Television

[Fox]

Jorja Fox and George Eads, I watch CSI all the time but what are there charicter names? thats the only way I will know who they are!!! Fired!!!!!! I'm really angry!!! why should they not get more money! the shows doing well and the charge a ton to buy the series in box set form!!! what is it like 10% to make the box set and 90% go to the makers!! pass the money along thats what I say!
Ranting Fox

[Kathy Li]

Jorja Fox plays Sara Seidel, and George Eads plays Nick Stokes.

Quill, you mean it's West Wing fallout?

Personally, I figure anything past the third year of a show is gravy. I don't mind new cast that much, though, because new cast generally means shaking up the formula a bit and giving the writers a bit more charater room. A new guy gets to bring out new sides to existing characters (ala Charles Emerson Winchester on MASH). And yeah, the Grissom/Sara thing would be neat, if they EVER GOT AROUND TO WRITING IT....they've been hinting for ages and then doing nothing. It's like Grissom's deafness--conveniently erased out of continuity.

OTOH, this status-quo writing could make losing a character more upsetting to the balance.

Ah. Found some info:

http://members.aol.com/JRD203/csi-news.htm

[Peter Murray]

Uh - so you doubt they'll write this Grissom/Sara thing... but Sara's probably not going to be in anyway? Doesn't sound as though there's much there for the writers to decide. Ditto for Sara at an AA meeting.

And I still say the next entry in the CSI franchise will be something like CSI: Poughkeepsie .

[Kathy Li]

Yes, that struck me as I was on draft five, hence it's being edited out and folks now scratching their heads wondering what you're talking about. But at least CSI is filming an episode in the UK this year (for some weird reason).

Actually, I think the best version of that joke I heard was CSI: Saskatchewan.

Anyways, CSI is the least of my problems. I'm watching The Amazing Race 5. And The 4400, and Dead Like Me is about to start up. And I'll have to see if Lost is any good....

[meteorite]

One thing that I always thought would be interesting would be if they reanimated the romance between Grissom and Mistress Heather. She was the only one who ever succeeded in confuzzling him as much as he usually confuzzles everyone else; Irene Adler to his Sherlock Holmes. They left it with her being p.o.'ed at him though, so that's unlikely.

At first, I was very irritated that they cut Nick and Sara in what I suspect were purely political maneuverings. After all, William Petersen had threatened to leave at one point, and CSI without Grissom is like Classic Star Trek without Spock. However, in retrospect, I hadn't seen much character development going on with either of them that really made sense, i.e., Sara suddenly becoming Supercop for a couple of episodes last season. Maybe this was a convenient excuse to remove a couple of characters that seemed to have gone stale. They may have shot themselves in the foot over this, but I'll give CSI at least a couple of episodes to rejuvenate. If they don't recapture my interest, though, it gets dropped like a hot potato. Hmmm, what else is worth watching on Thursdays...?

Time to reread some books.

[Fox]

Uh - so you doubt they'll write this Grissom/Sara thing... but Sara's probably not going to be in anyway? Doesn't sound as though there's much there for the writers to decide. Ditto for Sara at an AA meeting.

PM your right!! AGAIN I always thought they might do something but the writers are dim wits cause eveyone knows that somethings going on between them they just won't write the story!! its been going on since what series 2? and they still have done nothing about it!
Fox

Oh thanks for naming the char for me! it really helped!

[Kathy Li]

meteorite, from what I can gather from the news articles, it is a matter of network/negotiation politics. A lot of actors lately have been renegotiating pay levels while still under contract by staging "strikes." (The West Wing cast did it two years in a row). Eads and Fox's agents apparently threatened a similar thing at the bargaining table, while CBS just wasn't in the mood. Les Moonves (head honcho at CBS) is probably making an example of them, from the business point of view that once a contract's signed it should stick. From the actors' point of view, they signed on when they didn't know how big a success the show would be, and they want more than the raise they were offered.

