.) On the far side of the Farrellys agreeable Three Stooges remake, it s easy to register the Stooges influence on Dumb and Dumber To, but the timing is off in almost every scene: You either see the joke an instant before it comes, so it s no surprise, or an instant after it passes, so you say, Oh, that was a joke... Gee, it stunk. The key to Lloyd and Harry s characters is that they re incorrigible pranksters, that nothing comes second to hot-footing each other or someone else. But this time we feel more like the hit man played by Mike Starr in Dumb and Dumber. We want to say, GUYS!!! ENOUGH!!! The movie s badness could give you an ulcer. And yet... I came away respecting Carrey, whose eyes still glitter under his hideous bowl haircut and Daniels, who avidly jumps back into the pigpen. (Daniels might be known for a higher grade of project, but he has always credited Dumb and Dumber with keeping his movie career alive and obviously relishes the work.) Kathleen Turner is fearlessly brassy; it s a shame she s shot and lighted so poorly, that the Farrellys didn t protect her. I didn t watch thinking that Dumb and Dumber To was fated to be a disaster from its conception only that comedy is famously hard and this particular effort didn t pay off. I d still get in line for Dumber and Dumbest.

2 The Movies of 1994: The Near-Perfect Dumb and Dumber Moviepix Movies November 13, 2014 by Tom Carson Print All of these years later, nobody has made a movie about Monica Lewinsky s affair with Bill Clinton, and I wish someone would hop to it. Sarah Silverman isn t getting any younger, people. But you can t beat my pick for the right guys to handle the job: Bobby and Peter Farrelly at least if we could somehow time-zap em back to their prime. Closet innocence fans disguised as merchants of crass, they were so in sync with the Clinton era s Krispy Kreme gestalt that the nation s first (spiritually) 12-year-old president if the Secret Service code name for the White House in Bill s instant-gratification heyday wasn t The Cookie Jar, it shoulda been sometimes seems like a ghost character haunting their 90s movies. Heck, so does Monica. Getting the sequel treatment with Dumb and Dumber To this week, Dumb and Dumber came first, followed by Kingpin (which the Farrellys didn t write) and then There s Something About Mary their biggest hit, thanks mostly to Cameron Diaz s hair-gel misadventures with Ben Stiller s homemade Krispy Kreme icing. The Movies of 1994 Grantland takes on a golden year in cinema. Released the same year that a certain stain on someone s blue dress was getting the House GOP in an uproar, it must have been the first time someone s jism was employed as a sight gag in a mainstream comedy, forever cementing well, so to speak the Farrellys rude-boy rep. But the movie s use of rock s ultimate Mr. Innocent, Jonathan Richman, as its singing narrator amounted to an admirably sneaky way of foregrounding old-fashioned schmaltz while making someone else responsible for voicing it. That way, it didn t intrude on the jokes. As if demonstrating how fragile a gestalt can be, things started to go south with 2000 s Me, Myself & Irene, a movie that nobody on either side of the camera seemed to have much heart for. (D&D star Jim Carrey probably didn t think he d end up needing to go back to the Farrellys for a cred transfusion any more than they thought they d need to go back to him for box office insurance, and neither camp got what it wanted.) Though the brothers recouped to some extent with Shallow Hal, an apologia for their own perceived callousness that might ve turned painfully saccharine if not for Jack Black s mad-eyed zest in the title role, the old mojo has never returned in their later movies. Maybe they re waiting for Hillary. In the meantime, I wish Dumb and Dumber To all the best, really I do. If nothing else, I ll bet sight unseen that it s less rotten than 2003 s Dumb and Dumberer, which nobody from the original was involved in. But the odds are that the 2014 reprise wouldn t exist if the brothers, not to mention Carrey, couldn t really use a hit 20 mostly not-so-great years down the road. And I hope they don t mess up my memories of a movie that I think is close to perfect. This side of, oh, Billy Wilder s Some Like It Hot,1 perfect is a word that doesn t get applied to post- 1930s screen comedies, even beloved ones, too often. Let alone one that has Carrey s Lloyd Christmas fantasizing about charming the daylights out of a roomful of rich sophisticates, his inamorata included, by lighting his own farts. But there isn t a scene, including that one, or a performance that doesn t deliver exactly what the Farrellys want it to. You aren t sitting through weak ideas or misfired digressions to get to the good parts, the way we re all used to. Considering that (a) the Farrellys had never directed before, and (b) Dumb and Dumber s tone is a lot trickier to sustain than it looks, the absence of vacillation and visibly panicky second thoughts about

3 the whole premise is impressive. Yet what may be more remarkable is how the movie stays patently good-hearted without ever resorting to sentiment. The goal is to get audiences feeling huge tenderness for people we re primed to think are ridiculous, and we do. But that doesn t mean they ve grown any less ridiculous, because well, at least back then the brothers weren t big on redeeming anyone. Instead, the movie sets out to beguile us into cherishing them just as they are, the same way that John Waters used to with his more flagrant casts of freaks and oddballs. My guess is most of you won t need a plot refresher, but here it goes anyway. Lloyd and his best that is, only pal Harry (Jeff Daniels) start out sharing a forlorn pad in Providence, Rhode Island, working no-brainer jobs they keep getting fired from on the grounds of idiocy. Then Lloyd ends up in possession of a briefcase belonging to a rich Aspen gal named Mary (Lauren Holly), little knowing that he s just botched the ransom payoff intended for her husband s kidnappers. Having instantly decided that he s moony about her, Lloyd talks Harry into driving to Colorado to return the briefcase, since his pard is the one with wheels a van irresistibly outfitted to look like a literal shaggy dog, thanks to Harry s yen to open a pet-grooming store. Naturally, the kidnappers hired guns Mike Starr as Joe Mental Mentalino and Karen Duffy as his slinky accomplice, J.P. Shay are in hot pursuit after panicking our boys, who think they re being dunned for an unpaid utilities bill, and decapitating Harry s pet parakeet on a visit to the pair s, ahem, lodgings. The parakeet s posthumous fate Lloyd sells it to a trusting blind boy after Scotch-taping its wee head back on is the sickest joke in the movie. But if Dumb and Dumber celebrates anything, which it does, it s the slogan promoted by the hero of Kurt Vonnegut s Slapstick: Lonesome no more! Given how abject Lloyd and Harry are, isn t it great that they re a team? There s hope for misfits everywhere in that. Dumb-and-Dumber2Moviepix Sad sacks who prevail have been a screen staple since the silent era. But comedy duos usually depend on contrast to get laughs: goofball Jerry Lewis vs. urbane Dean Martin, dreamy Laurel vs. practicalminded Hardy, and so on. The Marx Brothers and the Farrellys beloved Three Stooges play off the same friction in triplicate. That s why the beauty and even, to some extent, the daring of Dumb and Dumber is that Harry is only slightly less IQ-challenged than Lloyd, and spends a lot less time getting exasperated with him than sharing his wavelength and endorsing his dreams. Whatever becomes of these two, they ll never be able to complain that nobody understands them. That s the magnificent side of their duncey bond. If you re in any doubt of how astute the Farrellys are about which relationship is the key one, recall the tellingly hands-off way that Lloyd s intended one and only is presented. Mary may be his love object, but she s not ours, despite her money and good looks two assets the movie doesn t have a great deal of use for. (Neither one depends on personality, and that settles that.) It s no disappointment that Lloyd doesn t wind up with her; in fact, Dumb and Dumber would have an unhappy ending if he did. What we want is what we get: him and Harry on the road again, blithely bungling the opportunity of their dimwit lifetimes in one of the sweetest codas in movies. Aside from There s Something About Mary, which plays a lot more by the rom-com rules hair-gel jokes and all most women I know are allergic to the Farrellys, which is no big surprise. Yet compared to the rancid gynophobia animating so many guy-oriented yuk-fests or, hell, the culture at large the brothers are sweetie pies.

4 Not that anyone s going to hire them to direct a Susan B. Anthony biopic anytime soon. In a way that s not only retro but consciously lunkheaded, they just like their heroes aren t unfond of women so much as bamboozled by their existence. Ever since Betty Friedan, every woman has known that mystification is dehumanization s pilot fish; not all of the reasons that frat boys love these movies are good ones, of course. And yet what keeps the Farrellys version relatively innocuous is that it s never hostile. D&D s Mary may not be swooned over by the filmmakers, but she is kind to Lloyd at crunch time. The movie doesn t expose her as a selfish bitch to turn us against her, which would be the go-to stratagem if authentic yobs were in charge. The Farrellys aren t often accused of being subtle. Nonetheless, it s worth noting how the values of what we weren t yet calling the 1 Percent are satirized almost exclusively via Lloyd and Harry s attempts to emulate them once our heroes discover by mishap, needless to say that the briefcase they ve lugged across the country is stuffed with cash. The parody of Pretty Woman s shopping spree ridicules the audience s internalization of those values as well. Even Luis Buñuel might have cackled at the sight of Lloyd and Harry swanking it up in their eyesore finery. Not accidentally, the switch also gives Carrey and Daniels oodles of fresh comedy business to play with right when they re close to exhausting the fun of the Lloyd-Harry partnership. Or Carrey is, anyhow, because he hasn t grasped and really, never would that a feature-length movie is something other than an extended skit. His costar is another story, and one of the treats of revisiting Dumb and Dumber is that the guy who gets my vote for best living American actor is in it. Coming off Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Mask, Carrey was movieland s hottest marquee name at the time, so he naturally got most of the attention. But man, is Jeff Daniels a marvel. First off, he s got to make the duo s best-buds intimacy convincing pretty much on his own, because Carrey with his stand-up-comic solipsism never had any gift for playing off his castmates, let alone standing back to let them shine. It s the real reason he never developed as an actor; after he d been at it a decade, it never occurred to Carrey to react to Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, even though she was tossing him vibrant stuff to die for. No wonder his big bids for Oscar consideration The Truman Show, Man on the Moon were solo turns. While Carrey s shtick as Lloyd is often inspired he works that chipped tooth and bowl haircut the way Peyton Manning manages a football shtick is still what it is. You re