Nobody Likes 'The Bachelor' Anymore
The Call Sheet sifts through the day's glut of Hollywood news to find the stories even non-industry types care about. Today: ABC's marriage show hits a new low, Bear Grylls is out of a job, and the return of Tempestt Bledsoe.
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Last night's depressing finale of what was apparently a pretty lackluster season of Das Bachelor earned the lowest ratings for any Bachelor finale ever. So it's probably completely rational and not at all reactionary to declare Der Bachelor once and for all over and done with forever and ever amen. Chris Harrison has been sealed inside Trista and Ryan's tomb, Jake Pavelka has finally been bagged, tagged, and put in a wooden crate and stored in the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and, of course, Bob Guiney has been humanely put down. No more The Bachelor, no more Bachelorette, goodbye After the Final Rose, see you in hell, Bachelor Pad. It's over. We're done. This is the real most dramatic rose ceremony ever, because we are not picking you, The Bachelor. We're sorry. We are instead proposing to the sweet embrace of nothing, of a TV turned off, of an apartment ticking away in the evening, the empty space waiting in vain to be filled once again with cold plastic romance, but to now and forevermore go unsatisfied. Phew. [Entertainment Weekly]
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Also gone (and, like, actually gone) is Bear Grylls. Oh, no no no, ha oh god no, he didn't like freeze to death in Idaho after eating some poison moose berries or anything, ha ha, god no, no. He's fine, I'm sure. He's just gone from the Discovery Channel. Yeah the network, which has been airing his Man vs. Wild for a number of years now, has parted ways with Grylls because he refused to do two specials that he was contracted to do. So, that's it. No more. Too bad for Bear. If you need him for any reason in the next little while, he'll be at a hotel. [The Hollywood Reporter]
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Um, buried way down at the bottom of this post about some actresses getting gigs on TV pilots is this huge, incredible news: Tempestt Bledsoe, aka TV's Vanessa Huxtable, has landed a role on a show. Yuppp. Bledsoe, who once had her own talk show for a hot second many moons ago, will be playing Anthony Anderson's wife on a show about three doofus friends being doofuses but really being good guys, and good dads, at heart. So, it's just some boring wife part, but whatever! It's Vanessa! On a TV show! Dabnis must be so proud. But Deadline? No one is proud of you. Why is this all the way down at the bottom? What is wrong with you? For shame, for shame. [Deadline]
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Suck on this, Bachelor (ew): HBO's Game Change was the network's highest rated original movie in almost eight years. So boom, some people are getting watched. Not you, Bachelor, but some people. Some people are still popular, oh yeah. People like... Sarah Palin. Oh. Hm. Ugh. Never mind. This is its own kind of bad news, isn't it. [Entertainment Weekly]
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Lionsgate has cut seven seconds out of The Hunger Games to secure the UK equivalent of a PG-13 rating. There were apparently some bits that were just too violent for the British censors, so they've been excised. Of course they'll still show in America, where as long as we don't see a disgusting private part, it's basically G-rated. Violence is just not a problem here, so we're not worried about it. (Not to sarcastically imply that we're advocating censorship or anything, it's just funny that you can say all manner of bad words and show nudity on British television but that The Hunger Games, which is about teens murdering each other, is too violent for movie theaters. It's basically opposite standards from here, is what's funny. Probably ultimately better standards, but opposite from ours. So, there it is.) [Entertainment Weekly]
Here is a new trailer for the early Oscar-contender Battleship. In this reel we see more of the spinny, glowy, bad alien robot things that cut buildings in half, plus Taylor Kitsch screaming more lines. Also Rihanna says "Boom" at one point, though she might have said "Boom" in another trailer too, who can't remember. The important thing is that this movie is going to be so coherent and wonderful and subtle and wise and warm and good and true. This is going to be this year's Trip to Bountiful, only perhaps a little slower paced. Slower paced than The Trip to Bountiful, that's right. (When I was a kid my dad brought that movie home from the library at the college where he worked and holy sweet Taylor Kitsch in heaven was that the slowest, most boring movie I think I'd ever seen in my life, it's become synonymous in my house with boring movies. The Trip to Bountiful. I'm sure it's a particularly fine film, just a nice story about an old lady going home, but to a kid it is worst than seventeen dentist appointments mixed with twenty haircuts. Awful, just awful. I hate you forever, The Trip to Bountiful. Anyway.)
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