Innholdsfortegnelse for 4/4/2016 i TV Guide Magazine

Like its off-the-grid heroes, CBS’s provocative cyber-thriller Person of Interest has been maddeningly MIA all season long, stoking many conspiracy theories among an aggravated fanbase. Fret no more: A truncated 13-episode fifth season, now confirmed to be the show’s last, will finally begin May 3, with CBS airing the episodes on Mondays and Tuesdays until the June 21 series finale. Not the most dignified exit, but at least the producers are promising us an actual conclusion to this labyrinthine saga of a mysterious Machine that sees everything and predicts crimes about to happen. Whether you’re late to this intriguing party or need a refresher, all 90 episodes of the first four seasons are available for immersive binge-watching on Netflix. Few shows are better suited for a deep dive, given the…

BRINGING IN MATCHBOX Twenty’s Rob Thomas to sing the jingle for iZombie’s in-series drink Super Max began as a writers’ joke—he shares a name with the CW drama’s executive producer, Rob Thomas, and the two are often mistaken for each other. (Producer Thomas was once asked to lobby for arts in education in D.C.; days before the event, he learned that the organizers meant to contact the singer.) But the gag felt right, so Thomas reached out to his namesake. The crooner (second from left, with Robert Buckley, Rose McIver and Malcolm Goodwin, as well as in the inset) plays himself at a prison-themed Super Max party in the April 12 season finale. Of course, things take a turn. “You don’t want everyone locked up when there are zombies around,”…

DAYTIME DRAMA WAS once flush with powerful, dynamic, filthy-rich grande dames—Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless, Alexandra Spaulding on Guiding Light, Lucinda Walsh on As the World Turns—who ruled their towns, took no crap, suffered divinely and went from vulnerable to viper in zero to 60. Alas, only one example of this once-great archetype remains— General Hospital’s Tracy Quartermaine, played by Emmy winner Jane Elliot—and the poor dear isn’t doing well these days. Tracy has been diagnosed with worms in her brain, the result of eating unclean food in Mexico. How are you feeling about this soap opera first? It’s very silly, but I like it. I started on GH in 1978 and my character has never been in a hospital bed, except once to give birth. It’s…

NOW THIS WAS a scandal. Kerry Washington, who knows a thing or two about political misconduct, heads the cast of the HBO film Confirmation, a piercing look at a watershed time in U.S. history—the 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court and the lurid sexual harassment charges brought against him by Anita Hill. America had never witnessed anything like it. Hill, a law professor who once served as Thomas’s assistant, claimed during the televised Senate hearings that her former boss had made unsolicited sexual advances toward her, crowing about his prowess at oral sex and reveling in his love for pornography. But Hill didn’t come off in this “he said, she said” like some weepy, distraught victim, and she took flak for it. Instead, she was calm, measured…

They’re on a boat! AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead is setting sail for its second season as Madison (Kim Dickens), Travis (Cliff Curtis) and their fellow Los Angeles–based survivors board a luxury yacht to escape the zombie-infested city. But there’s plenty of danger lurking on the high seas in the form of human threats and waterlogged walkers. “The zombies are able to tread and float, so they will make their way to you,” Dickens says. “You’ll see them ravaged by the saltwater and the sun. It’s not pretty.” In order to replicate the open water, production relocated to Baja Studios in Rosarito, Mexico, and took advantage of its two-acre filming tank, which was originally constructed for James Cameron’s classic 1997 film, Titanic. “I wasn’t super excited about that because it’s…

Is this the end of the romance between The Mindy Project’s central couple, Mindy (Mindy Kaling) and Danny (Chris Messina)? During last December’s midseason finale, the bickering docs could not agree on having more children together. But as Mindy now contemplates moving back into her old apartment, executive producer Matt Warburton hints that there is still hope for the couple. “The romantic comedy isn’t over yet,” Warburton promises. “We are playing through the complexities of a real adult relationship, but these episodes are definitely lighter in tone, and now that they have a kid, there is no version of this world where they’re not in each other’s lives.” Mindy and Danny’s romantic hiccups also resonate through the medical practice and affect their coworkers, notably nurse Morgan (Ike Barinholtz). “You’ll see…

