Skip to main content

Channel Surfing: Tina Fey Responds to McFlurryGate, "NCIS" Spinoff Nabs Three Leads, Pilot News, and More

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing.

30 Rock creator/star/writer/executive producer Tina Fey has set the record straight about the series' alleged product placement in last week's episode, in which Jack and Elisa (Salma Hayek) declared their love for McDonald's McFlurry as "the best dessert in the world." Fey says that the segment was NOT an example of product placement.

“It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the references to McDonald's in last night's episode of 30 Rock were in no way product placement. (Nor were they an attempt at product placement that fell through.)" said Fey in a statement. "We received no money from the McDonald's Corporation. We were actually a little worried they might sue us. That's just the kind of revenue-generating masterminds we are. Also, the upcoming story line where Liz Lemon starts dating Grimace is just based on a recurring dream I have. Seriously, though, it's not product placement. Also, whoever is writing my Twitter account is pretty funny, but it's not me.” (Entertainment Weekly's Hollywood Insider)

CBS has secured three leads for its untitled NCIS spinoff. Louise Lombard (CSI), Peter Cambor (Notes from the Underbelly), and Daniela Ruah (Midnight Passion) will star opposite Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J in the planned spinoff, which will air as an episode of CBS' NCIS later this season. Lombard will play female lead Clara, a former military police major; Cambor will play "quick-witted" Nate, an operational psychologist; Ruah will play a young forensic investigator. (Hollywood Reporter)

Alexis Dziena (Invasion) will join the cast of HBO's Entourage, where she'll play "Ashley, a beautiful, funny, smart, grounded, self-assured, non-Hollywood-type who, to everyone's great surprise, develops an interest in Eric." But there's allegedly a catch and/or a twist to this relationship. Any theories? (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

ABC has given a director-contingent pilot order to comedy Funny in Farsi, based on Firoozeh Dumas' novel about growing up as an Iranian immigrant in 1970s Orange County. Project, from ABC Studios, will be written/executive produced by Nastaran Dibai and Jeffrey Hodes. (Variety)

Dollhouse fans were likely not too pleased by the low ratings for the series' premiere on Friday night on FOX, which lured only 4.7 million viewers. While some were quick to yell "doomed," others, like Entertainment Weekly's Lynette Rice, had an alternate take on the news. "What does this mean for Dollhouse's long-term prospects?" asked Rice. "Although 4.7 million isn't that great -- Fox typically averages 5.5 million on Fridays -- the Whedon drama has a better chance of making it over the long haul if it stays put on the night. In fact, network insiders have long cautioned that if the series were scheduled earlier in the week and ended up attracting these kind of (low) viewership levels, it would have been axed by its second or third airing. So relax, Whedonites -- Dushku and Co. appear safe for now." (Entertainment Weekly's Hollywood Insider)

Charles McDougall (The Tudors) will direct CBS drama pilot The Good Wife, from CBS Paramount Network Television, Scott Free, and writer/executive producers Robert and Michelle King.
(Variety)

Stay tuned.

Comments

Anonymous said…
It's even worse that the McFlurry references were not product placement since that's how it came across. (I loved the episode other than that.)

But I think Fey's comment about Twitter is particularly funny as it's clearly someone else using her name (and trying very hard to be clever).

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season ...

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj...