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BUSINESS TIME

... In a conference call with reporters this morning, Louis C.K. announced that his FX show Louie won't make its usual summer debut next year; instead, Season 4 will be delayed until May of 2014. The extended break will give C.K., who writes, stars in, and directs the show, more creative freedom and the proper time to deliver the type of product he wants to. And you know what? Maybe a little vacation, too. The guy makes one of the best shows on TV right now, and it's almost all on his back, so go ahead Louis, go to the Grand Canyon or something. [Variety]

... ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager will end after the upcoming second half of its fifth season. All of ABC Family's current scripted shows have The Secret Life to thank, because it was the breakout series that put ABC Family in the business of original programming. The final 12 episodes of the series will begin airing in March. Now Shailene Woodley can be the star she was always meant to be and get a role opposite Shia Lebouf Shia Leboof Shia LaBeouf in something loud and splashy. [Deadline Hollywood]

... Also ending is the U.K.'s Shameless, the one Showtime's version is based on, which is calling it quits after 11 seasons. The Channel 4 dramedy will end in 2013. [THR]

... GSN has renewed The American Bible Challenge for a second season. It's a game show that tests contestants on their knowledge of the Bible. I just wanted to let you know that this thing exists. [GSN via press release]

... OMGYRAC! (Oh my goodness your ratings are crap!) Gossip Girl, once the zenith of pop culture and the accidental instructional precursor to Teen Mom, returned for its final season with... 770,000 viewers and a 0.4 rating among adults. You know what the final season needed? More hypersexualized ice-cream eating. [TV Line]

... J.J. Abrams is producing a Fox comedy about some woman's guide on becoming an adult. So I'm guessing there won't be any killer androids, alien overlords, or time-traveling in it? [Deadline Hollywood]

... Rachael Harris (The Hangover) and Angela Kinsey (The Office) are teaming up for Dirty Blondes, a comedy at Fox. The series is loosely based on their real-life friendship and focuses on two recently divorced pals. [Deadline Hollywood]

... Speaking of divorce and Fox and adding a terrible idea, Fox has ordered a pilot of the reality show Divorce Hotel. The gross premise features estranged couples staying in a luxury hotel and speeding up their divorce proceedings with lawyers, mediators, and I'm guessing hunky poolboys. [Deadline Hollywood]

... Nickelodeon is bringing its shows to Hulu. Now you have no excuse to fall behind on SpongeBob SquarePants. [NY Times]

CASTING NEWS

... Parks and Recreation is bringing back Megan Mullally to reprise her role as Tammy 2. She'll return in Episode 9 to cause some friction with Ron Swanson's new lady friend. [TV Guide]

... The Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco will host the People's Choice Awards for the second year in a row. Willingly. I had no idea Cuoco was a masochist. The more you know... [CBS via press release]

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Louie S02E12: "Late Night (Part 3)"

When I'm asked what FX's Louie is about, my response usually goes something along these lines: "It's about this middle-aged comedian who gets in awkward situations and generally comes out on the wrong end of his misadventures." As those of you who watch the show know, Louie is a well-intentioned, tough-luck kind of guy who keeps digging through the shovelfuls of crap that are heaped upon him. He's got a winning percentage roughly in the same neighborhood as the Pittsburgh Pirates (pre-Andrew McCutcheon). But in last night's exhilarating and outstanding episode, "The Late Show (Part 3)," Louie won the big one.

Life's victories are all relative, and while Louie didn't usurp David Letterman and get the job as the new host of Late Show, he won an even longer running match that he's been battling all his life. Whether he's hanging out in Miami, confronting his ex-wife, or going on a parade of tragic dates, Louie has been struggling to climb Confidence Mountain and, quite literally in the last two parts of this "Late Night" saga, he's generally been life's punching bag.

It's not clear whether Louie even wanted the Late Show job in the first place. His ex wanted him to have the job. His agent wanted him to have the job. The guy who manages his retirement portfolio wanted him to have the job. Louie wavered not just because it would mean a buttload of work, but because he looked into the eyes of his precious daughters and saw what he'd be missing with this new "success." We love Louie because we know he knows the difference between right and wrong, and because he recognizes the important things in life.

The real war hiding behind the goal we saw—Louie getting the Late Show job—was the one between the insecure Louie of old and the self-assured Louie who needed to punch his way out. Ultimately, Louie's drive to win the job came not from the promises of money and supermodel girlfriends and a mansion in Westchester County, but from proving himself to his detractors, the weasels in show business ("Seinfeld!" (said to the tune of "Newman!"))... and as a nice side effect, to himself.

