Saturday, May 9, 2009

Save "Lost & Found" Campaign

POSTED BY:  AdminiSpanker 
 

 

Sarah (RiriSpank): NBC announced the first part of its plan for the 2009/2010 TV Season... and "Lost & Found" is not in it !! WTF NBC ?! Are you on crack or something ? Anyway, we have until May 19th (when NBC reveals the second part) to gather and create a buzz around the show, so that the execs can see that "Lost & Found" already has fans. Why do we want "Lost & Found" so bad to be picked-up ? Hmm, two words : Katee. Sackhoff. ! Katee having her very own show ? Come on, it HAS to be good... more than good even... brilliant ! We know that however great the scripts are, she'll make them 10 times better. Ever seen "Bionic Woman" ? Well, you get what I mean, then... But that's not all... Brian Cox, an exciting cop show, a new series by Dick Wolf... What more do you need ?

What can we do ? Your being here is the first step, but all the work still has to be done. The thing is to create such a huge buzz around the show that NBC cannot ignore it. That means inviting all your friends to join us, writing NBC tons of emails and letters, telling the press about this campaign so that they represent us on a wider scale... just TALK ABOUT THE SHOW !

SwimSpank:
COME ON SPANKS! DO YOUR PART. YOU KNOW HOW THE INTERNET MACHINE WORKS! FACEBOOK! MYSPACE! TWITTER! LIVEJOURNAL! SKIFFY! ETC! GET THE WORD OUT!!

Why Lost & Found Blows Legally Mad out of the Water

POSTED BY:  snowflakespank 
 
(originally written for the Save Lost & Found website and also posted on the NBC boards)

According to TVWeek if a show in development was not already announced it won't be on in the fall, but there is still a chance that it may get picked up for midseason. This was specifically discussed in reference to the David E Kelly's "Legally Mad" but for those of us hoping "Lost & Found" finds a home at NBC, the dream lives on! While following the news on NBC's infronts and specifically "Lost & Found," I've seen a lot of commentary about these two shows. My conclusion is that "Lost & Found" is a better pick for NBC for a number of reasons.

I won't preface this with a caveat about how my opinion is biased, because as part of the viewing audience, our opinions and my biases are relevant. I want to see Lost & Found make the airwaves more than almost any other show because I can't wait to see Katee Sackhoff in just about anything. This is my first big point - the stars of the shows. All but one of the articles I have read mention Katee, of Battlestar Galactica fame, as an important aspect to L&F, while some but not all of these same articles mention Kristin Chenoweth for LM. The one article that did not mention Katee did not mention either of the series' leading ladies. But another article in The Chicago Tribune even refers to Lost & Found as "Katee Sackhoff's Dick Wolf project" giving her top billing over Dick Wolf, while never mentioning Chenoweth in relation to David E Kelley's Legally Mad. Now, I have nothing against Kristin Chenoweth and enjoyed her while she was in West Wing, but I don't think she brings the same benefits to NBC that Katee Sackhoff does. TV Squad said that they were looking forward to Lost & Found and a show that NBC has now officially picked up because "the stars - Chase and Sackhoff - might make them worth watching" and THR.com calls Katee Sackhoff "promotable."

It is my contention that Katee is far more than just "promotable." She can definitely be promoted to a new audience that is unfamiliar with her previous performances but even more, I believe (and you guys are totally evidence of this!) that Katee Sackhoff fans are a special kind of obsessive, and will watch virtually ANYTHING so long as she is in it. If they made The Last Sentinel into a TV series, many of us would suffer through the bad writing, poor conception and crummy acting by her co-stars just to see Katee on a regular basis. Surely Lost & Found can't be worse than a Last Sentinel series?! In contrast, Ms. Chenoweth is a well known and well loved actress whose name could certainly bring people to a project to "give it a try" but I think ultimately the shows quality will determine whether or not they keep watching. It boils down to this: If Katee starred in a moderately bad series and Kristin starred in a mediocre series, I think the Sackhoff show would still easily hold a much higher audience week after week.
That being said, I don't think Lost and Found would be a "moderately bad" show so lets talk about the shows themselves. Legally Mad is the brain child of the ever popular David E Kelley and Lost & Found is the newest crime solving evolution from Dick Wolf written by Chris Levinson. On this point let's call it a draw. I mean really can we say that David E Kelley's shows (like Ally Mc Beal, Chicago Hope, Boston Legal or The Practice) are any better or worse than Dick Wolf's many incarnations of Law & Order? How many L&O spin-offs do we have now anyway? And they all maintain a strong following and pull in big money for NBC. As far as big name show creators go,
these two are both giants.

So as a given with Wolf and Kelley at the respective helms, both shows are probably well written and well produced but I'm a bit concerned about the basic premise. First up... Legally Mad. Legally Mad is "a legal drama about Skippy Pylon, who is a very intelligent lawyer who joins her father's law firm. The only problem is that she also happens to be psychologically damaged, manic and has flashes of psychosis where she acts more like a teenager than a lawyer." according to TV Overmind. In my daily life I spend considerable energy to avoid grown adults who act like petulant teens so I am certainly not going to spend my entertainment time watching these annoying and all too frequently encountered nuisances on TV. That's a HUGE strike against Legally Mad in my opinion. However, if you discount this personality quirk, as this STLtoday.com article did, then it's just a show about a girl who joins Daddy's law firm. How original.

