SueTube – Let’s talk TV with critic Susan Young

She may be a little frail, but the first lady of TV comedy Carol Burnett still knows how to rock the house.
Burnett was honored by the Television Critics Association on Sunday night at the annual TCA awards for Career Achievement. She got a standing ovation from an audience that included producers and stars from “House,” “Lost,” “The Office,” “My Name is Earl,” “West Wing,” “High School Musical” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”
When she accepted the award, Burnett says she’s still open to playing other TV roles after a great experience on “Desperate Housewives.”
“So, if you have anything for me at ‘The Office,’ ” she said, looking over at the elated cast and crew.
After the ceremony, Steve Carell and the producers went over to talk some business with Burnett.
But it was in the queue to get their cars after the event that the stakes went up. “Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes and producer Betsy Beers took the opportunity to tell Burnett how much she had meant to them.
“You are the reason we are in this business,” Beers said. “Really. You have been my inspiration.”
Beers and Rhimes said that after her speech, they already started thinking about at least one episode written just with Burnett in mind.
I think she was talking to “The Office” people, I told them.
“Not if we get her first,” says Rhimes.

We’ll go along with the idea that two NBC series – “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” by “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin and “30 Rock” created by Tina Fey – set in the behind-the-scenes world of “Saturday Night Live” was just a fluke.
But at least Sorkin admits he felt a bit bad about the whole dust-up when it came out in the press that it caused a lot of network angst.
So, Sorkin says, he sent Fey flowers, wishing her good luck on her new series, just before the series were announced for the fall schedule last May.
“I thought I might hear from her, but I never did,” Sorkin said. “I was kind of surprised by that, but you know, the business being what it is, you just never know what to expect.”
So Sorkin finally caught up with Fey recently and asked her if she ever got his flowers.
“She said she got the flowers and thought it was a joke from one of the people at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” Sorkin says with a smile. “I guess she called everyone she knew at ‘SNL’ trying to find out who had done it, and then felt badly when she found out they came from me.”
Fey announced she was leaving “Saturday Night Live” to concentrate on starring, writing and producing “30 Rock.”
“I just tried doing too much and I need to just focus on this and my daughter,” says Fey, who wears an necklace with the letter on A on it for 10-month-old Alice. “I wanted to write a movie, which I did, I wanted to have my own show, which I do and I wanted to have a child. I think I’m one of the luckiest people ever.”
Even if the “30 Rock” is a bust, she doesn’t have much to worry about. The series is produced by “SNL’s” founder Lorne Michaels and I think he wouldn’t mind having her back on board.

Delroy Lindo plays tough guys and once you go toe-to-toe with him, you can quickly figure out why.
The East Bay resident plays a hard-edged FBI agent in the new NBC series “Kidnapped,” and when I walked up to him he stared at me like I was a dog about to desecrate his manicured lawn.
“You look like Estelle Parsons,” he pronounces.
I’m hoping he meant the young Estelle, who is now fast approaching 79. It’s been a long tour, so I might just be flattering myself.
So, I ask, you live in Berkeley or Oakland?
“Yes,” he says, the subject to be closed to further discussion.
So, this show tapes in New York. Isn’t that going to be hard on the family life?
“We’re moving to New York for five and a half months, then we’ll be back,” he says, with the expression on his face never changing and, in fact, getting a tad more intimidating.
So I continue.
Planning on doing any theater in the Bay Area?
“I’m directing ‘The Blue Door’ at Berkeley Rep,” he says. “But this is the third time I’ve tried to do something for them and it always falls through. Maybe third time’s the charm.”
Sensing I had pressed my luck enough, I quickly made my exit.

Braving the wicked heat out on the Ritz lawn, Woodside’s Linda Cardellini confided that her “ER” character nurse Sam is getting a new love interest.
“I don’t know who it is yet, but I’m excited,” says Cardellini, who looked pretty cool despite the oven-blast heat. Maybe that’s because she spent some time this year in Santa Fe, New Mexico filming a new CBS miniseries “Comanche Moon.”
The movie, one of the few original TV movies being produced this season, is a prequel to “Lonesome Dove” and chronicles the early romance of Gus, played by Steve Zahn in the Robert Duvall role and Clara, played by Cardellini in the Anjelica Huston role.
“It combined everything I love: horses, good script and great actors,” says Cardellini, who also had a role in the groundbreaking movie “Brokeback Mountain.”