Remembering Garry Shandling…Why it’s a good time to binge Person of Interest… Steve Harvey remembers the instant he knew Little Big Shots would be a hit. While the NBC show, which features the comedian interacting with talented kids, received some of the highest marks ever for an unscripted series when the network tested it with focus groups, it had already passed Harvey’s gut test. “When I do shows, I have a feeling,” Harvey told us in January, prior to the program’s launch. The moment came while taping one of the initial eight episodes last summer, as he sat on stage with a 5-year-old boy from Japan who didn’t speak much English. Despite the language barrier, Harvey and the boy—a viral video star who flawlessly re-creates Bruce Lee nunchaku moves—hit it…

GET YOUR ASH in gear and grab a beer! In Season 2 of Starz’s Ash vs. Evil Dead (premiering this fall) our hero (Bruce Campbell) is living it up in Florida now that he’s done with the deadites of last year. “When you have a chain-saw hand, this is how you tap a keg,” executive producer Craig DiGregorio jokes, adding that Ash is in for a real buzzkill. “Unfortunately for Ash, the party is cut short when he must return home to continue the fight against evil.” FOR THE RECORD DEATHS Joe Santos, who played Lt. Dennis Becker on The Rockford Files and Angelo Garepe on The Sopranos, died March 18 following a heart attack. He was 84. * Larry Drake died March 17 at age 66. He played Benny…

KAL PENN GOES back to his Harold & Kumar roots as he joins Season 3 of stoner comedy Deadbeat (April 20 on Hulu). He plays Clyde, a rich pothead who becomes medium Kevin Pacalioglu’s (Tyler Labine) new—and only— friend. “Pac has been left alone,” says Labine (near left, with Penn). “He’s in a really bad place.” So bad that the pals and budding business partners meet in jail. But their time in lockup has a happy ending: Clyde is so impressed with Pac’s clairvoyant abilities that they go into business together. “Clyde actually tries to execute some of the absurd ideas the guys come up with,” Penn says. “He gets on Pac’s case whenever Pac drops the ball or loses motivation.”…

@TVGMMattRoush Saturday, April 16, 8/7c, HBO Who knew that reliving our long national TV nightmares could be so enthralling? Barely will we have recovered from the exhilarating rush of FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson— the finale is April 5—before HBO rattles our memory cage with an explosive re-creation of another spectacle that had us glued to the TV three years earlier. (See page 40.) Confirmation reconfirms what it was about the incendiary 1991 hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that rocked the world beyond the confines of Washington: a combustible concoction of sex, race, gender and judicial politics that titillated and mortified all who couldn’t stop watching. In one of the well-chosen news excerpts from the time, NBC’s Tom Brokaw laments: “No one likes what’s going on, and…

It’s the oldest surviving curse in baseball. The Chicago Cubs haven’t played in a World Series since 1945, the year a tavern owner cast “The Curse of the Billy Goat” because, the legend goes, his pet goat was turned away at the stadium gate. Adding to the Cubbies’ chagrin, the club hasn’t won the championship since 1908. “I have the sense that this is going to be the summer of Cubs love,” says Karl Ravech, host of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. “This is the year that everybody believes that the Chicago Cubs are going to break the curse. This is the best team they’ve ever had to do it.” Ravech says the World Series “dream scenario” would pit the Cubs against the Boston Red Sox, who lifted their own “Curse of…

