Just Here

TLC has greenlit its first "scripted" series: The drama series, from Tyler Perry, is tentatively titled "Too Close To Home" and is about... Eight episodes have been ordered.

Yeah. I pulled that from TitanTV's website. Not sure where they got it because the only ABC/Disney press website' synopsis that I could find for this episode was even shorter.

This month (March 2016), marks the 50th anniversary of French ye-ye singer France Gall's infamous Les sucettes, which was written by the late Serge Gainesbourg. The song's literal lyrics are about a girl named Annie who likes lollipops, but the extensive double-entendres are all about oral sex.

Syfy has put out another press release about the upcoming season: Most notably, several major guest stars were mentioned:

Official Synopsis: 30-Second Trailer: Behind-the-Scenes Preview: "Wynonna Being Wynonna" Sneak Peek: HitFix: 'Wynonna Earp' showrunner pitched the series as 'Frozen' meets 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' - A good yet short interview with the showrunner, Emily Andras. Also, here's the first five pages from the original comics, via The Hollywood Reporter.

Season premiere is tonight...

Season premiere date finally announced... Via TVLine.com (emphasis added). Also, here's the original CBS press release.

Some reviews of the pilot and the second episode, which are mixed, to say the least: (All links have potential spoilers, but nothing apparently twist-y.) Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter did not like this at all: Robert Bianco, for USA Today, was similarly negative: Variety's reviewer, Brian Lowry took a more measured tact: The A.V. Club's Joshua Alston gave the series a "B" and was generally positive:

Priyanka Chopra has been cast in Paramount's Baywatch film as the "villain" (EW.com). The film has already begun production, with Chopra apparently re-arranging her Quantico filming schedule in order to accommodate her role in the Baywatch film (EW.com).

The final season is set to premiere on Thursday June 2nd, in the 9pm eastern timeslot, per a CW press release (via TheFutonCritic.com).

Emily VanCamp has been immortalized as an official Lego minfigure, thanks to her role as "Agent 13" in Captain America: Civil War. The Agent 13 minifig appears in set #76051 "Super Hero Airport Battle" (Lego.com). Madeleine Stowe, who starred in the original film version of 12 Monkeys will guest star in its TV adaption, appearing in the upcoming second season's finale, as well as providing a voice-over for the second season's premiere episode, which airs April 18th on the Syfy channel (EW.com).

Updates on CBS' Drew pilot: Sarah Shahi (Person of Interest, Life, The L Word) has been cast as the lead, Nancy Drew, who is now a thirty-something NYPD detective (Deadline.com) Other casting developments: Anthony Edwards (Goose!) is set to play Nancy's father, Vanessa Ferlito (Graceland, CSI: New York) will be playing another NYPD detective, and Felix Solis (The Good Wife, The Following) has been cast as an NYPD lieutenant and presumably Nancy's boss. (Deadline.com, see link above) Shahi's addition makes this a "must check out" for me, however I despise soulless in-name-only adaptations, and the fact that this comes from two Grey's Anatomy writers/producers (Joan Rater and Tony Phelan) worries me that this may have too many soapy relationship shenanigans, although having the show being under the CBS umbrella might help mitigate that issue.

Sarah Shahi has been cast as Nancy Drew in CBS' in-name-only pilot Drew (Deadline.com). Per Deadline and TVLine, Drew has first dibs on Shahi in the seemingly unlikely scenario that PoI is renewed for another season.

Deadline: ‘Mozart In The Jungle’ Renewed For Third Season By Amazon

Emily VanCamp's indie film, The Girl in the Book, which also stars Michael Nyqvist (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Ana Mulvoy-Ten (House of Anubis), and Michael Cristofer (Mr. Robot, Rubicon), was officially released on December 11th, both with a limited theatrical run and also digital streaming (e.g., Amazon* and iTunes). Although the film has mixed -- yet generally -- good reviews, VanCamp's performance as present-day Alice has garnered some very positive comments ("exceptional," "a layered, memorable performance," and "a showcase for VanCamp's talents") (RottenTomatoes.com). Officially, the film is unrated, but it would probably fall under an "R" rating, primarily for language. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWoGynCpy58 *Amazon has a 75% off promotion on one digital video rental through January 4th, 2016. Details should be on Amazon's page for the film.

From a few weeks ago (December 3rd)... Syfy Press Release: SYFY’S KILLJOYS SEASON 2 PRODUCTION BEGINS IN TORONTO And, farther back (October 8th)... The Hollywood Reporter: MIPCOM: Syfy's 'Killjoys' Stars Tease Second Season

If you're referring to the retired law enforcement officer who was part of the cold case club, he was played by Richard Riehle.

I'm not sure of all the details of Simon's IDF story (which, I don't completely believe, but that's another issue), but it does seem plausible. And, to give a specific and fairly similar example, a U.S. citizen -- born, raised, and educated in the U.S.A. -- who was essentially a volunteer (moved to Israel as an adult, after attending college) was killed in action inside the Gaza Strip last year (Times of Israel). As long as an American citizen serving in a foreign military is not engaging in hostilities against or spying against the U.S.A., the U.S. government doesn't really care what the citizen is doing. Now, concerning Simon joining the FBI, the two main issues would be (1) whether he is still a U.S. citizen (e.g., if he actually renounced his American citizenship before joining the IDF), and (2) his potential allegiance to a foreign country (Israel). The first issue is highly unlikely, but if applicable, would completely disqualify him from being an FBI special agent. The second issue would mainly affect his ability to get a classified security clearance, which could limit his career options inside the FBI. But, that would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis under the federal security clearance guidelines (specifically, the "Foreign Preference" and "Foreign Influence" sections, among others).