As for Lost and Found, TV Overmind says we get "an ‘offbeat' detective at the LAPD who ruffles too many feathers and gets sent into the bowels of the police station to work on John Doe cases." Ok, so it's not a brilliant shining light of originality either but nothing about that screams annoying and the shows it mimics have been successful. Its gives me a feel of Crossing Jordan meets Bones and as I love both of those shows I'm fine with slightly unoriginal. Besides, if the worst thing about L&F is that its unoriginal, did I not mention Katee Sackhoff fans would follow her to the ends of the Earth and back through a torrential hail storm and come out drenched but happy? Katee has the kind of star power and devotion you don't generally see on the small screen.

Lastly, I thought I should mention that the same TV Overmind article claims Lost & Found would be cheaper to make than Legally Mad. Rumor also has it the fewer spots available in Primetime NBC is because it is cheap to make unscripted shows and thus NBC is opting to put Leno on primetime five nights a week. So if the new season is about cutting primetime costs, go for the less expensive legal drama too! All in all, of these two legal shows from big name creators, you have an inexpensive show with a good if possibly unoriginal premise about criminal cases involving anonymous victims starring Katee Sackhoff, who brings a very devoted fan base ... or you can sign a more expensive either unoriginal or insanely annoying show about a lawyer who joins her dad's law firm played by Kristin Chenoweth who brings fans most of whom will turn the show off if it proves to be only mediocre. Don't forget, fans = advertisers = money so Lost & Found is cheap to make and will definitely have a consistent and large audience bringing in lots of advertiser money while Legally Mad is expensive to make and will have a less dependable fan base and is therefore a bigger risk for advertisers (i.e. potentially less money for NBC pockets). I see this as a no-brainer, but I'm not an NBC exec so what do I know.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Supanova Melbourne 2009

POSTED BY:  BeckSpank 
 
I know this is a bit late- but I wanted to share my convention experience and my first time (and hopefully not the last) meeting Katee Sackhoff. I actually had no intention of going to Supanova until two weeks before when they announced Katee as a last minute replacement guest. The convention came the weekend after the finale to BSG (which I didn’t like the ending of) so the convention was a good way for me to say goodbye to the show.
 
A few things that Katee said:
  • She doesn’t know what Kara is.
  • She seemed disappointed that there was no resolution between Kara and Lee, and she doesn’t know why it was written that way.
  • Katee ad-libbed the “I love you” to Sam because she knew she wasn’t getting any kind of resolution with Lee and she wanted Kara to have that with someone.
  • Katee is getting a motorcycle for her birthday (since this is late, she would now have it). She wants/or has (I’m not sure) a bike with yellow daises on it, and Tricia’s bike is purple.
  • Katee, Tricia, their significant others and Michael Trucco have formed a motorcycle group. Katee was excited that Michael was getting his fiancée a bike so they would have another woman in the group.
  • Katee isn’t in the BSG movie The Plan, as it was shooting started a few days after the finale finished and she was exhausted, plus she had just been diagnosed with cancer.
  • There was no resolution between Kara and Leoben because Callum Keith Rennie was really the only actor they couldn’t tie down to a contract and he was busy filming other things, probably Californication.
  • She loves Twilight, and came out on the second day to the Q and A wearing a Twilight shirt.
Overall she was a complete delight to meet, she was really friendly, though I was so nervous I couldn’t carry on any sort of prolonged conversation with her other than to basically gush to her about how awesome she is.
  
I know this is a bit late- but I wanted to share my convention experience and my first time (and hopefully not the last) meeting Katee Sackhoff. I actually had no intention of going to Supanova until two weeks before when they announced Katee as a last minute replacement guest. The convention came the weekend after the finale to BSG (which I didn’t like the ending of) so the convention was a good way for me to say goodbye to the show.
 
A few things that Katee said:
  • She doesn’t know what Kara is.
  • She seemed disappointed that there was no resolution between Kara and Lee, and she doesn’t know why it was written that way.
  • Katee ad-libbed the “I love you” to Sam because she knew she wasn’t getting any kind of resolution with Lee and she wanted Kara to have that with someone.
  • Katee is getting a motorcycle for her birthday (since this is late, she would now have it). She wants/or has (I’m not sure) a bike with yellow daises on it, and Tricia’s bike is purple.
  • Katee, Tricia, their significant others and Michael Trucco have formed a motorcycle group. Katee was excited that Michael was getting his fiancée a bike so they would have another woman in the group.
  • Katee isn’t in the BSG movie The Plan, as it was shooting started a few days after the finale finished and she was exhausted, plus she had just been diagnosed with cancer.
  • There was no resolution between Kara and Leoben because Callum Keith Rennie was really the only actor they couldn’t tie down to a contract and he was busy filming other things, probably Californication.
  • She loves Twilight, and came out on the second day to the Q and A wearing a Twilight shirt.
Overall she was a complete delight to meet, she was really friendly, though I was so nervous I couldn’t carry on any sort of prolonged conversation with her other than to basically gush to her about how awesome she is.