It was the hottest party of 2006 press tour.
NBC did a barbecue-themed party out on the lawn of the Ritz-Carlton for their final night of press tour, but they found it hard to round up the talent and push those cattle out of the air-conditioned Ritz.
Temperatures soared to around 115 degrees, and no one was eager to get out.
Milo Ventigmiglia and Adrian Pasdar said they already put in more than a pound of sweat promoting their show, “Heroes” about ordinary people with extraordinary powers at San Diego’s Comic Con on Friday.

“The whole cast, except Greg Grunberg and Hayden Panettiere who had to work that day, went down to San Diego on a bus,” said Ventigmiglia. “This thing was falling apart and the air conditioning went out. So we were trapped in this thing for two hours, baking. We spent the time laughing and joking about it.

As Pasdar said, “You get to know really fast just what kind of people you are working with you get stuck in that situation. And we’ve got some great people on the show.”

The series is created and produced by Pittsburg native Tim Kring.

You just know that before Sorkin took the stage in front of a room filled with close to 200 critics, his handlers laid down a few rules that started out with “no drug talk” and ended with “really, no drug talk.”

Sorkin was at the summer TV critics press tour to talk about his new series, “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” a fictionalized look at the backstage works at “Saturday Night Live.” The large ensemble cast includes Bradley Whitford and Timothy Busfield from “The West Wing” and Matthew Perry from a little sitcom called “Friends.”

The critical darling’s acclaimed work includes the film “A Few Good Men” and series “Sports Night” and “The West Wing.” But he became a late-night talk show punch line after his much-publicized arrest at the Burbank airport for possession of cocaine, mushrooms and marijuana in 2001.

In the first few moments of “Studio 60” opens with a “Network” rant by the producer about how bad television has become, and cites shows that resemble such NBC fare as “Fear Factor” and Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice.”

So Sorkin was asked about using this show and how he felt about the state of network TV.

“I do think that television is terribly influential part of this country and when things that are very mean-spirited and voyeuristic go on TV,” Sorkin said. “I think it’s bad crack in the schoolyard.” Sorkin immediately tried to turn into the incredible shrinking man, going through a wide array of crimson tones.

“Why did I use that word?” he said.

Later, Perry was asked what it was like playing a character that is based on both Sorkin and his creative partner Thomas Schlamme.

“I think it’s more like bad Vicodin in the schoolyard,” quipped Perry, who had a little scandal in 1997 about being in the early stages of dependency on Vicodin.

The stage, and audience, erupted into laughter as Sorkin tried slinking even lower in the chair, rubbing his forehead like a magic lantern that might transport him elsewhere.

“I never wished I had a drug problem,” said Whitford, who plays Perry’s character’s partner on the show.

Until now, perhaps.

Finally, when cast member Steven Weber started talking about aspirin and cloth diapers on the schoolyard, it was more than Sorkin could take.

“I’ll pay $100 to everyone in the room if I can just get that quote out of the papers tomorrow,” Sorkin begged.

No such luck.

Somebody was watching.

A while ago, someone put up bootleg copies on www.youtube.com of a 2005 WB comedy pilot that wasn’t picked up, produced by Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs”). The innovative series is about two guys who want to become sitcom writers and end up being part of a reality series.

The series pilot, which is shown in three parts, was downloaded more than 600,000 times from the San Mateo-based YouTube Web site. People started writing about it. (see www.insidebayarea.com/TV for Susan Young’s column on it.)

On Friday, NBC announced that it will pick up the series, first airing as webisodes, then later on the network. The stars, Paul Campbell and Taran Killam, will return to their roles as best pals from the Midwest who get the call from a network to come work for them “if they think they can do a better job.”

The two try to develop a great TV sitcom, unaware that the network is actually manipulating and recording their every move for a reality series.

“This comedy pilot has generated a life of its own and we are intrigued by its potential to develop into a series,” says NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly. “Sometimes, if you show it, they will come. We’ve seen how people have responded on the Internet, plus we always bet on Bill Lawrence’s work.”

Lawrence says he’s always been passionate about the project and “I think we will see more launched on the Internet in the future.”

Perhaps it was an homage to “Lost,” but for whatever reason the limited lighting at the ABC stars party made the whole affair turn into blind man’s bluff.

Still, we were able to find enough people to shed some light on what’s going on with the networks two top series.

For one thing, “Desperate Housewives” opens up with Mike Delfino (Jamie Denton) in a coma. Susan (Teri Hatcher) starts a vigil at his hospital bed, but before she knows it, she finds herself attracted to the man played by Dougray Scott, across the hall whose wife is in a coma.

