Celebrity Splits Reported this Week

It's been a big week for celebrity break-ups. Who will these stars snuggle up with during the storm? Reported to be breaking up are:

- Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, though they're denying it.

- Minka Kelly and Derek Jeter. This news comes as she is about to star in the new Charlie's Angels series on ABC.

- Bruce Boxleitner and Melissa Gilbert, who have been married 16 years.

"We have loved each other for a very long time and we share four incredible sons together," said Gilbert in a statement issued in March when the pair announced they were separating.

Gilbert, 47, and Boxleitner, 61, have one biological son together, 15-year-old Michael for whom they are seeking joint custody. Gilbert has a son, Dakota, from her previous marriage to Bo Brinkman. Boxleitner has two from his marriage to Kathryn Oglivy, Sam and Lee.

Name of Katie Couric Talk Show Revealed

It shouldn't come as a surprise to any TV watchers that Katie Couric's upcoming talker will be called simply, Katie.

The program, promised as a mix of celebrities, issues and anything else that comes up, will premier in September 2012 on ABC stations across the country.

Sounds remarkably like the big talk show with a title to match the female host's first name that just left the airwaves. I wonder if Katie has a best friend named Gayle?

Gore on TV: Good or Gratuitous?

Does anyone else think there are too many shows on TV that revolve around grizzly dead bodies, especially as a percentage of all the primetime shows out there?  And do you think they’re getting more and more so?  I do.  A Rizzoli & Isles scene a couple of weeks ago prompted this post when Dr. Isles (Sasha Alexander) extracted a baby from a cadaver.

Here’s a list of all the dead body shows I can name.  (Please feel free to add any in the comments section.)

• CSI
• CSI: Miami
• CSI: New York
• NCIS
• NCIS Los Angeles
• Bones
• Rizzoli & Isles
• Castle
• Body of Proof
• Criminal Minds
• Dexter

Why are there so many and why do the discovery and autopsy scenes get more and more disgusting? 

Almost all of these shows follow a formula.  A group of normal people, many times children, are hiking in the woods, walking down the street or throwing something in the trash.  The music intensifies and here it comes.  A badly decomposed body jumps out or is revealed in shocking fashion.  Cut to the theme song, credits, back from commercial and a familiar team of detectives is combing through the muck.  For me, that’s when the good part starts, the deduction and sleuthing.

It’s my contention that producers are competing with each other for shock value because the gruesomeness has been ramped up in the past year or so.  There have been bodies in pizza ovens, eaten by worms, gnawed at by animals and left to decompose in the hot sun.

The question is how much of this sensationalist TV is gratuitous and how much is actually pertinent to the story.

Viewers mustn’t care too much because the ratings are strong and there have even been features in such respected publications as New York Magazine with the title, “The Ten Grossest Dead Bodies of the TV Season” (May 26, 2011),

And, an informal poll shows many viewers are unfazed by the gore.

“Some of the close-up scenes in NCIS can be a little gross but nothing to stop anyone from enjoying one of the better shows around,” says Archie Schiano.  He’s actually impressed with the way private parts are concealed with “judiciously positioned lighting that keep scenes quite decent.”

Don Sileo, a former member of SAG and Actor’s Equity, now a marketer, is also a fan.   He says, “Good writing and strong ensembles keeps me tuned in. I like the plots that are lifted from recent cases. The special effects are good for action, unless I'm eating.”

Joan Lohnes says, “They don’t scare me.  I’m a nurse!”

And, Dorrie Burke, who at one time spent a day at the Medical Examiner’s office as part of a job with the Department of Investigation, longed for a long ago HBO program called Autopsy: Confessions of a Medical Examiner (1994). 

“I was absolutely fascinated by it.  It was a documentary; real cases, evaluated by one-time New York City coroner Michael Baden.  At the time, I didn't find it gory at all.  It was such a unique view into an unseen world.” 

Burke did say that real life peek at the coroner’s office was off-putting.   “For a while I was afraid to eat, fearing food would block my windpipe after they showed us cross-section of a child's throat with a wedged lima bean.  Cause of death was choking.”

In case you’re interested, the producers of procedural shows, as they’re called, are spending millions to dress up mannequins and pay actors to play dead.  According to the Wall Street Journal, "NCIS" and "CSI" use dummies molded in the likeness of the actor playing the victim at a cost of about $7,800 each.  The paper says a typical crime drama is shot in eight days at a cost of about $2.5 million.

In some cases, actual people are used because as NCIS executive producer Mark Horowitz has said, “nothing looks more realistic than an actor playing dead.” 