And it's that last bit that became the most satisfying scene of Louie to date. Chewed up and spit out by a system that used him as a negotiating ploy, Louie didn't go home and cry. He walked right over the Ed Sullivan Theater and stood up straight, his chest puffed out and swelling with pride, his arms raised above his head because fuck you, David Letterman. And everything was glued together by the simplest of productions and incredible music that crescendoed to Rocky-theme proportions. When no one, not even himself, thought he could do it, Louie went and killed it. In this case, "it" wasn't winning the Late Show job, but this "it" meant a lot more to Louie and to us.

Are we at a turning point in the life of Louie and Louie? Maybe, maybe not. But this week, as the show's final credits rolled, Louie wasn't a punching bag. As of now, he's still fighting. And it's a beautiful thing to watch.

– I loved the turn of Jack Dahl (David Lynch) from rickety old CBS exec to wise sage, the Mr. Miyagi of late-night. He ended up being exactly the mentor Louie needed.

– Jack: "Tune in every night folks, it's the crying cleaning lady show!"

– Louie: "You know what your problem is? You're just a pencil penis parade."

– What kind of powerful man is Louis C.K. in the comedy industry? He got Jay Leno, Chris Rock, and Jerry Seinfeld to all agree to play two-faced scheming asshole versions of themselves with essentially zero parody.

– Yes, we'd all watch a late-night talk show hosted by Louis C.K.

– Most importantly, this episode just made me feel really good. One of the best episodes of the series, right up there with "Miami" and "Duckling," but uniquely its own.

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Louie S03E11: "Late Night (Part 2)"

Well now we know why David Letterman's teeth are messed up and Jay Leno's chin is swollen: because part of their training to be late-night talk-show hosts involved getting beat up in a boxing ring. After a taking last week off, Louie returned last night with the second part of its "Late Night" trilogy, immediately resolving the cliffhanger (cliffhanger? On the infamously discontinuous Louie!?!?) in the opening moments. Louie said "yes" and agreed to be considered for the possibility of competing for a job that may or may not be his depending on who else is up for the gig and a lot of financial considerations.

These "Late Night" episodes are a look at show business through Louis C.K.'s brain, with Louie offering its hero the dream job of a lifetime: hosting CBS's Late Show. But the path to the Ed Sullivan Theater is littered with fake friends spouting fake advice, senile old network executives stuck in the Cold War, and a brutal mental and physical toll on Louie, who's now going through the process of being molded into a man that studios think America will love enough to watch for an hour each night and not change the channel when a Lexus commercial comes on.

It's perfectly appropriate that weirdo David Lynch made a guest appearance as Jack Dahl, the mentor who will ment Louie into the next Letterman, because Louis C.K. sees the industry as fraught with unnecessary hoops and indecipherable steps. The scenes with the network waiting rooms and meetings with the executives could easily have been deleted scenes from Mulholland Drive. Why does Mr. Dahl have a gun and foreign currency in his desk? Because he's fucking weird, that's why. The inmates are running the asylum; we're talking about people who are so out of touch with what actually works that they're beholden to the days of old, suffering early onset rigor mortis that's so rigid, if they fell down they'd shatter into a million old-man pieces. This business, this process, it's so antiquated.

And that's exactly what Louie wants to show you. Louis C.K., mature after decades in the business and finally reaping the benefits of his talents largely through his own stubbornness and ideals, has been through this in his real life. The offers have poured in, dump trucks full of money have pulled into his driveway, and friends have likely told him what he wants to hear but not what they actually think. Meanwhile, he prefers doing things his own way. He has almost total control over his small, critically adored show on FX. He's circumvented ticket-broker vultures and scalpers looking to cash in on his live performances by selling directly to the public. He created, largely on his own, his own stand-up special and sold it on the internet, for five bucks a pop, as a test to see if it could be done without some corporate intervention, simultaneously ensuring that the result was more controllable by the artist and cheaper for the consumer (it was a HUGE success, and he took the majority of the money and donated it to charity and gave bonuses to those who worked on it). Bluntly put, this is a man who rightfully thinks show business is in the hands of the wrong people and wants you to see it the way he sees it.

And one of the ways he sees it is as a tedious, drawn-out, and boring process. And I think some of that was reflected in the pacing of both this episode and last week's. There's some art that's going beyond the television happening here, as the story of a man going through this long process is more effective if we endure the long process with him. Heck, the one-episode break between Part 1 and Part 2 even works to the story's advantage, if you really think about it, because just as we were dying to see what became of this job offer, Louis C.K. was probably going through the same thing waiting for a job offer at one point in his career.

