Roger Catlin | TV Eye

Boy Shakira/Britney is Out

Oh, he had a nice run, first donning golden hair and shaking his hips right into the semi-finals of “America’s Got Talent” as Boy Shakira before completely changing his act last week as Boy Britney.

The switch must have been too much a shock for his fans, so the chubby man turned female performer was eliminated Tuesday night as last week’s 10 performers were trimmed by half.

Now we’ll never be able to see any of his future changes on the show, be it Boy Madonna, Boy Lindsay Lohan or Boy Katie Couric.

He shed no tear, nor was allowed to make a statement along the lines of last week’s inspirational “it’s me.” No, the show’s variation of Sanjaya could only shuffle off stage with the all-stilt dancers, detritus of this summer’s highest rated show, god help us.

Now all that’s left in the talent free for all are huge family bands and generic country crooners. So who’s left to vote for? I guess The Glamazons, Boy Britney’s spiritual sisters for sure.

Two will be knocked out after tonight’s vote.

The Show That Wouldn’t Die

Tuned back into “On the Lot” Tuesday, partly because nobody else is.

Ratings are averaging 2.7 million – way lower than almost any other summer show. Mark Burnett’s other summer reality flop, “Pirate Master,” had its plug pulled (to show its remaining episodes only online) and it was averaging 6.2 million.

What keeps “On the Lot” on the schedule? It has to be Steven Spielberg’s name on there as co-producer with Burnett. Canning a show with his name on it wouldn’t be good for future prospects.

So on it drags. Just five are left by now – all guys of course; all of them doing “funny” little films with broad gestures that ought to make them each one of them good for commercials or summer Hollywood films.

(I have no proof of this, but I think this may be why directors from Bergman to Antonioni seem to be shuffling off this mortal coil at such a rate this week).

There were six directors left when Tuesday’s show started, but Andrew from Minneapolis was sent packing by the audience either for a film that “didn’t hit like it should have,” as the filmmaker analyzed – or because they were getting a little tired of that wool cap.

Viewers, the few of them who bother to call, don’t have to leave reasons why people get few votes. Look at Jason, who got most votes for his work last week. He’s the guy who wears those ridiculous oversized baseball hats and jerseys that might be more suitable for the Wu Tang Clan than whatever suburb he’s from.

Five is about the right sized pool from which to watch a slew of 2 ½ minute films, this week about the road, a road trip or something with a car (the badly slipping Zach had his characters sitting in a car that didn’t drive so much as transport itself).

Everyone like Adam’s “cute” film about a car radio that made everybody dance, though he’s been relying on forced dance films since he started in the competition.

Sam got a most improved for a scene about curing a backseat driver. Will did a bad “Twilight Zone” remake in which his car starts to attack him back, but not very much. Jason got to use Jerry O’Connell in a clunker about moving some guy out to the woods while asleep as a birthday prank (which actually wasn’t much worse than his upcoming sitcom “Carpoolers,” which he also was allowed to plug, even though it will premiere on competing ABC during precisely this timeslot this fall).

Even the judges aren’t showing up every week for this show. Garry Marshall, who happens to be in Connecticut preparing a musical version of “Happy Days” for the Goodspeed Opera House, was replaced by his sister, the director and former Laverne, Penny Marshall (who shockingly sounded almost exactly like him). Guest director was Gary Ross, the guy who did “Seabiscuit.” And Carrie Fisher sat there like a woman who couldn’t get a job to take her away from this wreck if she were still Princess Leia.

ABC News Goes 'Nashville Star'

It was just three years ago when ABC News had to defend itself when a Barbara Walters-hosted edition of "20/20" on adoption sounded a little too much like a reality show along the lines of, "Who Wants to Be An Adoptive Parent?"

Monday night, ABC News moved boldly into a straight-on "Nashville Star"-like reality show competition by producing the oddly named one-shot, "6 Degrees of Martina McBride."

The two hour show began with a half dozen hopefuls trying to get to McBride. Eventually they all work with established Nashville songwriters, play a Music City showcase, and record a song in McBride's studio.

Finally, a three person judges panel that includes Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel and singer Miranda Lambert, chooses a winner from the three finalists. It was the oldest among the competitors, DeAnn Roberts, 44, of Dickens, TX., whose age combined was greater than her finalists -- Kristaina Craig, 19, of rural Nebraska, and Thomas Stratton, 18, of small town Oregon.

