Salting the peacock's tail

We have a week to go, and we're pretty much finished being polite. Around here that means talking smack about a series or a network within earshot of executives, producers, even the sensitive talent, and not caring how they feel about it.

In other words, NBC arrived just in the nick of time.

NBC had a rough year. The network lost close to a billion dollars at the upfronts in May; canceled every new show it premiered in 2004-2005 except for "Medium" and "Joey," the second of which should be dead; and finished the season in fourth place.

Such news made the evil jackals within us begin salivating. Every press tour, you see, NBC Universal executives Jeff Zucker and Kevin Reilly make a grand entrance, strutting around the stage while talking about the old rules no longer applying and lying through their teeth about how tremendous their schedule is.

This wild arrogance even continued through last year, when the network was stinking worse than Kevin Federline's feet. That, my friends, is plain delusional behavior. If Tom Cruise were a network, he would be NBC.

Thus it was something of a shock to see Reilly, NBC's president of entertainment, humbly walk onstage alone on Sunday morning. Then he admitted to his network's failures.

To continue the TomKat metaphor, he appeared to be where I imagine Katie Holmes will be, emotionally speaking, in about five years. That is, repentant and full of regret at having force-fed her lapse of reason to the public.

"Really, last season for us was kind of a colonic. It wasn't a lot of fun to go through at the time, but it's going to be healthy in the long run," Reilly said. "It really took any residual sense of entitlement or complacency at our company and blew it out, so to speak."

Having planted that delightful image in our heads minutes after many of us had consumed bran muffins and coffee, he tiptoed through the Peacock's plans.

NBC's season officially starts Sept. 19. The final season of "Will & Grace" kicks off Sept. 29 with a live episode directed by James Burrows, guest starring Alec Baldwin and Eric Stoltz. Two versions will be shot, one for each coast, with different jokes for each broadcast.

The network also has projects in development with Paul Haggis ("Million Dollar Baby," "Crash") and Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption"). Reilly then announced NBC's pick-up of two more dramas: "Windfall," about a group of friends who win a $386 million lottery jackpot, and "Book of Daniel," starring Aidan Quinn. A reality series called "Treasure Hunter" also is in the works.

Finally, Reilly exhibited cautious optimism regarding "My Name is Earl," which debuts at 9 p.m. Sept. 20, and will be paired in the hour with another season of "The Office."

Apparently "Earl" was the highest-testing comedy in 15 years -- meaning, a group of strangers who watched it in a dark room somewhere liked it more than lots of other junk, including "Friends."

Again, Reilly didn't admit that until someone asked him about it, and he refused to see too much into "Earl's" test score. "Medical Investigation" probably tested well, too. Look at where that got him.

He didn't mention other comedies NBC is holding back for midseason, including "Four Kings" and "Thick and Thin," neither of which is worth getting excited about.

In fact, Reilly didn't give us many direct answers to our questions. The only "scoop" we found out about "The West Wing," for instance, is that it has a 22-episode commitment, and that it will run straight through except for a few interruptions. No news about when the Bartlet administration might make its exit or anything along those lines. He didn't even have Martha Stewart's "Apprentice" catchphrase to share.

This bored us. Boredom leads to surliness. And a surly critic is a rude critic.

"Why is it so hard right now for NBC to make a good comedy?" somebody asked. "... Are we really to believe that 'Thick and Thin' is one of the three best comedies you had this year? And if so, what's the problem?"

Reilly did a softshoe around the question before fielding the next one.

"Kevin, I don't think I've ever seen NBC seem as 'I'm humbled' as you were when you came out to talk to us. I think in January you were still kind of in denial," another obviously emboldened soul asked. "When did this set in, this realization? And seriously, how tough is it to concede these points and say, 'Hey, we may not have hit bottom yet and we're in trouble?'"

Ouch!

"Well, it's human nature. There was denial. There was denial. That's human nature," Reilly said with a nervous smile. "... At this point in time, just the fact is the fact ... we had enormous, history-making hits going away. We needed to re-seed them. It didn't happen, and now we are where we are. I can tell you, it's like a weird monkey off my back, in a way."

There was more. "Do you personally feel under the gun?" "Thursday night, aren't you just wasting a season here? You've got all shows down-trending."

I almost felt sorry for the man.

But then, what does Reilly expect? Zucker was in Reilly's position from 2000 until last year -- he was named president of NBC Universal's Television Group upon Reilly's arrival -- and did not bring a single bona fide hit to the network during his tenure. Zucker set NBC up for the downhill slide Reilly has inherited. We shouldn't be surprised the new entertainment president hasn't yet found a way to stop its skid.

The surest thing NBC has in the works is -- what else? -- another Dick Wolf project. It won't be under the "Law & Order" umbrella, especially since "Trial By Jury" didn't perform as expected. Wolf was quite ticked off at the fourth "Law & Order's" cancellation, Reilly added. So to ease his annoyance, NBC is putting the producer's new show on the development fast track.

"We have a tremendous amount of business we're going to do with Dick," the executive said.

Look at that statement in another way, and it pretty much sums up the state of things at NBC, too.

Posted by Melanie McFarland at July 24, 2005 11:18 PM