Deadpool

Enter the TV Deadpool Contest

For the last 10 years I've been competing in the Ted Marshall Open, a contest to predict 10 shows on broadcast TV that will be cancelled during the coming season. Mike Burger began the game 17 years ago as the Alison La Placa Open, naming it after a great comedic actress who starred in the short-lived shows Suzanne Pleshette is Maggie Briggs, Duet, Open House, Stat, The Jackie Thomas Show and Tom. When La Placa lost her sense of humor about the name in 2008 and sent a cease and desist ... (read more)

2017/09/21

NBC's New Series Outlaw is a Crime

Jimmy Smits on the TV series Outlaw It pains me to say this as a fan of Victor Sifuentes and President Santos, but the new Jimmy Smits drama Outlaw could be the worst new show of the 2010-11 TV season. In this NBC series, Smits plays the most conservative jurist on the Supreme Court, who has a crisis of conscience after the death of his liberal civil rights activist father and quits the court to represent the wrongly convicted downtrodden. The pilot asks you to accept all of the following as ... (read more)

2010/09/20

Nikita Has a Decent Shot on The CW

Maggie Q in Nikita on The CW The new action series Nikita, based on the 1990 French film Le Femme Nikita, premiered Thursday night on The CW. It's the second series based on the film, following a syndicated Canadian TV series that aired from 1997 to 2001. This time around, Maggie Q plays Nikita, Shane West plays her handler, Lyndsy Fonseca plays her protege and the secret government agency is called Division instead of Operations. There have been a lot of shows in which model-thin women kick ... (read more)

2010/09/11

The Hellcats Pilot Has Little to Cheer About

A scene from Hellcats on The CW The new fall TV season began Wednesday night with Hellcats, the latest series on The CW aimed at the 16-year-old girl in all of us. The drama stars Aly Michalka and Ashley Tisdale, two products of the Disney Channel ingenue factory, as college cheerleaders in Memphis. Michalka plays a law student who scoffs at cheerleaders until she loses her scholarship, a fact overlooked by her boozy mother (played by the buoyant Gail O'Grady). Fortunately, the plucky young ... (read more)

2010/09/10

Patricia Heaton Killed My TV Deadpool

ABC has renewed three of its Wednesday night comedies: Modern Family, Cougar Town and The Middle. The first two were not much of a surprise, but The Middle was on the bubble and seemed likely to join Hank in the sitcom graveyard. The Middle is a flyover state sitcom starring Patricia Heaton, the misanthropic janitor from Scrubs and three mostly forgettable child actors. The show hinges on the lovability of Heaton, which seemed like a longshot to me at the start of the season. She was perfect as ... (read more)

2010/01/12

CBS Moves Accidentally on Purpose

CBS is moving Accidentally on Purpose to Wednesday nights to make room for Rules of Engagement and putting the new show Miami Medical on Friday nights. Gary Unmarried and Numb3rs will be bumped to make room. I put Accidentally on my TV Deadpool entry on purpose, deciding that CBS would be unable to resist cancelling the lowest rated of its four Monday comedies. The show has probably showed enough of an audience to get a second season (sigh), which is pretty good for a sitcom that lacks ... (read more)

2010/01/07

Prognosis Bleak for Scrubs, Better Off Ted

The good news for fans of Scrubs and Better Off Ted: ABC is running twice as many episodes of both shows in January by running two episodes back-to-back in the same hour. The bad news: ABC is doing this to start February with something else in those timeslots. Better Off Ted appears in 17 entries in the TV DeadPool, while Scrubs appears in 36. ... (read more)

2009/12/18

ABC Cancels Not-So-Bewitching Eastwick

The Stars of the ABC TV series Eastwick The ABC supernatural chick drama Eastwick has been cancelled, according to James Hibberd: ABC has picked up five more episodes of Tuesday night crime drama The Forgotten while deciding against ordering additional episodes of Wednesday's Eastwick. The Christian Slater procedural has been the stronger of the duo, both of which are produced by Warner Bros. and air at 10 p.m. Eastwick will finish production on 13 episodes and ABC plans to run them all. There ... (read more)

2009/11/10