TV: Diane Holloway

Face to face with old faces, new friends for fall TV

By Diane Holloway
AMERICAN-STATESMAN TELEVISION WRITER
Monday, July 24, 2006

At the recent Television Critics Association Tour in Los Angeles, Diane Holloway blogged about the hottest fall shows and stars. Here are some highlights. To read more, visit austin360.com/tvblog.

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"Friday Night Lights" is calling Austin home, at least through its first season and, with luck, well beyond. Creator Peter Berg, who also directed the 2004 movie that inspired the series, thinks the NBC show will be able to explore some of the deeper issues that were in H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger's book.

"We're using football as a baseline to look more at the culture of athletics and small town life," Berg said.

The pilot uses Pflugerville High School for the football scenes and will return to the high school on a regular basis. The show's production will film its own scenes on an old, unused football field in town and blend that footage with scenes shot of the Pflugerville Panthers' football games.

"They like the exposure, and we're not all that intrusive," Berg said. The production also is making an "unspecified donation" to the school in exchange for using the location.

The fictional team will be known as the Panthers, but for legal reasons, Pflugerville will be called Dillon.

Filming begins in August for the show's Oct. 3 debut.

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Rob Thomas, former Austin musician and Reagan High School journalism teacher, admits "Veronica Mars" has put him through some nerve-wracking times.

First he agonized over whether the pilot he created would be bought, and then after UPN picked it up, he worried it would fail. After his ABC romantic drama "Cupid" failed, he spent "four miserable years trying to get a show on the air," and he didn't want to be miserable again.

"Veronica Mars" is the darling of critics and beloved by a fervent, but small, group of fans. But when UPN and the WB merged, the fate of "Veronica" was again up in the air.

Now that "Veronica" has made the cut — and the show will be paired on Tuesday nights with "Gilmore Girls" — Thomas is feeling pretty jolly.

"I just hope they don't move 'Lost' to Tuesday nights," he said. "We're in a make-or-break season here."

Thomas concedes that last season was a bit of a creative slump for "Veronica," and he plans to correct the problems.

"It was just too convoluted with too many mysteries at once," he said. "There will not be two concurrent mysteries; there will be shorter arcs, and that will give a new audience more jumping in points."

The big plot development is that Veronica and her pals will go to college, although Veronica will live at home with her private-eye dad.

Thomas still considers Austin home, even though he lives in L.A. He was thrilled last season when the Alamo Drafthouse held a "Veronica Mars" night, and hundreds of fans turned out.

"I felt like Gene Roddenberry," Thomas said. "Those people knew everything about the show. It was amazing."

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NBC has high hopes for Aaron Sorkin's new inside-TV drama "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." And Sorkin, after a troubled exit from "The West Wing" years before it ended and a well-publicized history with drugs, appeared before TV critics eager to talk . . . and promptly stuck his foot in his mouth.

"I think TV is a terribly influential part of this country," he said, analyzing an opening scene in the pilot in which a network exec wigs out and starts railing about censorship and other TV horrors. "There are things that are mean-spirited and voyeuristic (NBC's 'The Apprentice' and 'Fear Factor' are mentioned in the show), and I think it's bad crack in the school yard."

Howls of laughter erupted from reporters, audible groans from NBC folks.

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A smallish band of TV critics was invited to tour the mammoth hospital set of "Grey's Anatomy" and everybody — except Isaiah Washington, who was in Washington, D.C., on NAACP business — was on hand to gab. Very relaxed, very nice and VERY cold. Just like a real hospital.

Because creator Shonda Rhimes had threatened them all with death if they spill any serious plot secrets, we don't actually know the fate of Izzie, the doctor who fell in love with a heart transplant patient and lied to move him up on the list. You may recall, amid gallons of tears, that patient, Denny, died anyway with a sobbing Izzie lying beside him in her formal prom dress.

"I really don't know what's going to happen with her," said Katherine Heigl, who plays Izzie. "All I know is that I'm here now. Izzie did quit at the end of last season, and I don't know if she'll be back into medicine. But I'm back on the show."