PrimeTime correspondent Jay Schadler turned Ryan Seacrest for the evening, hosting in a way that would never suggest a journalism background.

At least what could have been a whole season of competition was collapsed into a single night -- and probably didn't garner a big audience in the dead end of July. And it was odd that McBride, for all of her presence in the show's name and logo, was so absent for most of the show, popping up at the end via video screen to give her generic congratulations (DeAnn will win a recording contract).

But there was synergy at work here, and maybe a little money-making. You can pick up DeAnn's winning song on iTunes beginning today.

Finalists For Two Shows

It’s down to two in a pair of Monday night reality series. Chef Gordon Ramsay cut his final three on “Hell’s Kitchen” to Rock, 30, and Bonnie, 24 after sending Jen home.

It was another Jen, the 48 year old and last 40something standing that will be one of the final two on “Age of Love” opposite the last woman in her 20s, Amanda.

The two became finalists not because anything the bachelor at hand Mark Philippoussis had to do, though. The women went from four to two because of self-elimination. Maria, 42, who always did things her own way, came to realization that he wsn’t the guy for her. Then the youngest, Megan, 21, couldn’t bring herself to take the 14-hour flight to Australia to meet his parents. She was deathly scared of flying. It was the oddest reason anyone ever had to take herself out of a dating competition. But whatever it takes for the women to call the shots, Philippoussis looked relieved not to do any of the eliminations himself.

Now it’s up to the tennis player’s family to hide their surprise at the 23-year age difference among the finalists.

Choices were made on "Hell's Kitchen," in that kind of fakeout way that "Idol" became famous for. "Rock," Ramsay intoned, "you've got to go ... to the finals."

Rock who bowed his head at the "got to go" part, never recovered when he realized he got to stay after all. Bonnie could hardly believe she got to stay, especially since Jen won the last competition, when their three moms unanimously voted her fried chicken better than Rock's variations on spaghetti or Bonnie's take on franks and beans.

Winning that competition meant Jen and her mom got to go out with Ramsay and his mom (it was one of those cream puff episodes, with much less cussing since the moms were around). In what served as a consolation, she got $1,000 to spend at a kitchen supply store.

Inside 'The Big Brother' House

The Big Brother house isn't a house at all.

It's more like a warehouse.

Though all the public sees is its fancifully colored interior, green outdoor recreation area and fake oversized front door, the summer's most famous reality show domicile is really all enclosed in a big sound studio on the CBS lot.

After a few seasons in jerry-rigged trailers, the network dedicated Studio 18, where ''Yes, Dear'' was once shot, to the summer perennial three years ago. Inside, it's a mix of gaily painted gingerbread house décor and dour minimum security prison.

Because reality TV, from docu-soaps to survivor shows, are such an ingrained part of television these days, it's easy to forget how creepy to have all this surveillance for our entertainment.

Fifty-four cameras and 64 microphones pick up all the action (and inaction) in the house 24 hours a day; a staff of 200 employees work round the clock shooting, directing, logging, editing and producing what amounts to three hours of prime time weekly, 21 hours of live cable feed weekly, and 24 hours daily on the internet of their doings.

''No other television show is done like this,'' says producer Allison Grodner, who says goodbye to her summers when ''Big Brother'' is on; staffers often crash out in the studio space surrounding the house after long shifts.

''We don't' stop taping ever,'' she says. ''The beast doesn't stop.''

The producer turns tour guide when welcoming a few writers to the inner workings of the House, usually strictly verboten to the press when the season is on.

It's strange enough to watch the 42 monitors peering into every corner of the house where 13 people started the season. A phalanx of directors pulls up the most interesting bits to put out over the internet feed; another couple of people carefully log what's happening and what’s said for help later in editing for the prime time show; audio engineers do their own knob-twiddling, getting sound out of a cast that is constantly spouting strategy in whispery tones so low they sometimes have to use subtitles.

The level of overview is equal to, say, the movie ''The Truman Show'' or the George Orwell text that inspired the show's title.

But when Grodner opens the black curtains to the dark corridors lining every wall in the house, the gravity of the voyeurism is fully felt.

''It's really what I call the human zoo,'' Grodner says, as she reveals the two-way mirrors that line every wall of the house. Visitors have been asked to wear black, like the cameramen who operate from a rail on a shelf lining the living quarters, obscuring us from those inside. It allows us to see, quite close up, as some contestants sleep, others pack, and others pad around the house looking for someone to chat with.

The Simpsons’ Big Weekend

''The Simpsons Movie'' exceeded expectations by grossing $70.1 million in its opening weekend, earning another $100 million overseas, succeeding in building up what was essentially an elongated edition of a show that’s already run more than 400 episodes.

It was good, and reliably funny, just as the show has continued to be despite perennial gripes about dips in quality. The move to the big screen was translated mostly in hugely wide shots, assisted by computer animation, that shifted the background or, more often, was able to fit in as many characters into the screen as possible.

One of the legacies of ''The Simpsons'' show is having introduced hundreds of memorable characters and populating its cartoon community. I had heard there was a scene when all of them are pictured, but I was surprised to learn there were several such scenes.

While most favorites can be depicted in the background, few get a chance to do anything. Somebody far in the future watching ''The Simpsons Movie'' will have to guess the importance or backstory of the squiggles they'll see saying one line and disappearing forever. In that, ''The Simpsons Movie'' is like the movies they used to make out of old radio shows, where favorite characters are mentioned or flash by, but are hardly given a context within the movie. A better example may be the movies made out of favorite comic strips, from the series of ''Blondie'' movies or those with Lil' Abner. Changing the frame size of a favorite franchise can alter its focus altogether.

There were also way too many of those massive set pieces designed for the big screen – crossing the canyon in a motorcycle or knocking oneself out with  wrecking ball that have already been seen too many times in preview.

Never before has the Simpsons' house seemed so three-dimensional, though the original requirements for a funny cartoon never required such visual verisimilitude.

As solid as the film is, ''The Simpsons Movie'' may be more a triumph in promotion. With a number of smart promotions, from instant Kwik-E-Marts to the Springfield video competition, a nation of closet ''Simpsons'' fans were at once reinvigorated and reintroduced.

Homer’s head became the icon it deserves to be.

'Simpsons' Part II

Because of the demand to see ''The Simpsons Movie'' among writers at the TV critics press tour, a group of ''Simpsons'' nerds as fervent as you'll ever see, I buttonholed producer Al Jean at the Fox network party at the Santa Monica Pier and asked, after all the talk of the movie, and the general championing  of the show for 18 seasons, couldn't there have been at least a screening for TV critics during press tour?

''I would love to have had a screening for TV critics,'' said Jean, who spoke like a man whose film promotion had gotten away from him.

He said he liked the finished product, which they had been tweaking until the final seconds, and now full attention of his fellow producers could be shifted on the TV show.

Not that they’d been neglecting it. Producers had been working fulltime on both the past couple of years. They know now that with what may be an increased number of fans gained from the movie, they’ve got to put on a strong season when it returns this fall. Without the movie, Jean says he can how have a semblance of family life as well.

Amid all the promotion for the film, he was a little miffed at the oral history of the series presented in the new Vanity Fair. ''How can you have a history without talking to me or Matt [Groening]?'' he asked.

Jean also disputed several things in the story, particularly the notion that Groening and James L. Brooks don’t get along, and the reliance of the story on people who hadn’t worked on the ''Simpsons'' for a decade, and only worked there briefly when they did.

'Family Guy:' The Anti-'Simpsons'

How can one Fox cartoon be so insightful and funny only to make room for one that is as relentlessly unfunny and crude as ''Family Guy''?

Yeah, it’s a hit, brought back from the dead because of DVD sales of the first season (There’s a lot of 14 year old boys around, and those who never outgrew the era).

Things haven’t improved much on the show, judging from a table read of their 100th show during press tour. Meant to be he served up as entertainment over lunch one day, it was instead a surprising display at how unfunny and scatological a show can be.

The script ''Stewie Kills Lois'' wasn’t so much pushing the envelope as pushing the ecch.

The act in the title of the episode may be the sweetest thing that happens compared to the ''jokes'' about abortion or cancer that figure into it.

Seth MacFarlane, who created the show and still keeps most of the voices for himself, still sounds as if he's acting out at his Kent private school, trying to get a rise out of the headmaster while he cracks his buddies up.

Hey, the script works for many; they got howls for the same reading at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, where, MacFarlane says, ''you had like 2,000 drunk people in their 20s who were just, you know, laughing at stage directions.''

A number of my fellow critics were so doubled up in laughs at the lunch reading, they threatened their digestion process.