never unconscious that he s doing a routine, which doesn t hurt the movie particularly. By contrast, Daniels doesn t have stardom s pressure to contend with. Doughy-faced and kudzu-haired (it s wonderful how the Mutt Cutts van and he resemble each other), he damn near convinces you that he s been Harry all of his life. It s as incredible to remember that Daniels was fresh off playing noble Joshua Chamberlain in Gettysburg the year before as it is to realize he d go on to incarnating, say, the smart-and-smarter parental dilemmas of The Squid and the Whale. But you d have to be awfully pretentious to think that being the heart and soul of Dumb and Dumber is a lesser achievement. He s got moments Harry helplessly cracking up as he asks Lloyd to kiss him, for instance that are as lovely as any comic acting on film, and the movie could replace Carrey more easily (the young Adam Sandler might have done fine) than it could do without Daniels. Funnily enough, Daniels is also the only member of Dumb and Dumber s talent pool whose career has stayed in the ascendant. (Let s forgive him The Newsroom; being a ventriloquist s dummy for Aaron Sorkin would put a damper on just about anybody s lust for life.) Carrey lost me well before his box office slide in the aughts, and he hasn t looked like being Jim Carrey strikes even him as much fun ever since Me, Myself & Irene added flop sweat to his manic mode. Much as I love the Farrellys, the last movie of theirs I paid any heed to was 2003 s Stuck on You, which tried to resurrect their only real passion telling the world what it s like to be brothers by casting Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as Siamese twins. But then, as Orson Welles coulda told them, it s not easy to regroup for the long game when your first movie said it all. Op-Ed: The Disney Vault needs to be reopened for the HD era Op-Ed: The Disney Vault needs to be reopened for the HD era

5 Disney has always had an odd relationship with its past, which the company treats as both its greatest resource and as a zone to which only a few have access. For decades, Disney has re-released its most famous features to theaters about every seven years often enough, the theory went, to catch a new generation each time around. The rest of the time, they remained in what the company dubbed The Disney Vault. (Incidentally, if you can hear the term Disney Vault without thinking of this TV Funhouse short, that just means you probably haven t seen it yet.) The policy, which has been carried over first to Disney VHS, then DVD, and, most recently, Blu-ray releases, makes a certain amount of sense business-wise, creating a sense of scarcity and specialness around films from Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs to Beauty And The Beast. It s not like the features ever disappeared well, most of the features, anyway they just weren t always at hand. Eventually, they d all be let out of the vault. The same can t be said, however, for Disney s animated shorts, the cornerstone on which Walt Disney built what would become the empire we know today. Noel Murray has a column today about the old, weird Disney, all of which would be hard to see if it weren t for Disney s relatively relaxed policy toward YouTube uploads. But the hard-to-seeness also extends to the many delightful shorts featuring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and all the other characters still plastered on pieces of Disney merchandise. It s not that Disney hasn t continued to use these characters, which live on in everything from the pre-school-targeted Club Mickey Mouse to a series of clever new Mickey Mouse cartoons. But it still seems odd, even wrong to keep so many entertaining cartoons away from the current generation of kids. (And, hey, I ve road-tested them with my own toddler. They still play beautifully.) This wasn t always so: From 2001 to 2009, the double-disc DVD sets of the Walt Disney Treasures series offered thoughtful packages of Disney s cartoons (and TV shows and bits of ephemera) assembled and hosted with the occasional note of caution about old cartoons not always squaring with contemporary sensibilities by Leonard Maltin. They re exemplary collections, but their limited pressings often made them hard to track down not long after their release, and they now sometimes go for upwards of $100 on Amazon and in other secondhand markets. Not only should they be brought back into print, they should be given a good dusting off for the HD era, which has made the features look better than they ever have on home video. Some of the shorts have resurfaced on Netflix and as bonus features on Disney Blu-rays for Snow White, Beauty And The Beast, and other titles, but they deserve a more comprehensive, Disney Treasures-style approach, if not for physical media, then for HD streaming packages of some sort. (Though, ahem, both Pixar and Disney s old rivals at Warner Bros. have put together nice sets of shorts for Blu-ray release.) When Frozen played theaters last year it was accompanied by the delightful Get A Horse!, a Mickey Mouse short the combined the hand-drawn, black-and-white animation of Mickey s earliest days with 21st-century computer animation. It paid tribute to Mickey s long history by letting the past and present live side-by-side harmoniously. The company responsible for it should find a way to do the same. Fall TV Trade Machine: Making All the Moves That Fix the Biggest Problems of a Troubled Season Illustration by Linsey Fields TV November 12, 2014 by Andy Greenwald Print In the long, hot summer of 2013, we here at Grantland introduced the Fantasy TV Trade Machine as a way to simultaneously kill time and save the shows we loved. It was a fun diversion, nothing more.

6 Then, last fall, the Machine took on a more pressing responsibility: If used correctly, it could serve as an instruction manual for fixing new network shows before it was too late. Tweaking them while they still had that factory scent and before they were resigned to the remainder bin by unimpressed viewers would benefit all involved: the overtaxed networks, the underused actors, and, most of all, the skeptical audience. The goal of the Grantland Fantasy TV Trade Machine is to make every show better. Its bedrock belief is that such a thing is possible. The Machine s only rule? Do no harm.1 (Its existential irony: There is no actual machine. Not yet, anyway.) This fall, I looked at a historically weak slate of broadcast shows not as a challenge but as an opportunity. Surely, with a few performers swapped here and there, even the saddest turkey could become a soaring eagle! Of course, I may have waited a bit too long to find out: The fall season s biggest turkeys have already been led to the slaughterhouse. (That didn t stop me from raiding the corpse of Selfie for expiring contracts and spare parts.) So the series I fed through the Machine aren t the worst of the lot, but merely the most frustrating. I honestly believe they are all capable of improvement.2 As I started gaming out trade scenarios, I soon realized that a series of simple one-for-one swaps wouldn t suffice. The problems of these freshmen shows were too ingrained, the miscasting too severe. Once I began moving pieces around, the process began to look like a game of dominos. Saving Mulaney meant disrupting Marry Me. But messing with Marry Me offered a window of hope for The Affair. And so on. There s a chance this looks confusing. There s a chance it looks like madness. But there s also a chance that it s all so crazy that it just might work. Remember, no actual actors were harmed in the making of this fantasy trade list. (Though quite a few egos were likely bruised.) We trade because we love. And boy, do we love to trade. THE SHOW: Mulaney mulaneyshortnbc THE CURRENT CAST: John Mulaney Nasim Pedrad Seaton Smith Zack Pearlman Elliott Gould Martin Short THE PROBLEM: Everyone loves John Mulaney as a writer for Saturday Night Live, where he helped tweak Stefon; as a stand-up comedian; and as a polite, well-dressed human being. Unfortunately, not many people feel the same way about Mulaney, the multi-cam sitcom currently dying a slow and very public death on Fox s Sunday night. Though the series has improved since its debut, the ratings have not, leading the network to shave its season order from 16 to 13.3 Fox seems committed to airing the remaining episodes, but a second season is both unlikely and, as of yet, undeserved. With its stilted rhythms and hit-and-miss humor, Mulaney has been unable to make a case for either its throwback style or its own existence. A drastic shake-up is needed. Luckily, that s exactly what I ve got. THE TRADES: Fox receives Casey Wilson (from Marry Me, NBC) and John Cho (expiring contract from Selfie, ABC). CBS receives Seaton Smith (to Scorpion) and Zack Pearlman (to Stalker). AMC receives Elliott Gould (to Halt and Catch Fire). THE NEW CAST: John Mulaney

7 Nasim Pedrad Casey Wilson John Cho Martin Short THE RATIONALE: I ve spoken to John Mulaney twice now and I m swayed by his unapologetic love for the multi-cam comedies of his youth. More important, I m convinced by his talent and abilities that, if given one more chance, he could transform Mulaney into a sitcom worthy of that legacy. So if you, too, are willing to accept all of that and judging by the ratings, you are definitely not then let s take it a step further. If the problem with Mulaney isn t the format, it is definitely the context. Right now, Mulaney is trying (and failing!) to be two shows at once: an apartment-based comedy about wacky roommates and a workplace-based comedy about a nutty boss. Mulaney himself is the only connective thread between these two worlds, which is a problem since (1) even he would likely tell you that he s the weakest performer on his own show, and (2) TV s John Mulaney is, thus far, a sweatered cipher without many characteristics to call his own. My solution? Mulaney needs to pick sides, and it s not the one you may think. Despite the assertion of former Fox boss Kevin Reilly, Mulaney is not Seinfeld for a new generation. But it could still be 30 Rock for a broader audience. Mulaney s sharply observed stand-up bits, about procuring Xanax and accidentally chasing women through the subway, simply don t translate well to teleplays, and especially not when they re needlessly neutered in the process. Focusing on the professional instead of the personal would allow Mulaney to draw a bright line between the jokes he tells onstage and the jokes he can mine from his years of experience in Studio 8H. So let s dispatch the talented but ill-served Seaton Smith (he ll be fine on Scorpion; see below) and the intensely aggravating Zack Pearlman (he ll be lit on fire on Stalker). Elliott Gould is a wonderful actor, but totally wasted here as a gay neighbor whose primary personality trait is that he s gay. Off to the greener (and more creative) pastures of cable with you! As far as I m concerned, Mulaney now sleeps at the office. So let s get to work. Right now on Mulaney, Martin Short is hamming it up as Lou Cannon, the host of a C-grade quiz show. I wouldn t make him any more kosher, but I d promote Lou to the host of his own late-night talk show. John Mulaney is, as now, an ambitious, morally questionable new hire to the writer s room. I d keep Nasim Pedrad in the mix she s the best thing on the current version of Mulaney but add her to Lou s staff, perhaps as his PA. (It s already in continuity for Lou to like her! Not that anyone but me is keeping track of Mulaney continuity.) With Selfie canceled, John Cho is suddenly available. Let s bring him in as Lou s overtaxed producer. And, to add romantic spark and conflict, let s rescue Casey Wilson from the squawking ship that is NBC s Marry Me. That show has an even better pedigree than Mulaney it s the baby of Wilson s husband, Happy Endings creator David Caspe and, so far, it also has better ratings. But, somewhat perversely, I still think Mulaney has more potential. On Marry Me, Wilson is flopsweating through nearly every scene, keeping a listing, unpleasant series afloat through sheer force of comedic will. On Mulaney, she could take a breath. Besides, the less physical type of backstabbing required to survive behind the scenes of a late-night institution is probably something she could play in her sleep. I m setting my imaginary DVR for this never-gonna-happen version of Mulaney as I type. It was never going to be a world-changing sitcom, but this way it could, at least, be an entertaining one. But, wait, if Casey Wilson is on Mulaney, what does that mean for THE SHOW: Marry Me Marry Me - Season PilotNBC THE CURRENT CAST: Casey Wilson Ken Marino John Gemberling Sarah Wright Olsen