“It’s like she’s waiting for Jimmy Stewart to wake up, but she’s looking at Cary Grant across the hall,” says creator Marc Cherry.

Bree (Marcia Cross) gets married to Kyle McLachlan, while Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) gets stuck caring for the mother of her unborn child, who was fathered either artificially or the old-fashioned way by tossed out hubby Carlos.

And make no mistake, they are putting the funny back into the show by lining up an A-list of comedy writers from such shows as “Frasier” and “Will & Grace.”

As it turned out, the night was filled with producers ready to spill series secrets. When news that “Lost” producer Carlton Cuse was having an attack of loose lips over in the corner, almost every critic in the party clawed their way through the crowd to get the low down.

First, Cuse says, Desmond isn’t dead. And we’ll be spending the first six episodes, before it goes on hiatus until next spring, seeing Kate, Jack and Sawyer dealing with life in captivity.

The trio will be with The Others, and Cuse says we’ll discover that The Others are quite different from what we thought. Also, the outside world was introduced in the season finale (“and that’s not going away” Cuse says), with men at an ice station detecting where the Losties are located.

So again we ask, “Does this explain the polar bear in the first season?”

“Well, the artic is the only place where polar bears live,” says Cuse. “And polar bears will be back this season.”

Three actors playing characters on “Prison Break” have made their getaway to ABC. Patricia Wettig, who played the ambitious vice president, will now be “Brothers & Sisters” which is produced by her husband Ken Olin.

Sunnyvale’s Camille Guaty, who played the girlfriend of one of prisoners and John Billingsly, who played the supposedly dead brother of the vice president, joined the cast of “The Nine.”

There was supposed to be some “Dancing with Stars” action later, but the professional dancers said they just couldn’t work under these conditions.

Too dark.

Nothing better than getting on the set of “Grey’s Anatomy” and immediately bumping into Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey), Patrick Dempsey (Derek “Dr. McDreamy” Shepherd) and Emmy nominee Sandra Oh (Cristina Yang).

So, Ellen, after having your way with the very married Dr. McDreamy in the season finale, just who else might you bed?

“No one is safe,” she says smiling wickedly. “All cute boys beware.”

(We’re still pushing for a return of Eric Dane, who played the guy who almost broke up McDreamy’s marriage. Although McDreamy seems to be doing just fine all on his own now.)

As for McDreamy, or rather Dempsey, he says that the two things fans always say to him are “My mother loves you” and “Who are you picking?”

They are referring, of course, to whether the good-in-bed doctor will choose Meredith or his wife, played by San Jose native Kate Walsh.
“Well, I can tell you that the triangle gets resolved rather quickly,” says Walsh, who looks as if she’s still part of the cast. Perhaps she gives McDreamy his come-uppance finally and she can get back to that dishy Eric Dane.

Seeming every bit as socially awkward as her straightforward character, Oh watched as the critics taking the tour of the set rushed her co-stars.

“No one is going to want to talk to me, are they?” she said, looking nervously at me.

No worries. It didn’t take long for folks to zone in on her.

Sitting in a remote spot on the set was Sara Ramirez, who plays Dr. Callie Torres on the show. She says she was picked to join the show after she was seen in the Broadway smash hit “Monty Python’s Spamalot.”

“They came to me, although I don’t know what about my over-the-top performance (as Lady of the Lake) said orthopedic surgeon to them,” says Ramirez, who won a Tony for her role.

You would have thought journalists would pounce on the chance to ask Anne “I think I’m an alien” Heche if she was a bit more grounded these days.

Instead, when Heche showed up at the summer TV press tour to pump up interest in her ABC series “Men in Trees,” there was more curiosity in raccoons.

The series, with Heche as a self-help guru who just got dumped by her boyfriend after she arrives for a gig in Alaska, has a lot of wildlife.

Turns out the raccoon Elvis has a dog as a stunt double. And he sleeps at night. And they wake him up to go to work.

Finally, a reporter stumbled out a question about her mentally unstable past, saying something like is she now…

“Sane?” asked Heche.

Heche says she’s now very blessed, although she still has some quirks. Like covering her ears and do the LA-LA-LA whenever anyone asked about where the series was going.

“Anne doesn’t want to hear about what’s happening in the future,” explained creator Jenny Bicks, like this was perfectly reasonable behavior.

Later, when asked if anyone could relate to Heche’s character, she quipped, “Clearly, I never used a life coach.”