I think it’s great that creative people are being put to work in these tough times to make dead bodies look more and more horrible.  And actors need to earn a living, too. I still think the practice could be toned down a bit.  In yet another recent episode of Rizzoli & Isles, Dr. Isles pulled a heart out of a body and sliced it in pieces to determine something or other.  PLEASE.  That was too much.

Jack Wagner and Heather Locklear Engaged

Soap fans will be interested to know that Jack Wagner, formerly of Melrose Place and General Hospital, is engaged to Melrose and Knots Landing actress Heather Locklear.  They are 51 and 50, respectively.

Locklear has a child with her ex-husband, Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi.

Wagner has two children with his ex, actress Kristina Wagner, his longtime co-star on GH.  They played husband and wife.   He is a semi-pro golfer who has also had a singing career.

Susan Lucci May Stay with All My Children

TV Guide is reporting that Susan Lucci will continue to play Erica Kane when All My Children starts its online run next year.

The show, one of the longest running programs on television, will leave the ABC airwaves on September 23rd.

Lucci, 64, is the last remaining original cast member.  She is a native New Yorker who has been traveling to the West Coast to tape her scenes on AMC.  Lucci's failure to bolt is a good sign that other actors will remain, though there is still a lot of speculation about that.  One star, Jacob Young, will be leaving and returning to his old soap, The Bold and the Beautiful on CBS.

In other news, a number of former cast members are returning to AMC for the final month, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Sarah Michelle Gellar, CSI: Miami star Eva La Rue (Maria Santos Grey), Josh Duhamel (the dearly departed Leo du Pres), Thorsten Kaye (Zach) and Cady McClain (Dixie).  They are back or soon will be.

The online version, backed by Prospect Park, will be available on the net beginning in early 2012. The company is also seeking a cable outlet for AMC and ABC's other outgoing soap, One Life to Live.

ABC is replacing All My Children with The Chew, a one-hour food/lifestyle program.  (Yuck!)

Storage Wars: I Don’t Get It

Storage Wars on A&E was the 12th most highly rated program on cable last week.  It regularly scores in the top 20.  I embarked on a mission this weekend to figure out why.  I’m still shrugging my shoulders. 

The show seems formulaic, dull, full of characters lacking couth and, worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be a pay-off.

Each installment starts with an auction of the unclaimed contents of someone’s completely filled storage locker.  The bidders can’t examine the material within; they can only scope it out from the door and decide in an instant if they’re going for it. They will bid blindly on hunches based on what they can see and whether those few visible items are a tip-off to what lies beneath.  I guess this is where the suspense comes in.

A completely incomprehensible auctioneer then takes bids from the few regulars gathered and a winner is declared.  Fortunately, there are graphics to let viewers in on what’s happening, because it really is difficult to follow.

Eventually, the program gets around to showing the winners as they explore what’s inside the locker to see if they got what they paid for, if they were completely taken, or if there was treasure within.  Did the winning bidder strike gold and find the Holy Grail amidst someone’s long forgotten junk?

The concept is promising, along the lines of Pawn Stars and Antiques Road Show, but it’s too seldom that there’s anything more than stuff.

And the people.  In one episode a couple, presumably husband and wife, bicker when he repeatedly allows her to be hit by falling debris, the piles of containers that tumble when the guy is sifting through the locker.  Later, he throws something that hits her accidentally.  When she complains, he tells her to tough it out and concentrate on finding something valuable.  Hence, the uncouth part.

It should come as no surprise that a reality show is littered with low-lifes, but I don’t get the mass appeal of this one.  There doesn’t seem to be one redeeming quality, at least not one that would make this program more popular than White Collar or Covert Affairs, for example.  I would understand if these lockers contained valuable objects and if the aforementioned hillbillies were making thousands upon thousands of dollars for their investment of hundreds, but that’s not the case. 

Storage Wars is just another train wreck waiting for a crowd to gather.  So far, the crowd is getting what it wants.

News on Three Cable Shows: In Plain Sight Cancelled

USA has renewed In Plain Sight with Mary McCormack for one final season of eight episodes that will air during the spring of 2012.  It will be cancelled after that.

TNT recently announced it is renewing the Timothy Hutton caper drama Leverage for a 15-episode fifth season.  The fourth season, airing now, is doing very well in the ratings.  The next season will air next summer.

Suits on USA, starring Gabriel Macht and Patrick Adams,  is also getting another pick-up after its current inaugural season.