Some additional background on the re-branding... Variety posted this article on 3 December 2014: Disney’s ABC Family Cable Network Mulling Reboot Though, it looks like this name change may have been in the works since at least July 2014. Disney registered the lapsed FreeformTV.com domain on 13 July 2014. That domain currently redirects to ABC Family's website. Excerpts from the WHOIS look up: DOMAIN NAME: FREEFORMTV.COM REGISTRY DOMAIN ID: 1866713964_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN REGISTRAR WHOIS SERVER: WHOIS.CORPORATEDOMAINS.COM REGISTRAR URL: WWW.CSCPROTECTSBRANDS.COM UPDATED DATE: 2015-10-07T00:22:31Z CREATION DATE: 2014-07-13T18:18:17Z REGISTRANT ORGANIZATION: DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC. REGISTRANT STREET: 500 SOUTH BUENA STREET REGISTRANT CITY: BURBANK REGISTRANT STATE/PROVINCE: CA REGISTRANT POSTAL CODE: 91521

I have no clue what type of radio was being used as a prop, but modern first-responder radios (such as this Motorola model) have built-in GPS.

Coming in with low expectations, I've seen enough to stick around for a second episode, with the Nimah twin twist helping to seal the deal. Regarding the dorm layout, it looked like each pair of rooms had a shared jack-and-jill bathroom, which is fairly common, especially in more recent university residence halls (though large apartment-style suites are also quite common). But, regarding Nimah's single, at least with her (and her twin's!) last scene, the room's door looked to be a double fire/emergency door, and there appeared to a lighted "Exit" sign above it. Also, regarding Brian J. Smith's character and the Malawi girl, the general age of consent in Malawi is only 14,* so based on what I heard in the pilot (Miranda only mentioned "slept with"), there doesn't seem to be enough to call that part of his backstory statutory rape.

Nice find. Some of the nits are minor (type of gun), and I'll push back on the "recruited" comment because (1) it's a typical Hollywood trope and allowable in my opinion, and (2) there could be situations where someone's unique expertise or situation is useful to the FBI. And, the find-the-secret assignment was clearly fictional, but as a plot device, it was a nice way to dump some exposition about the main characters without having the typical pilot-y clunkiness. Cara posted this FBI Jobs .gov link in the episode thread, but I'll add that if you read the biographies for agents in leadership positions (e.g., Senior Agent In Charge at field offices) on the FBI website, they do tend to have 5-7 years of local law enforcement experience. Also, I'll just mention this here (again): In Malawi, the general agent of consent is 14, so Brian J. Smith's character probably would not have been guilty of rape, based on what was mentioned in the pilot. (Miranda only uses the phrase "slept with.")

This felt like "Bones and Castle met at a bar in South Beach, and... had a baby show ten months later." (And, maybe Forever joined in the fun as well?) Possibilities' post above summed up a number of issues I had with the Pilot, including some others, since I was only half-paying attention. Random Observations: I didn't care for having another youngest detective in the NYPD. (What's next a "Doogie Howser, P.D."?) Or, the issue of a detective transferring from one major metropolitan police department to another. Better options would have been to have her been (1) in the Miami-Dade police, but joined the FBI, and then moved back to Miami-Dade for some reason; (2) semi-retired, e.g. as a stay-at-home wife/mother since her husband had money or had a high-paying job; or (3) just made her a private investigator. The open-style pathology lab looked more like a temporary set, then an every-episode set. Not to mention that the lab area looked to be completely open, and to another floor. (I hope they have good ventilation.) And, then performing an autopsy in street clothes, without scrubs or a mask? A defense lawyer would have a field day with that one. I wasn't paying too close attention at the end, but the boat "search" sequence didn't seem all that legal. I assume that they partially re-wrote the murder-of-the-week to incorporate Mama Rosewood's character, but I would have preferred that the plot to bring Rosewood together with Detective Villa could have been a lot stronger. E.g., more personal to one of the characters, like the detective's dead partner, and/or the detective being very dedicated and not being satisfied with the "rush job" autopsy done by the county medical examiner's office. I didn't mind the billboard thing, because I'm sure that expert witness fees can easily be in the hundreds of dollars per hour and there tends to be a few "superstar" experts, especially in television land. Though, the number of permanent billboards would probably be excessively expensive in real-life.

Unless I missed something, on the Navy Seal thing, I'm guessing Jaimie Alexander's character has that tattoo because of some reason related to a dead or presumed dead boyfriend/husband or family member was a Navy Seal and that backstory is part of her reasoning for whatever she's doing.

Looks like CBS is doing something a bit different with their Saturday morning educational/syndicated block* by airing a half-hour scripted drama, titled "The Inspectors."** Synopsis via TV Insider: The series started filming in April and looks to have already wrapped up its first season (looks to be 22 episodes). Per his Twitter, Carlos Bernard (of 24 fame) has directed a few of the episodes and based on the ever-reliable IMDb, looks to be either playing the lead character's father or another family member (but is only listed for a few episodes). *The block is branded "CBS Dream Team" but the time slots are sold to and managed by a third-party company (Wikipedia). **I saw a mention of this on Twitter because one of my accounts follows the USPS. And, I was like what the heck is this, because I didn't remember that show being part of CBS' upfront announcements or anything else.