That breaks all the rules of traditional comedy as laid out by Dahl. "Comedy is all about timing, son. You gotta get 'em, you gotta tell 'em," he said as Louie wondered why Dahl wasn't haunting a crypt somewhere. But that's Louie's M.O., breaking the rules of comedy. And watching Louie break the rules of comedy in a comedy while its on-screen character is being told the rules of comedy becomes mindfuckingly brilliant high art. The punchlines aren't there, but the statement is profound and hilarious. If you want factory-made punchlines, go watch 2 Broke Girls and let the jokes elicit some type of conditioned behavioral response. Louie's taking observational humor to the next level.

– Should Louie take the job if he's offered it? It's the opportunity of 10 lifetimes, but is it worth it for Louie to be sucked into that showbiz machine? Obviously to preserve the show he can't, lest Louie turn into The Larry Sanders Show, but just looking at this from a man-on-the-street perspective and not from a Louie perspective, he should at least give it a try.

– What do you think the point of the supermarket scene (when Jane caught an old woman stealing) was? TVDoneWright's Adam Wright (follow him on Twitter, he's great and opinionated) says it was to show that Louie's kids will be fine without him, just as his ex-wife said, and serves as encouragement to go for the job. That's one take, but I'm not totally sure I agree. Louie himself wasn't interested in intervening, and I don't think that a starving old woman taking food from a large chain market with bloated profit margins so she can survive is actually a bad thing. In other words, little Jane is kind of an asshole. Maybe it's actually a sign that Louie needs to stick around and teach her the nuances of right and wrong.

– There were some amazing cameos in this one, but why is it that my favorite was Clay Davis from The Wire as the boxing instructor? Next week: SEINFELD.

– Was the bit with the boxing too heavy-handed as an analogy for the rigors that late-night hosts go through?

View the original article here

What to watch on Thursday, August 30...

Oh Thursday, where haven't you been all my life? It's like every week I turn around you're just there. So reliable, I tells ya! And now let's see what you've got to offer the world in respect to TV goodness:

9pm, Lifetime
Project Runway
In tonight's "Oh My Lord and Taylor" Bonnie Brooks will guest judge while designers scramble to complete in a challenge that could land them a deal that would showcase their designs as part of a 10-piece capsule collection. It's gettin' real, yo!

10pm, TBS
Sullivan & Son
In "How Carol Got Her Groove Back" a certain somebody (coughCarol) finds out she's starting menopause and gets, like, suuper depressed. What a fun surprise! To make matters awkward, Ahmed will do his best to life her spirits, but every attempt will backfire.

10pm, FX
Wilfred
In "Questions" Ryan will make an effort to figure out where Wilfred really came from. How? By digging deep within his own conscience. Is it wrong to assume Wilfred was formed out of a plume of marijuana smoke?

10:30pm, MTV
Awkward.
In tonight's "Pick Me, Choose Me, Love Me" (could they have chosen a more narcissistic title? It's so Jenna!). Jenna publishes a blog that gets releaseed into the blogosphere and spreads through the school like wildfire—but the backlash of outspoken opinions about her life choices may be too much for her to handle. This is why we don't publish our secrets on the web, Jenna.

10:30pm, FX
Louie
In "Late Show, Part 1," which is the first of not two but three parts, Louie does his best to catch a break. And by break, I mean he does his best to be more famous than he already is. When will it be enough, Louie? WHEN WILL IT BE ENOUGH?

PLUS ALL NEW EPISODES OF...
Republican National Convention, 7 p.m., PBS, CNN, or MSNBC
The American Bible Challenge, 8 p.m., Game Show Network
Wipeout, 8 p.m., ABC
Auction Kings, 9 p.m., Discovery
Beat the Chefs, 9 p.m., Game Show Network
Behind Mansion Walls, 9 p.m., Investigation Discovery
Big Brother, 9 p.m., CBS
Braxton Family Values, 9 p.m., WE TV
Crime Inc., 9 p.m., CNBC
Four Weddings, 9 p.m., TLC
Project Runway, 9 p.m., Lifetime
Rookie Blue, 9 p.m., ABC
Saving Hope, 9 p.m., NBC
The Next, 9 p.m., The CW
Extreme Chef, 10 p.m., Food
High School Moms, 10 p.m., Discovery Fit & Health
How Do They Do It?, 10 p.m., Science
Snooki & JWoww, 10 p.m., MTV
Sullivan & Son, 10 p.m., TBS
The First 48, 10 p.m., A&E;
The Real L Word, 10 p.m., Showtime
Very Bad Men, 10 p.m., Investigation Discovery
Wilfred, 10 p.m., FX
House Hunters International, 10:30 p.m., HGTV
Awkward, 10:30 p.m., MTV
Louie, 10:30 p.m., FX

LATE-NITE PICKS:
Bruce Willis on Late Show With David Letterman, 11:35 p.m., CBS
Dolph Lundgren and journalist Savannah Guthrie on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, 11:35 p.m., NBC
Spike Lee and Mike Birbiglia on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, 12:37 a.m., CBS

What are you watching tonight?