The fact that they were making $100,000 per episode, and that prior to the show they both only had supporting or featured roles makes me shrug and be somewhat less than sympathetic with their lack of power at the bargaining table, vs. Petersen ($500k/ep) and Helgenberger ($250k/ep). And btw, that's 22-24 episodes per season. One can see why Moonves gets testy. :-)

It sounds as if nobody showed up the first day of shooting, but that only Eads and Fox are getting punished for it.

[meteorite]

And on a parallel note, it looks like when the studio called their bluff, the agents backpedaled frantically, and were brushed off when they tried to patch up negotiations. George Eads and Jorja Fox will probably be rehired, but without the raise they wanted.

Didn't know the West Wing staff pulled the same stunt...maybe to protest half the budget disappearing up Aaron Sorkin's nose? Still waiting to see if they can recapture the same writing zing sans Sorkin. At least the show can end with dignity, with the end of Bartlet's term of office. I was rewatching old episodes, and had a suspicion confirmed: he is related to the Josiah Bartlett that was an original signer of the Declaration of Independence for New Hampshire. Dropped a 't' along the generations, though. Funny what you find out while processing books for your library.

[Kathy Li]

I was hoping on West Wing, too, but not sure it's going to happen. Only the Glenn Close episode came close, although I do quite enjoy what John Sacret Young does to occasionally turn in a China Beach episode for them.

Yeah, I remember that. I hooked up the name from having watched 1776 waaay too many times as a kid.

Oo! look! Futon Critic has even more news on Eads and Fox.

[Kathy Li]

I'm back from Comic-Con! The Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars panel was an absolute BLAST, and the part where I laughed the hardest was when someone asked Ben Browder about his guest-shot on CSI, and he said that Naren Shankar was working on CSI, now and that we should all petition him to hire Black and Browder on as regulars, even though we all know they don't pay very much because they need the work.

About twenty or thirty of us knew what he was talking about and we laughed like loons.

But it did make me long, fleetingly, for Eads not to get rehired (he's back, btw) so that we could see Browder every week again.

Second favorite part of the panel was when some guy was trying to act cool by saying he wasn't a fan of the show and he didn't think of them as big movie stars or anything, etc. etc. continuing to put his foot in his mouth, and Rockne O'Bannon basically pointed out that he'd known how to use the word "frell" and had obviously seen all the episodes, and he was a FAN. Sorry. At which Browder jumped in, saying he saw the guy's point, and that he thought of us as the audience, not fans. Then Claudia Black leaned into her mike and said, "But, I am a star!"

For the Joss Whedon Serenity panel, take a look at www.fireflyfan.net. Someone's put up an audio taping of the panel as an MP3 file.

[Kathy Li]

Bump.

So, is anybody looking forward to any of the new fall shows? I'm curious about Lost.

[Kathy Li]

Just in case anybody else likes keeping track of the number of Superman movie actors who've shown up on Smallville, we're getting one more. Lessee, there's Annette O'Toole (Clark's mom), who was Lana Lang in Superman III; Terrence Stamp (voice of Jor-El) was Zod in Superman II; Christopher Reeve (Dr. Swann) who was, of course, Clark/Superman. And now we've got Margot Kidder (Bridget Crosby) who was, of course, Lois Lane.

[Peter Murray]

I can't think of anything I'm looking forward to on TV, but there's the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series starting next week.

However, since Kathy told me when it was starting, she already knows that...

And the chances are we won't see any of the new shows you get, anyway.

[Kathy Li]

Are you saying Channel Five isn't going to pick up CSI: New York, after picking up CSI and CSI: Miami?!

Besides, there's something wrong if we can get a new show starring Hugh Laurie on Fox (House) that can't be seen in the UK.

[Peter Murray]

Well, I haven't been watching CSI: Poughkeepsie, CSI: Saskatchewan or any of the others anyway. Maybe they will get it, then.

I haven't heard of House yet, so maybe that'll be on here. Though if it's actually made by Fox, it might be on Murdoch's satellite channels, and I don't have satellite.