Sally Field has a TV show?

IMHO, Brothers and Sisters has gone downhill from the time TPTB bought in Rob Lowe. RL is a fine actor but he wasn't required. B&S already had a cast who were all fantastic actors in their own right and they worked well as an ensemble from day one. The writing was good, the storylines were solid. It also had a enough innate storylines based upon the characters that it wasn't going to need any external help for a while. It seems to me that someone who couldn't grasp the shows premise thought that they needed to start tweaking it to 'improve' it. The parallels with Commander-in-Chief are well deserved.

It's funny, but I've been enjoying Jon Robin Baitz's posts on Huffington far more than Brothers and Sisters. He's a fantastic prose writer.

Brothers and Sisters seemed doomed from the beginning. They did assemble the best cast possible for a tv series, but other problems arose right away. They had to reshoot the pilot and tweak the cast. A monumental mistake was made in the decision to hire Marti Noxon as showrunner (though I'm not a Buffy fan, I know the Buffy faithful refer to her as "Marti Toxin" because they hated the episodes she penned). Noxon was canned after the first few episodes and Greg Berlanti was brought in. There's no questioning Berlanti's talent, but he was only going to be involved with Brothers and Sisters for a short time-he had created Eli Stone (which will begin airing soon) and was going to produce Dirty Sexy Money.

Brothers and Sisters did become a modest hit for ABC last year, but apparently the audience was "too old" in ABC's eyes. The perspective of tv execs is really amazing right now; a show with low ratings can remain on the air if it gets the young demographics; a show with good ratings has to be "tinkered with" or discarded if the demos slant towards baby boomers.

It's nice to know that ABC is using the same tactics with their night shows that they've used with their daytime shows-and haven't learned a thing from it. About seven or eight years ago, Brian Frons took over ABC daytime with a vision to make the ABC soaps more youthful and glamourous. He fired the headwriters and he demoted or forced out beloved veterans and replaced them with new, pretty, mostly blonde, svelte bodies devoid of personality or character and most importantly, had dubious connection to the backstories or families. In some cases, histories were hideously altered to facilitate the new characters' enterance. All three ABC soaps became trainwrecks and their ratings took a major dive. Right now, I think the ABC soaps are THE lowest rated in daytime.The only one that is watchable right now is One Life to Live, thanks to the actors publicly expressing their displeasure (a mutiny, in reality) that led to the hiring of a compentent head writer and the restoration of the older players to center stage.

The Bush administration is unpopular, facing an opposition congress and on its way out to boot. The fact that the country has some respect for the office in general is the only reason George Bush can even get a parking space anymore. ABC certainly isn’t making programming decisions based on any pressure coming from them and the administration is way too busy trying to lock down some kind of legacy to care what ABC is doing anyway.

That said, I do have to say on a political note that one of the things that always bothered me about Brother and Sisters was that a program being run by an overtly liberal show runner was using supposedly Republican to bash Republican ideals under the guise of “questioning their beliefs”. If you want to use a character to spout your political views create a character that agrees with you politically and have them do it.

I don't want to suggest any kind of conspiracy theory, but Baitz has been writing some columns over at the Huffington Post that are extremely critical of the Bush Administration. I'm just sayin'...

Baitz's involvement was highly limited for most of this season. I didn't notice much difference. Overall, I still think the show has an uneven tone, frequently too silly (something that could be addressed primarily by changing the music cues). But the show's been out of his hands for a while. It was Greg Berlanti's, but now I understand it's under a third showrunner, Mark B. Perry (much of this is in the long AfterElton piece). I'm worried about the fact that the most recent item on Perry's resume is "One Tree Hill". Not exactly prime time's finest.

For the record, the important distinction is to oust someone means to tell them "Get in line or we're going to have to ask you to leave" where as to fire someone is to say "Leave...Now".

In one case the decision is still in the hands of the person who is leaving while in the other the studio has already made the decision.

"I was ousted, not fired, an important distinction"

How is that an "important distinction? he's gone.

And ABC is now officially the dumbest network on the planet, beating Fox (CW isn't a network).

Remember Commander and Chief? ABC fired the guy because he was writing too slow and they needed 24 episodes, they said there would only be 18, so he was ditched. The show went to hell, and in the end 18 episodes were made and the show canceled. It was the biggest hit of that year.

Now ABC has another hit, and they "push" the guy out. How nice.