The TV Zone

David Chase came. He saw. He comedied.

Thus the creator of "The Sopranos" charmed the crowd at this weekend's TCA Awards ceremony, despite slipping quickly in and out of the ballroom soiree, surrounded by a phlanx of HBO publicists, lest the horde of attending critics batter him about the head with such nagging questions as "What the blank was that last scene of the series finale about?"

Accepting the critics association's Heritage Award for his just-ended series' pervasive impact on TV and culture, Chase turned to the writer presenting the award (Alan Sepinwall of Newark's Star Ledger) and said, "I'm from New Jersey. You're from New Jersey. So you know it is possible to be sitting in a restaurant in New Jersey, and everything just stops. It is not that big of a deal."

But, Chase continued, he did eventually realize that if he was to appear this night before the nation's TV critics, "it might be a good idea if we said something about the ending." The awards' hundreds of attendees hushed. Maybe . . . could it be . . . some scrap of a scoop about that burning-debate blackout?

Chase confided he was impressed years ago in film school by the ending of the 1960s fantasy movie "Planet of the Apes," where human astronauts crash-land in a society ruled by simians and eventually discover maybe it's related to their own. "When the movie was over, I said, 'Wow, so they had a Statue of Liberty, too,'" Chase deadpanned about his slow-on-the-uptake realization, drawing yet another laugh from the Beverly Hilton ballroom crowd. "So that's what you're up against."

What, you thought he was gonna say something? In earlier acceptance remarks when "The Sopranos" won this year's TCA drama-of-the-year trophy, Chase had set his teasing tone for the night. "Here's another clue for you all," he said. "The walrus for Paulie."

Gee. Thanks, Dave. Here's another vintage musical reference: We're your puppets.

Alec Baldwin was a bit more forthcoming as he accepted this year's TCA nod for individual comedy achievement for his dry "30 Rock" humor. Living up to the honor, Baldwin rambled through a raucous anecdote about "how sad I am on a personal note that 'The Sopranos' is over." Baldwin said he'd switched several years ago to a new agent who dangled the prospect of Chase's interest in him doing a "Sopranos" guest shot. But their meeting and the gig never materialized. Then one day in Manhattan's "blasting furnace of summertime," he had raced blocks down the scalding sidewalk to the Four Seasons restaurant to meet a socialite about a charity event. "Now I'm shvitzing," Baldwin remembered, to the point he has to go into the men's room, take off his jacket, and take off his shirt, putting it under the hand-blower to dry it out. So he's standing there "topless. And into this room walks David Chase."

But comedy wasn't the only tone of the hourlong ceremony, held in the majestic ballroom that annually hosts the Golden Globes awards. (The low-budget TCA event isn't quite that elaborate or glittering. Our self-run, no-staff group is lucky to put bowls of nuts on the tables and show slides with the nominees' names on stage-side monitor screens.) The annual gathering usually has a heavy love-fest component, too. We critics (200 scribes from this country and Canada) tend to honor shows that might otherwise go without recognition -- under-the-radar overachievers the Emmys don't deign to notice. We've given top awards to axed series (1997's "EZ Streets," a short-lived effort from Paul Haggis, later an Oscar fave for writing "Million Dollar Baby" and directing "Crash"). We've been the first to flag surprising up-and-comers (Michael Chiklis for "The Shield"). We're not in it for the TV ratings (since our ceremony isn't televised) or the red-carpet hoopla (not even E!). We just groove to great tube.

"Friday Night Lights" felt the love this time, and the stars and producers of NBC's richly emotional but ratings-challenged saga turned it back-at-us. Accepting the TCA award for best new show, producer Jason Katims said "I really in my heart feel the reason we just started shooting a second season a few days ago is largely because of you." He told critics other shows might have "deserved" the award as much, "but nobody needed it as much as us."

"Heroes" did just fine in the ratings its first season, and series creator Tim Kring gave TV columnists some credit for that. "A lot of people initially wanted to dismiss this show as too sci-fi or simply fantasy," Kring said. But critics recognized "we set out to do something unique and something bold," with "a message of hope and a message of interconnectedness in the face of what is becoming an increasingly cynical world." He and much of the cast -- Masi Oka, Adrian Pasdar, Jack Coleman, Zachary Quinto -- took the stage to accept the TCA's most prestigious award, program of the year, by saluting "your collaboration with us in making this a huge success."