8 Tymberlee Hill Tim Meadows Dan Bucatinsky THE PROBLEM: As explained above, Marry Me is a hysterical sitcom in all the wrong ways. With its Adderall pacing and relentless cheer, it s not making me laugh so much as it s making me exhausted. Worse, the ensemble gathered around the solid leads is Exhibit A for the slapdash casting part desperation, part shrug that is sinking contemporary network sitcoms. I don t believe that John Gemberling s obnoxious, self-loathing beardo exists in the same universe as Sarah Wright Olsen s type A diva. I don t believe they exist at all. THE TRADES: NBC receives Dominic West (from The Affair, Showtime) and Da Vine Joy Randolph (expiring contract from Selfie, ABC). AMC receives John Gemberling, Sarah Wright Olsen, and Tymberlee Hill (all to The Walking Dead). THE NEW CAST: Ken Marino Dominic West Da Vine Joy Randolph Stephen Guarino Tim Meadows Dan Bucatinsky THE RATIONALE: So far, none of 2014 s heavily hyped sit-rom-coms have worked and that includes Marry Me. So why not try a fresh approach? Let s keep the romance and the impending nuptials, but swap the gender. Ken Marino remains as the everydude-ish Jake, but now he s hopelessly in love with Jimmy, a loud and proud British expat played by Dominic West. After his five years of urban blight and frustration in Baltimore and one miserable summer in the Hamptons, I feel like West has earned the right to laugh and he s proved he s capable of inspiring it in others. Tim Meadows and Dan Bucatinsky remain as a long-married gay couple, but instead of serving as emotional soundproofing for Wilson s freak-outs, they re now Marino and West s neighbors, acting as sounding boards and role models for a happy, long-term relationship. Stephen Guarino already reprising his memorable role from Happy Endings now makes even more sense in the regular cast as one of Marino s exes. And Da Vine Joy Randolph was a surprise breakout from Selfie s shortened run. Let s add her to the mix as West s immigration attorney turned confidante. I m not sure this version of Marry Me is better than what s currently on TV, but it s certainly more interesting. But wait, you say. If Dominic West is getting hitched over here, what does that mean for THE SHOW: The Affair theaffair_west_wilsonshowtime THE CURRENT CAST: Dominic West Maura Tierney Ruth Wilson Joshua Jackson THE PROBLEM: There are a lot of things that rub me the wrong way about The Affair: the lack of humor, the ponderous pacing, the sheer amount of Pacey. But the aspect of the show that rankles most

9 is the miscasting. Dominic West is an exceptional actor, but he s entirely wrong for the part of a selfproclaimed neurotic Brooklyn novelist. And Joshua Jackson was far more believable as a clone stolen from an alternate dimension than he is as a horse rancher. Thanks to these stumbles, The Affair is stilted when it should be sexy, confusing when it needs to be compelling. I know the show was just renewed for a second season. But in TV Trade Machine world, it s never too late to blow it up and start again. THE TRADES: Showtime receives Scoot McNairy (from Halt and Catch Fire, AMC), Michael Cudlitz (from The Walking Dead, AMC), and Emily Mortimer (expiring contract from The Newsroom, HBO). AMC receives Maura Tierney (to The Walking Dead) and Joshua Jackson (to Halt and Catch Fire). NBC receives Dominic West (to Marry Me). THE NEW CAST: Scoot McNairy Emily Mortimer Ruth Wilson Michael Cudlitz THE RATIONALE: Scoot McNairy is one of the most interesting young-ish actors working today. As good as he is as a bottled-up programmer on AMC s so-so Halt and Catch Fire, he could be considerably better as a nebbishy novelist ready to explode. As president and chief operating officer of the Emily Mortimer Fan Club,4 I m all too happy to free her from the sanctimonious shackles of The Newsroom. She has onscreen experience being cuckolded from her time in Match Point, a role that also allowed her to be entirely self-possessed and sympathetic. These are skills that will come in handy in what still appears to be a rather thankless role. But the move I m most excited about is the addition of Michael Cudlitz. Strong and soulful, he s been a revelation on this drastically improved season of The Walking Dead and, given that show s turnover, I can t imagine he ll be sticking around all that long. Dropping him into the placid waters of The Affair is like tossing a cannonball into a puddle. Not only does he make for a far more plausible rancher than Jackson, but the difference in age with Wilson and the difference in physicality with McNairy also add a new level of menace to what has been, thus far, a far too polite show. Bonus: There s no need to worry too much about the survivors whom Cudlitz just left behind, because THE SHOW: The Walking Dead walking_dead_lincoln_gungene Page/AMC THE PROBLEM: There isn t one. In its fifth season, The Walking Dead is better than it s ever been. So why is it all over this column? Because no show on television is more vital to the TV Trade Machine project than The Walking Dead. Thanks to the demands of its premise, the series gobbles up fresh meat like well, you know. And so, like a cagey GM, TWD involves itself in nearly every trade Hoovering up expiring contracts, selling high on reclamation projects, and accepting nearly every stiff on offer. In this, the show reminds me of my beloved Philadelphia 76ers: Everyone is a potential asset; no one is ever untouchable. What matters is the long-term plan, not the personalities involved. THE TRADES: AMC receives Maura Tierney and, like, two extra children (from The Affair, Showtime); Elyes Gabel, Jadyn Wong, and Ari Stidham (from Scorpion, CBS); Alana De La Garza (from Forever, ABC); and John Gemberling, Sarah Wright Olsen, and Tymberlee Hill (from Marry Me, NBC).