Bones left its fans hanging back in December’s midseason finale with the news that Hodgins (TJ Thyne) had been paralyzed because of a lingering injury he obtained from an explosion at a crime scene. With the Fox drama finally back for the second half of Season 11, Hodgins is navigating life in his wheelchair, but he remains optimistic that it’s only a matter of time until he walks again. “He’s a bit in denial,” executive producer Michael Peterson says. “That’s really the arc of that first episode: trying to come to terms with where he is. But this is not going to be an easy road.” Helping Hodgins is his wife, Angela (Michaela Conlin)—though she has concerns about his return to work. “She is as devoted as humanly possible to…

Fresh Off the Boat’s Randall Park and Dr. Ken’s Ken Jeong have known each other since the early 2000s but haven’t often worked together. Now, though, the pals have engineered a quasicrossover on their ABC sitcoms: Park guest stars on the April 15 episode of Dr. Ken as the leader of the “Korean Men’s Club,” and Jeong will appear on a May episode of Fresh Off the Boat as the twin brother of Park’s Louis. Park and Jeong (who is still a licensed MD and was once a full-time doctor) discuss their groundbreaking sitcoms—the only series in primetime boasting predominantly Asian-American casts. Randall, what did you make of Ken when you first met? Here was this doctor trying out comedy. Park: I was in awe of him. For a Korean…

OUTLANDER, Season premiere Saturday, April 9, 9/8c, Starz IT’S MIDDAY ON the Prague set of Starz’s steamy hit Outlander, and it’s so hot that the extras dressed as French aristocrats flick their prop silk fans nonstop. Sam Heughan, the strapping 6-foot-3 redhead who plays dashing 18th-century Scottish Highlander Jamie Fraser, is doing a scene in which he leaps up from a game of chess, runs to his suddenly stricken wife, Claire (Caitriona Balfe), and carries her off to find help. The heat makes it more of a workout than he bargained for, and when Heughan finally deposits a breathless Balfe out of camera range on the polished floors of Strahov Monastery—standing in for the library of Paris’s Palace of Versailles—he breaks into a relieved smile. “I think I’ve probably dropped…

LEEANNE LOCKEN THE LOWDOWN “I have the biggest personality on the show. It’s both a handicap and a blessing,” says LeeAnne, who rubs elbows with society’s upper crust as a full-time volunteer on the charity circuit. WATCH FOR An insta-clash with younger castmate Brandi. “I’ve lived 10 lifetimes,” says LeeAnne, 48. “So when someone who’s lived a half of one tries to tell me that I’m wrong? It blew me away!” DON’T MESS WITH HER BECAUSE… “If you come to me with negative intentions, you better handle whatever I flip back at you. Don’t plate it if you can’t serve it!” BRANDI REDMOND THE LOWDOWN “I love to laugh, and I’m a goofball,” says the former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and married mother of two. “But nothing is out of my…

IMAGINE WHEN HARRY Met Sally but with an American named Rob (Rob Delaney) and an Irishwoman called Sharon (Sharon Horgan). And when Rob meets Sharon—while on a business trip in London—they spend several nights together and she accidentally gets pregnant. So Rob decides to move to England, where they have more sex, argue a lot and, ultimately, get hitched. That’s the basic premise behind the U.K. comedy Catastrophe, which premieres its entire six-episode second season on Amazon April 8. Creators and stars Delaney and Horgan talk about childbirth, intercourse and what’s on the (kids) menu for Rob and Sharon in Season 2. Why’d you guys decide to set Season 2 three years after the end of Season 1? Delaney: We were desperate to show them as a married couple deeper…

NBC found success with its procedurals, but its newest drama, Game of Silence, aims to be a bit darker than what’s currently on network television. “I think the show is cable-like, and I think that’s a good thing,” executive producer David Hudgins says. Game of Silence (an adaptation of the Turkish series Suskunlar) follows a fractured group of friends who are bonded by (and still recovering from) what they went through in a juvenile detention center decades earlier. The mystery of what happened to the men as kids—which ties into a current conspiracy—will unravel during the run of the first season. The series gets a special launch behind The Voice this week before moving to its permanent Thursday home. The story kicks off when Boots (Derek Phillips) brutally attacks a…