Aw, gee. We feel special. You feel special. All God's children feel special. But it's just one night. A fun one, a warm-and-fuzzy one, a we-all-love-TV celebration night. Yet it's over in a blink. Saturday night we party together, Sunday morning we're back to grilling TV's makers in press tour's unending parade of press conferences, holding them to account for their work, demanding to know what the blank they think they're doing.

Sometimes, they even answer us.

But not this time. [HBO photo by Craig Blankenhorn.]

OK, this whole "green" thing has now officially Gone Too Far.

The sure sign of overkill: NBC crowed at press tour that's it's devoting an entire week of fall shows -- hours and hours and hours of shows, in prime time and cable and news and yada yada -- to a Nov. 4-10 ecological-awareness campaign oh-so-cleverly (and promotionally) called Green Is Universal.

The network's NBC Universal corporate umbrella is spearheading this "pro-social" "global event," where "green-friendly and environmentally oriented messages" will be shoehorned into -- I mean, included in -- the likes of "My Name Is Earl," "Heroes" and, God forbid, "Deal or No Deal." Even in (I swear I'm not making this up) NBC's "Sunday Night Football" broadcast of the Nov. 4 Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game.

This wall-to-wall week will also encompass such NBC Universal cable properties as Bravo, where stylists and chefs will further get on our case. CNBC shouting heads should hash over "green" stocks. Universal HD foists upon us short films about protecting the environment. Sci Fi plans a "Eureka" marathon carrying the theme Technology and Science to the Rescue.

What if you don't wanna be rescued?

I'm not against green. My recycle bin is full, and not just on the computer. But this wholesale hijacking of our airwaves for such a sledgehammer approach does nobody any favors. Viewers will be sick of the incessant sermonizing looooong before it's over, creating not a save-the-planet groundswell but a shut-up-about-it-already backlash.

Which may have started moments later.

"We're screwed," said John Krasinski of "The Office" at NBC's press tour session for its Thursday night comedies. "We're a paper company. We're going to get hammered."

"My Name Is Earl" creator Greg Garcia said it might not be so bad if fed-up viewers bailed by midweek. "If they turn off their TVs, think how much energy that will save."

Bill Lawrence, the mastermind behind "Scrubs," actually thinks the save-the-planet "burden is less for comedies. I doubt that any show here" -- "30 Rock's" Tina Fey was also on the panel -- "is going to be preachy, and is [instead] going to handle it in a comedic way. And although 'Law & Order' is usually pretty funny, I doubt they'll do the same jokes we all do."

"Saves a lot of energy if they cut all the 'dun-duns' out."

We'll let sound effects maven (and "Scrubs" star) Zach Braff have that last word.

Smell that? (Sniff. Sniff.) Ah, yes -- the scent toward which entire flocks of TV critics fly like moths to a flame at the twice-yearly Hollywood gang-interrogation called press tour.

It's the sweet perfume known as Obfuscation. Or Withholding Information, the ever-popular Spin, or sometimes even Look How Long His Nose Is Growing. Nothing makes our kind grab for the press-conference question mike quite so aggressively as when panelists deliver non-answer answers, or what one reporter delicately termed an attempt to "fudge" a few issues during this afternoon's session for CBS' fall "Kid Nation" reality series. [CBS photo above by Monty Brinton.]

Let us count the varieties of fudge served up in this veritable chocolate-fest.

Critics skeptically inquired about the notion of sending 40 kids ages 8-15 into a New Mexico ghost town for 40 days to undertake the on-camera mission of creating their own youth-run society with, as CBS' promo clip proudly proclaimed, "no adults!"

Well, OK, admitted producer Tom Forman ("Armed & Famous," "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"). The project actually had "a large adult safety net." Like a hundred-plus grownup crew members, nutritionists, doctors, etc. "But we were mostly just standing back and watching" as the kids cooked and cleaned, cared for animals, ran businesses, formed a more perfect government, etc.

Now about that genuine ghost town. Some of us had heard that oddly-camera-friendly Bonanza City, N.M., was actually being used in recent years as a standing movie set ("Silverado").