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Louie S02E09: "Looking for Liz/Lilly Changes"

One constant about Louie, the character, is his consistent befuddlement with other human beings. But nothing confuses Louie more than the opposite sex, and he took it from all sides last night in "Looking for Liz/Lilly Changes," Louie's take on Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

The episode was divided into two parts, and in both, Louie gawked in amazement at how bizarre two women in his life acted. You could actually say three if you include Liz (Parker Posey from "Daddy's Girlfriend"), the emotionally inconsistent muse that dragged Louie by the hand to a Scandinavian deli and engaged in breaking and entering.

It was Liz that was the impetus for his first adventure, which guest starred Chloe Sevigny as a rambunctious (I guess that's the word for it) romantic who couldn't bear to see Louie give up on a chance to find love or whatever that panging Louie has in his loins is.

It should be said now that Louis C.K. obviously thinks that women who work in bookstores should be institutionalized.

Sevigny played a woman (did we ever get her name?) who worked in the same bookstore that Liz did. Turns out Liz quit shortly after her date with Louie for reasons unknown except for that's exactly what unstable women like Liz do, and Sevigny's character (let's call her "Chloe") would not let Louie's love fade as the incredibly beta Louie was willing to let it do. So here's Louie and a stranger–emphasis on strange–stalking Liz, and we can talk about them going to Liz's building and the rude bellman but let's just jump forward to the toe-curling finale.

As much as Louie loves to tell "real" stories (see: "Miami"), it also takes pleasure in fantasy and exaggeration and has done so to extremes in recent episodes (see: one-man action-movie chase scene running away from his dad). Louis C.K.'s standup is often punctuated by two steps into the realm of ridiculous to get a point across, and that translates into his show through these bouts of bizarre. Obviously Louie never jumped on a sleek motor-tricycle and speedboat to get away from his father, and it's probable that Chloe didn't actually go to town on herself in the coffee shop because she was over-stimulated from trying to make Louie's romantic connection.

Or did she? That's part of the beauty of Louie. We see a world filtered through his eyes, and those are some weird eyes, man. Sometimes it works to great effect, as the end-of-episode chase scene did in "Dad," and sometimes it's just something weird that happens, like Chloe's bean-flicking. I don't want to say that didn't particularly work in this case, but I also don't go into my insane friend's house–knowing full well that he is insane–and complain about the mismatched wallpaper. This is Louis' world, and we're just dropping in to see what he has to say. I'm not sure it always has to make sense, and I don't think we'll always find something digging for deeper meaning. Maybe Louie just wanted to see some girl get off.

The second half brought Louie into conflict with a woman a little closer to him, his eldest daughter Lilly. All of 10 years old, Lilly was having grown-up problems at school. It could be bullying, it could be playground teasing, it could just be an argument over Bieber's best song. I don't know and I don't care (Louie does a fantastic job ignoring unnecessary details). All that mattered was that Lilly was a big grump.

Once again, here's another female whose behavior completely confuses Louie, this time to frustration. As Louie was smokin' and surfin' while shittin', youngest daughter Jane tried to tell him that Lilly left the apartment, when in fact she didn't. Louie freaked out and called the cops, but, it should be noted, was more afraid to call his ex-wife (another scary woman in Louie's life) than the cops. Of course Lilly was in the apartment the whole time, reading in her closet with headphones on.

Now I don't want you to leave this article saying, "Tim thinks Louie is a misogynist who hates women and thinks they're weird." Louie, like a lot of men, just doesn't get women. These absurd behaviors exhibited by women in the episode (particularly Chloe's solo session) aren't necessarily portrayed negatively, and who knows if they even happened at all. We're in Louie's head when we watch the show, and he's just as much of a freak as the people he has run-ins with. Would anyone be surprised if the series ended with Louie in a straightjacket telling all these stories to a house plant in the lobby of a mental institution?

– Who else brings their laptop into the bathroom with them? I write half my articles for TV.com in there. *This may or may not be true.

– The funniest bit of the episode by far was the final stand-up routine talking about cabs, seat belts, and kids. Way too funny. Especially his line about cab drivers' home countries "where kids die all day and it's boring..."

– If you have kids, how often to you flip them off behind their back? Future parents, how often do you think you will flip your kids off behind their backs? For me, I know I will be doing it about 30-35 times a day. I do it to my cats all the time.

– What percentage of things that happen in Louie do you think actually happen? Is it 90-percent reality and 10-percent Louie's imagination? Or is it closer to 50-50?

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