And MacFarlane liked the response from critics too. ''There are things that you guys laughed at that we thought, well -- we were kind of led to believe maybe you'd be horrified by,'' he says. ''And other things that I was surprised that, you know, maybe that did offend you.''

And despite its hot button and, I found, tasteless topics, MacFarlane says it had already been deeply cut for use on TV. What exactly, he was asked, had been cut?

Oh, I think the abortion one was about eight times as long. Some of this stuff, actually, you will only see on the DVD. There's some stuff that was, you know, judiciously edited with our approval. And some stuff -- for example, the swearing you'll only see on the DVD. Since that's become such a big part of "Family Guy," there are – occasionally if we bleep something for TV, we'll let it slide on the DVD.

MacFarlane says he and the writers try to balance the shock with more high-quality entertainment. ''You know, we do a lot of poop jokes, but at the same time, we use a 45-piece orchestra every week with a full string section. And, you know, we don't try to shock for shock's sake. If something is just shocking and not funny, then we'll cut it out. And we have these table reads every week, which we do for each episode, in which we have a very good cross section of artists and people from the outside and writers, and, you know, the studio network is there. And no one is shy about gasping in horror if we have crossed the line, and so it's a very good barometer.''

Well, somebody finally asks, what shocks or offends you?

''I don’t know,'' McFarlane answers. ''The Bush administration, I guess.''

Boy Shakira Becomes Boy Britney

Look, I'm just back from a few weeks on press tour, where the irony is that I watch far less TV than I do when I'm at home. But I'm surprised I hadn't heard about the huge turnaround for our favorite act among the Top 20 semi-finalists on ''America’s Got Talent.''

Catching up today on Saturday’s rerun, I have learned that the act formerly known as Boy Shakira has reinvented himself … as Boy Britney!

Gone are the flowing blonde tresses and coochy-coochy hip shaking and in comes the school girl outfit (with badly bulging midriff, perhaps a commentary on today’s out of shape Britney) to which he lip-synchs to one of her biggest hits.

Piers Morgan, usually the gloomy gus on the panel, admits, ''The trouble is: you’re becoming my guilty pleasure… I can’t bring myself to buzz you.''

Sharon Osbourne continued to show her love as well. ''Absolutely amazing,'' she cooed. ''I love you and I love the belly.''

David Hasselhoff, who acts as if he's in a parallel universe where people consider this entertainment, didn't even give up a fight (lord knows he’s benefit from incorrect assessments of entertainment, especially when it comes to his own singing in Germany).

But even if what he did was no better than a pantomime, Boy Britney, nee Shakira confided to Jerry Springer, ''It’s me. It's all about entertainment.''

It's all very exciting. Vote for the Worst is getting on board with more fervor than they've had since Sanjaya. Vote totals will be in Tuesday and I for one can't wait for his later incarnation for the finals (Boy Madonna?).

Don't you love summer TV?

Back to the Stone Age

Networks send out advance copies of the pilots of new shows marked “not for review” and indeed lots of work is done on the pilots, completed in the spring, before they’re shown in the fall.

But they wouldn’t be sending them out if they didn’t want to kickstart a little buzz. The only problem is that some shows inevitably get buzz so negative you have to wonder whether the show will ever make it on the air.

''Cavemen” stood out from the dozens of new shows announced for the fall because, like, say, “The Bionic Woman,” it was based on source material people seemed to know: those droll and very funny Geico ads in which a bunch of California raised cavemen (you can tell by their linen sportscoats, sunglasses and what they order in restaurants) get a bit indignant at ads that say something’s so simple “even a caveman can do it.”

They’ve had enough of those stereotypes and getting petulant about it is about as much humor as you’re going to get out of a 30-second spot.

But can you turn a 30-second ad into a 30-minute sitcom? Hey, it worked for the California Raisins, didn’t it? (No, actually it didn’t).

The problem with the pilot for ABC’s “Cavemen,” though, is that its attempted humor was entirely based on if they were a minority group, that weren’t expected to behave at parties, known for sexual prowess, had some athletic skills, used the M word out of Cro-Mags the way some used the N-word.

It was like “Amos & Andy” in that a show about oppressed minorities played entirely by non-minorities; the jokes would be about minorities, but minorities couldn’t even get a job on it.

So, as you might expect, the press tour panel on “Cavemen,” in which eight white man faced reporters might have had some spark to it.