The Calm Before The Storm

Well, the box office did exactly what I thought it was going to do. I mean, not at the time that I made my predictions, but earlier in the week when I said it was going to be exactly the same as last week with the addition of “Angels & Demons”.

1. Angels & Demons (1)
2. Star Trek (2)
3. X-Men (3)
4. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (5)
5. Obsessed (x)

So, while I wasn’t completely correct, I’m going to give myself five points anyway for my amazing display of character. The good news, though, is that “Angels & Demons” only made $5 million more than “Star Trek” and didn’t even break $50 million, proving that people are still willing to simply stay at home and watch “Unsolved Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle” on the History Channel instead of paying $10 at the the theater when they want a good conspiracy theory. The other good news is that people are still compelled to shell out money to see “Obsessed”, keeping it in the top 5 for four weeks straight. I never thought I’d say this, but thank God “Night at the Museum 2” and “Terminator 4” are coming out next week.

Oh, and “Management” placed 16th, opening at $378,000, falling just shy of second-week foreign comedy “Rudo y Cursi”.  I’m sure it’ll rebound next week, though. You know, word of mouth and stuff like that.

not the same "management"

This week begins “Acknowledge your TV Exec” week, as the networks far and wide finally whittle down their final choices for the fall line-up. Preliminaries have already been in for a couple weeks now, but there are still some interesting titles that might skirt by for no discernible reason. Naturally, the big shows on each network have been renewed, so I won’t go into those. I’ll just break it down into like, best and worst decisions, because that’s a hell of a lot easier for me.

BEST DECISIONS (so far)

• “Eli Stone” canceled. Which is something they did a long time ago, to eventually replace it with…
• “The Unusuals”, which is canceled. Sorry, Perrineau, guess you’re gonna have to wait for that sequel to “Oz”. And hey, at least you lasted as long as “Life on Mars.”
• “Knight Rider” canceled. Obviously.
• “Lipstick Jungle” canceled, presumably so they can go back to writing the next 12 installments in the “Sex & The City” movie franchise.
• “Kings” canceled.
• NBC considering canceling “Law & Order Criminal Intent”, “Kath & Kim”, and “My Name is Earl”. Now, if only we could get those other Law & Order’s taken care of, too.

WORST/MOST CONFUSING DECISIONS (so far)

• ABC officially renewing: “Better Off Ted”, “Cougar Town”, “Castle”, “Eastwick”, and “Scrubs”. The first four are odd for obvious reasons, but “Scrubs” just had their series finale. So… maybe they meant “unnamed Scrubs spinoff”.
• ABC considering renewing “Surviving Suburbia”, which is half way between “Full House” and a Carlos Mencia stand-up special.
• “Everybody Hates Chris” is probably going to be canceled, which isn’t terribly surprising, but still kind of sad considering it was the only semi-decent thing on the CW (which has already renewed seven of the worst shows on television: “Gossip Girl”, “Vampire Diaries”, “One Tree Hill”, “Supernatural”, “Smallville”, “America’s Next Top Model”, and “90210”).
• FOX has officially renewed both “Fringe” and “Dollhouse”, leaving “King of the Hill” by the wayside. Fortunately ABC is supposed to pick it up, and will probably pair it with the awful-looking “The Goode Family” in some sort of weird ABC animation block they’re planning.

There’s a lot of other weird stuff, just glancing over the schedules, but I’ll address that later once it becomes solidified. This summer, though, looks abundant with the worst shows ever to air on televsion, including (but not limited to): “Big Brother XI”, “Merlin” (which will focus on Merlin’s teen years… seriously), “Great American Road Trip”, “Greatest American Dog” (greatest always beats great), “Dating in the Dark” (a reality show that is EXACTLY what it sounds like, God help us all), “Glee” (a “High School Musical” series on FOX with no actual demographic), and “The Listener” (which is quite literally “The Mentalist” but takes place in a hospital) just to name a few. Jesus. All we can really hope for this summer is for Conan not to suck too terribly.

NBC's a laugh a minute

And now I never want to talk about television again, which is fortunate for you because I was totally going to start an extensive preview of 24’s season finale which will air tonight. But, again, doing this would probably kill me, and I do not want that to be the way I leave this blog. I’ll see you guys Wednesday, hopefully with a new movie review.