10 Showtime receives Michael Cudlitz (to The Affair) ABC receives Sonequa Martin-Green and Tyler James Williams (to Forever) THE RATIONALE: I really like this spot for Maura Tierney. She s a beloved TV actress, equally adept at comedy and drama. The one opportunity she hasn t yet been given in her long and circuitous career is a chance to kick ass or at least saw off a couple of heads. There s a steely toughness underneath Tierney s pleasant veneer. It was there on ER, and it was certainly evident in her own personal life when she overcame cancer in Put a pistol in her hand, take away her conditioner, and she ll fit right in with The Walking Dead s ragtag group of survivors. As for everyone else? Well, zombies gotta eat. THE SHOW: Forever JUDD HIRSCH, IOAN GRUFFUDD, ALANA DE LA GARZAABC THE CURRENT CAST: Ioan Gruffudd Alana De La Garza Joel David Moore Donnie Keshawarz Lorraine Toussaint Judd Hirsch THE PROBLEM: Unlike many shows, Forever knew exactly what it was from the start. It s a light, general-interest drama designed to entertain, to occasionally charm, and, above all, to run six seasons in highly profitable cultural anonymity. (Let s call this the Bones corollary.) Unfortunately, Forever has proved to be a bit too low-key. After a surprisingly robust debut, the ratings have sunk to the point at which the show s title may prove to be more ironic than prophetic. This would be a shame. Forever isn t great, but it s not trying to be. On the broadcast networks these days, good is plenty good enough. THE TRADES: ABC receives Sonequa Martin-Green and Tyler James Williams (from The Walking Dead, AMC) and Archie Panjabi (from The Good Wife, CBS). AMC receives Alana De La Garza (to The Walking Dead) and Joel David Moore (to Halt and Catch Fire). THE NEW CAST: Ioan Gruffudd Sonequa Martin-Green Tyler James Williams Donnie Keshawarz Archie Panjabi Lorraine Toussaint Judd Hirsch THE RATIONALE: The gentle banter between Ioan Gruffudd s ageless Henry Morgan and Judd Hirsch s well-aged Abe is pleasant, but not nearly enough to fuel an entire series. And so the first order of business is replacing the perfectly adequate Alana De La Garza with the potentially extraordinary Sonequa Martin-Green. I say potentially because in her two-plus seasons as Sasha on The Walking Dead, Martin-Green has shuttled between the background and the foreground. Sometimes she s the show s emotional center, her vengeful fury muted by her tender affection for Larry Gilliard Jr. s Bob.

11 Other times, she s stuck mopping up other people s messes or their misses. The one constant is that, no matter what she s doing, Martin-Green demands our attention. As Dr. Morgan s new partner (and, of course, inevitable love interest), she d add a shot of adrenaline to a show in danger of slipping into a coma. For similar reasons, I m swapping one three-named actor for another in the role of Henry s awkward assistant. Joel David Moore is fine, but I have him tagged for better things on cable. Tyler James Williams, the former star of Everybody Hates Chris, is having a moment just now, with a strong turn on The Walking Dead and a leading role in Dear White People. There s no downside to either. But Williams s upside is higher than Forever s current, distressingly low ceiling. In addition to a pulse, Forever also lacks a worthy adversary. Since its September premiere, the show has been teasing viewers with the shadowy presence of Adam, an unseen killer who claims to be afflicted with the same immortality bug as Henry. Well, bully for him. Despite its title, Forever doesn t have time to dilly-dally with somnolent cases of the week. It needs an interesting villain and it needed him yesterday. Or should I say her? There s no reason Adam can t be a pseudonym of Eve, Henry s true immortal foil. As for casting, I can think of no better candidate than Archie Panjabi, soon-to-be-late of The Good Wife. Panjabi plays a complicated heroine (more or less) on that show, but it s high time she steered into the skid of her terrible press. (Nothing has ever been said on the record, but there has to be a reason the only actor still willing to share scenes with Panjabi is an iphone 5.) If Panjabi can strike fear into the hearts of Emmy winners, think of what she d be able to do to Forever s dwindling fan base. THE SHOW: Scorpion scorpion-castcbs THE CURRENT CAST: Elyes Gabel Katharine McPhee Eddie Kaye Thomas Jadyn Wong Ari Stidham Robert Patrick THE PROBLEM: Judging by the ratings, Scorpion doesn t need my help. The show is doing healthy business among the procedural-addicted masses who help CBS stay flush, as well as with the 18-to-49- year-olds who keep advertisers swingin on the flippity-flop. It s been granted a full season order, and renewal seems like a formality. And yet. No fall show frustrates me more because, for as decent as Scorpion has been, it ought to be so much better. The premise is kicky and fun: A ragtag group of socially inept geniuses aid the government when the going gets tough. Former Idol Katharine McPhee is around to add humanity. Her silent, gifted son (played by Riley B. Smith) is around to add heart. I want to love Scorpion the way I love the unfairly forgotten caper flick Sneakers. But I don t. And the reason is the cast. Stilted and bland, Elyes Gabel is no leader of men not even the half-considered head cases he has following him. I say, let s take a cue from the Scorpion playbook and think outside the box. And then let s blow up the entire box and start fresh. THE TRADES: CBS reassigns Maggie Q (from Stalker). CBS receives John Gallagher Jr. (from The Newsroom, HBO) and Seaton Smith (from Mulaney, Fox). AMC receives Elyes Gabel, Jadyn Wong, and Ari Stidham (to The Walking Dead). THE NEW CAST:

12 Maggie Q John Gallagher Jr. Eddie Kaye Thomas Seaton Smith Katharine McPhee Robert Patrick THE RATIONALE: Leave the genius-ing to the writers. What Scorpion needs badly is personality and chemistry. And I think, thanks to my tinkering, that it may finally have it. Maggie Q is the best thing about CBS s hideous Stalker yes, that s like praising the crudités on the Titanic, but still. She s a fun, physical performer, and I actually enjoy watching her order people around in the few minutes Stalker devotes each week to the living before it gets back to fetishizing the demented and the dead.5 With her chilly charisma, she d be perfect as the team s new engineer. Next to Q, I d throw in John Gallagher Jr., a warm actor currently in aesthetic exile on The Newsroom. A colleague recently referred to his character on that show as the saddest man in the universe. Replacing Gabel as the real-life founder of the Scorpion crew should cheer him up. And while comedian Smith isn t working as Motif on Mulaney, there s something about him that suggests skills beyond punch lines. Why not slide him in as the team s resident laptop-hammering hacker? Eddie Kaye Thomas, the best of the preexisting bunch, is fine right where he is. McPhee can also stay, of course, because she s a national treasure. And Robert Patrick isn t going anywhere because he s a national monument. (I mean that quite literally. One more crag on that oaky face of his and he can be legally classified as a Sequoioideae.) THE SHOW: Halt and Catch Fire haltandcatchfire_ep1tina Rowden/AMC THE CURRENT CAST: Lee Pace Scoot McNairy Mackenzie Davis Kerry Bishé THE PROBLEM: Despite some ardent fans, AMC s Halt and Catch Fire limped into its second-season renewal. The show took far too long to find its legs and, if we re being honest, I still feel like it may have found the wrong pair. The most exciting parts of Halt s first year involved Cameron, Mackenzie Davis s some-kind-of-wonderful hacker, and Kerry Bishé s Donna, a working wife and mother who happens to be just as good a programmer as her troubled husband. If AMC wants Halt to do more than just run code, it needs to invest in a major upgrade. Here s how to do it: THE TRADES: AMC receives Elliott Gould (from Mulaney, Fox), Joshua Jackson (from The Affair, Showtime), and Joel David Moore (from Forever, ABC). Showtime receives Scoot McNairy (to The Affair). HBO receives Lee Pace (to Game of Thrones). THE NEW CAST: Mackenzie Davis Kerry Bishé Joshua Jackson Joel David Moore

13 Elliott Gould THE RATIONALE: We ve had plenty of prestige-chasing cable dramas about difficult men attempting impossible things. Isn t it time to reboot one of these old boxes from the female perspective? Pessimists might look at this trade as AMC losing both of its gifted stars. I see it as a chance for the network to promote real talent and put them in an incredible position to succeed. A show about Davis and Bishé attempting to shake up the staid world of American computing in 1980s Texas would be fascinating and this is huge for spinoff-crazy AMC totally original. Joshua Jackson could step easily into a Lee Pace like role (cocky charlatan more interested in bank than bytes), and Joel David Moore certainly fits right in as some sort of gawky computing savant. Throw in Elliott Gould as a millionaire who could either fund their dreams or crush them it s about time he started playing cool again; enough with the constant kvetching and you ve got the hardware for a series that could win the next generation of great dramas, not settle for fourth place in this one. THE SHOW: Game of Thrones Game of Thrones THE PROBLEM: None, now that Bran s birdbrained vision quest is sidelined for an entire season. THE TRADES: HBO receives Lee Pace (from Halt and Catch Fire, AMC) and Karen Gillan (expiring contract from Selfie, ABC). THE RATIONALE: HBO didn t need to get involved in the Trade Machine this fall, and yet it smartly parlayed two expiring contracts (Emily Mortimer and John Gallagher Jr. from The Newsroom) into two Marvel movie stars on the rise. Though I haven t read the books, I have no doubt that there s some sort of cocky, sword-twirling knight debuting soon that Pace could play in his sleep. As for the spunky Gillan well, would anyone really mind if she were to make a surprise appearance as Ygritte s long-lost arrow-shooting cousin, Ygrotte? Jon Snow must have learned a few things during the long offseason, and I m sure she d be happy to give him a chance to try them out. See? Everyone s happy. This is how HBO stays atop the Iron Throne. And how the Picasso of the TV Trade Machine paints his masterpiece. Music Critics See Their Role and Influence Waning in The Era of Digital Music music concert Credit: Shutterstock/KR MEDIA Productions Dan Singer November 13, COMMENT Nate Patrin s career trajectory in music journalism was once the norm. Patrin grew up reading Spin and Rolling Stone in the 1990s and wrote music reviews for his high school newspaper. He began contributing to the Minneapolis alt-weekly City Pages in 1999, and from there he moved up to the big leagues, freelancing for Spin and Blender. It was the traditional path, Patrin said. Nate Patrin Nate Patrin Between then and now, Blender folded in 2009 and Rolling Stone physically shrank its print magazine. In September, Spin Media ended the print edition of Vibe, and Spin, which became an online-only publication in 2012, had its fourth editor-in-chief in two years, Craig Marks, step down.

14 As the entire media industry has struggled to adapt to demands of the digital age and turn a profit, music publications in particular are facing a slew of unique challenges that have redefined their roles and responsibilities. Patrin, who currently freelances for Pitchfork and several other outlets, is one of many writers who were drawn to music journalism s authoritative voices and engaging stories, only to find themselves riding out the profession s growing pains as it reshapes for the future. It can get discouraging, feeling like options for diehard music enthusiasts could be narrowing, Patrin said. Reviews and Page Views One of the biggest shifts in digital-era music journalism is the changing role of the music critic. Chris Weingarten Chris Weingarten I feel like professional music criticism is almost a thing of the past, said Rolling Stone contributing editor Chris Weingarten, who has been vocal about the topic in recent years and calls himself the Last Rock Critic Standing in his Twitter bio. He noted that there are limitless opportunities to write about music online for free or next-to-nothing, but professional critics are losing the relevancy they once had. A critic s voice is now someone who s trying to speak articulately in the midst of noise, Weingarten said. Album leaks and streaming services like Spotify have democratized the public s access to music, Weingarten said, and this diminishes the immediacy and impact of reviews written by professionals. By the time any of those reviews hit, you ve heard it. You ve made up your mind, Weingarten said. The whole idea of sitting down and reading eight grafs about it after all that? It s almost like, Yeah, I ve moved on. This traditional consumer guide approach to music journalism, as Poynter media reporter and former Spin critic Andrew Beaujon puts it, has given way to a more esoteric style of criticism that conveys what it s like to experience certain kinds of music. I really enjoy that kind of writing, Beaujon said, but there just aren t that many publications willing to pay for it. In addition to criticism, music news has been changed by the social web. Similar to other forms of niche journalism, the music news cycle has rapidly accelerated, and coverage is now driven by click-based metrics that determine a music publication s value to advertisers, according to Weingarten and fellow music critic Maura Johnston. Johnston, who has written about music for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and other publications, believes that the pressure to increase web traffic causes major music publications to churn out sensationalist outrage pieces and celebrity coverage of popular artists, a development she compared to when your bagel shop starts selling frozen yogurt. With diminished resources, what happens is the stuff that s known to make money gets all of the resources and the time, Johnston said. Johnston said she personally struggles with this trend in content creation because her interest in writing about new, unhyped artists is less profitable for publications compared to pieces covering mainstays who are guaranteed clicks.

15 When Johnston wrote for The Village Voice and the pop music website Idolator, the things that were like Hey, this is a cool band would never get as much traffic as a list of something or [a piece] pointing out something is bad, she said. Johnston also attributes this shift in coverage to the way readers use social media to curate content from a number of different sources, making it harder for music publications to target a consistent audience they can sell to advertisers. Safe, predictable topics receive more attention as a result of this uncertainty, she said. Weingarten doesn t think most music writers are passionate about doing sensationalist music news coverage, but he acknowledges that, at least for the time being, it is necessary in order for music publications to survive in a click-based economy. If music publications eventually find a new way to quantify their worth that doesn t involve click-based metrics, he said, then you could start seeing sensationalist coverage go away. Pitchfork: Music Journalism s New Tastemaker One of the most successful music publications of the digital era is Pitchfork Media, a Chicago-based online magazine. Amy Phillips, news editor of Pitchfork Amy Phillips, news editor of Pitchfork (By Jacob Murphy.) Pitchfork Media, commonly referred to as Pitchfork, was launched in 1995 by Ryan Schreiber, who was a 19-year-old record store employee at the time. The publication initially gained a following for its vigorous coverage of indie music, but as it has matured it has become a one-stop shop for coverage of both up-and-coming artists and well-known indie and pop veterans. Pitchfork has expanded its brand considerably over the past decade by curating its own music festivals, launching the print quarterly, The Pitchfork Review, creating a film site called The Dissolve and licensing video content. Matt Frampton, Pitchfork Media s vice president of sales, said that despite being born online, Pitchfork has found success using a fairly traditional publishing model. Our goal is [to] make really great content that people want to read, Frampton said. When people want to read great content, that means you have a really interesting audience that advertisers want to reach. Pitchfork s primary source of revenue is advertising, and its expected revenue growth is very healthy, Frampton said, ranging from 25-to-40 percent each year. Frampton said Pitchfork s website receives about 6.2 million unique visitors and 40 million page views each month. According to comscore, a web analytics firm, Pitchfork received 2.47 million unique visitors in August, outperforming Spin and Vibe but falling short of Rolling Stone s 11 million unique visitors. Pitchfork news editor Amy Phillips credits Pitchfork s strong opinions and constant stream of news coverage with helping the publication build such a prominent and dedicated following. Phillips said Pitchfork doesn t target users with short attention spans, instead publishing lengthy reviews, features and documentaries. Aside from its rapid-fire news coverage, she said, the site is definitely for people who want to sit and take a deep dive in things. A freelancer for Pitchfork since 2007, Patrin said the publication s album review schedule typically 25 reviews are published each week provides him with opportunities to consistently receive assignments and cover more eclectic releases that might have fallen through the cracks at a print magazine.