This year's Oscarcast wasn't as critically adored as last year's, but at least it improved upon it in the ratings. The ceremony attracted 41.3 million viewers, up 15% from last year and the best result since 2005. It would have done even better if ABC and Cablevision had resolved their dispute before the show began airing in New York, but on the other hand, at least those viewers had Neil Patrick Harris's superfluous opening trimmed by default. Bright sides! [The Wrap]
There was only one real shock during last night's 82nd Annual Academy Awards -- more specifically, a shock of orange hair that bum rushed the Kodak Theater stage during Music by Prudence director Roger Ross Williams' acceptance speech for Best Documentary Short. Perhaps more stymying than the onstage assault was the one detail that separates the woman underneath the orange hair, Elinor Burkett, from the other delinquent stage-rusher she is being most compared to today, Kanye West. Unlike West, who crashed Taylor Swift's acceptance speech during this year's VMAs to proclaim that another artist deserved the honor, Burkett was actually attached to the category's winner, Music of Prudence, as a producer. So what's the big deal?
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· If the cancellation of TNT's Raising the Bar left you heartsick, find comfort in the knowledge that Mark-Paul Gosselaar will resume the role of idealistic young lawyer in Franklin & Bash for TNT's sister network TBS. The erstwhile Zack Morris will play Steven Bash, alongside Breckin Meyer's Jared Franklin. The pair of lifelong friends are street lawyers who are recruited by the firm's patriarch after taking down a white-shoe law firm in a high-profile case. The hourlong comedy is from writers Kevin Falls (West Wing) and Bill Chais (Family Law). [THR]
Kathy Bates convinces David E. Kelley to consider a sex change, an Almost Famous alum weighs Wright vs. Wrong, and more TV Bites after the jump.
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When word broke yesterday that actor Adam Scott might be leaving the Starz sleeper Party Down to become a new regular on the increasingly overstuffed Parks and Recreation, it came as some surprise. Sure, Parks offered network exposure, but as Scott had told Movieline in December, he loved working on Party Down so much that he was devastated when the second season finished filming, stating that he "could keep doing it forever."
So will he? Movieline cornered Scott last night on the Indie Spirit red carpet to clarify the situation.
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Another week of Project Runway has come and gone, and another eliminated contestant opines to Movieline about their departure. Was it the cocky, conductor-hatted Emilio? Was it the perky Amy? How about feisty southern-belle Anthony? Hyper-banged Maya? Combed-over Jesse? Ever-silent Ben? We reveal the loser and talk with him/her after the jump.
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It may seem like celebrities were placed on earth by God himself but they actually descended from a messy web of ancestors just like the rest of us. That might be the point of NBC's new Friday night placeholder Who Do You Think You Are? Of course, the point could also be that it is pretty inexpensive to throw together a field crew, get some lab nerds to run some DNA, and then dig deep into the music library for motifs that can disguise blandness and shallow emotional content.
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Project Runway returned from the ether this week with a challenge that baited the toolshed demographic -- and not just because Jesse was prominently featured! (Guh-her.) The ten remaining designers used hardware supplies to construct their look, but more impressively, Tim Gunn did not take a circular saw to his own dainty wrists. This man is bored. I make it all entertaining after the jump.
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You saw it in this morning's trades: Adam Scott, so poignant and funny on Starz's Party Down as a struggling commercial actor who returns to the depressing milieu of cater-waitering to pay the bills, has joined the cast of NBC's Parks and Recreation. If ever a show didn't need more cast members, Park's bloated ensemble, which also now includes Rob Lowe, would be the one. Scott's loose contract with Starz requires that he only appear on three episodes on Season 3 -- a similar arrangement that led to the show losing Jane Lynch to Fox's smash-hit Glee this season. (Lynch does return for the Party Down season finale -- an episode revolving around her wedding.) When Movieline spoke to Scott in December, he seemed to be down with Down, calling it "my favorite job, I just love it," and telling us "he could keep doing it forever." So what happened? Probably a mixture of money and visibility -- though it would be presumptuous to assume Scott, who has a producer credit on the series, is gone for good.
Meanwhile, his costar Ken Marino, who plays the dimwitted cater supervisor Ron Donald, was forthright when we asked him yesterday how he felt about losing Lynch to a network series:
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Life is full of disappointments, the old Lutheran church hymn goes, but nothing seems to let people down more often than Saturday Night Live. Even long time fans of the show who have been burned by stale characters, poor acting and basic unfunniness still come back every week hoping for the best but usually getting something short of that. Zach Galifianakis did his best to raise expectations last night on Late Night with jokes about walking offstage mid-show and a bizarre "skitch" in which Jimmy Fallon did not even break character. Those clips, as well as the other highlights you missed last night while listing 40 pairs of Aiaiai headphones on eBay, after the jump.
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During last night's Idol, Ryan Seacrest asked four more contestants to pack their knife-like vocals and go. While none of the castoffs seemed like contenders for the crown, they offered all-American showmanship and -- as first piano teachers everywhere call it -- pizzazz! We mourn the four lost souls after the jump.
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It's true! Conan O'Brien has cleared his busy schedule of Twitter brain trusts and dolphin meet and greets to perform a live show in April, fulfilling Megan Mullally's prophecy that Coco will "have the last laugh". TMZ broke the story an hour ago, with confirmation of one show from Ticketmaster.
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Headbands off to uber-producer Mark Burnett for shopping two reality series featuring alpha females this week. In addition to the untitled Sarah Palin-Alaska project, Burnett has reunited with domestic goddess Martha Stewart to produce an eight-episode series, Help Me, Martha, in which strangers encountering last minute social event disasters find Stewart and a team of eight experts at their doorsteps. The hour-long show, which does not have a network yet, will find crisis-prone contestants via nominations by friends. [Variety]
· The Star Trek scribe team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci has booked a Danno for their Hawaii Five-O remake. Scott Caan has signed on to join the CBS series in the role of Danny "Danno" Williams (originally played by James MacArthur), a Jersey cop transferred to Hawaii after a bitter divorce to be close to his young daughter. Alex O'Loughlin has already been cast as the lead. [THR]
ABC plans to injure more celebrities for your entertainment, Larry Charles finds leads for his Show, and more TV Bites after the jump.
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Law and Order: SVU's failure to broadcast the leaked kiss between star Mariska Hargitay and guest actress Kathy Griffin is shameful enough, but Griffin may have harbored her own share of regrets the day she filmed the kiss, considering that her first run-in with Hargitay in the early '90s ended in disaster.
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It is now Day Four of the Jay Leno at 11:35 experiment and magically NBC is borderline relevant again. Who would have thought that having three hours of actual entertainment during primetime could make viewers want to watch your network? Only everyone in the history of television, but at least Pam is finally pushing out that kid so The Office can start having interesting storylines again.
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