Well, sorta, said Forman. The production had to have some place to "safely put kids." So there were extant/constructed (and fairly comfy) buildings in which to sleep, eat, restructure civilization and hold town hall meetings. (And, lest we forget, to shoot well-lit TV footage.)

But the kids were supposedly set loose in it to construct a new society in whatever manner they wanted. "We made the decision early on that we were going to give these kids an incredible experience," Forman said, and producers would just "follow their lead," with cameras just happening to record it all. Well, except for those producer-designed Showdown challenges like the ones on "Survivor." And the every-three-days Town Halls serving as a kind of tribal council. And other cliffhanger/climax-generating events like that.

Forman said "I get it" about critics' well-voiced "Kid Nation" reservations. But he also claimed critics can't understand what a truly authentic and life-broadening experience this was for the kids. He said that's what all of the kids and their parents would tell us if they were here to answer questions. Except they weren't here. Why? Because those so-cool kids would only show him up, the perpetually smiley Forman grinned, before launching into more Hollywood how-great-my-project-is fast talk. "I can't wait," he enthused, "for everybody to meet them." Except that he, and we, will have to.

So maybe the kids aren't here because they're in school. Oh, wait. It's July. Interesting. "Kid Nation" was actually held back for a fall premiere from CBS' originally intended summer run. So when was this all-natural kid experience staged and shot? "April-May," said Forman. Which, where I live, is during the school year. Don't real kids go to school?

Sure, this show is all about average American young people determined to, as Forman said, "prove something to the adult world out there." Too bad he had just minutes earlier discussed rather more frankly what makes a show like "Kid Nation" so important in the network TV scheme of things.

America is "getting bored" by been-there done-that unscripted shows filled with "Hollywood reality types out to further their career," Forman said. The networks need to find something to provide the same "unpretentious excitement of the first cycle of 'Survivor,'" before everybody knew the reality show drill. The concept here was that "maybe we need to look for participants who weren't even born" when the reality format took off. Besides, he noted, kids are "incredibly honest. If they're sad, they cry. If they're mad, they fight. It's human beings at their best and human beings at their worst. They don't censor themselves."

Umm, maybe that's because they're immature, ventured one critic's follow-up question, and they haven't developed the internal mechanisms that tell an adult when to keep things private, or check a baser impulse, or forestall behavior that might injure/embarrass oneself or others. They are kids, for cripes' sakes – children! -- who are still developing, still learning skills like self-control, still rather inexperienced at interpersonal conduct. And they are still (despite any reality TV impulses) protected by society with all kinds of different-than-adults ethics and, yes, laws in recognition of their inability to make well-considered decisions. (See my colleague Verne Gay's report on that below.)

All this protection appears to disappear when it comes to providing reality show fodder for TV networks. Earlier this morning, CBS entertainment chief Nina Tassler was telling us about the "legacy of reality shows" changing now. "To really get out there and change the landscape of television, you have to sort of stir public debate. We know we're going to create some controversy," she said. "The whole objective was to get out there and do something different and have people talk about the show. Which is what's happening."

Well, bully for CBS, and its stock price, and the future employment prospects for reality show producers. But what about the on-camera kids whose actual lives provide this brave new landscape of "entertainment"? One of the most admired veteran critics of our unruly clan prefaced his question to Forman by positing that "You could ruin a kid for life. Literally. You could brand a kid as, say, the crybaby of 'Kid Nation'" and change the way both he and the world see him from then on, quite possibly not for the better.

Forman urged critics not to "judge the show based on a log line" synopsis condensed for a TV listing or press release. Fair enough. We haven't been shown more than a couple minutes' clips so far. That's why we come here to ask these questions. That's why we'd like to ask them of the kids themselves, and their parents, who Tassler told us "knew full well what was involved, and they embraced this opportunity for their kids."

So did Shirley Temple's folks. (The vintage Hollywood icon later wrote a book about the fallout of that "embrace.") So did the parents of such tragic died-young kid stars as Dana Plato, Anissa Jones and River Phoenix.

And those were performers playing scripted fictional roles. The hazard here is that "Kid Nation" has the potential to pervert real children's real (and naive) behavior into (not so naively) edited TV melodrama, which will linger through their entire real lives on DVD shelves and in cyberspace.

Forman kept telling us to just wait and see his show's "compelling stories about amazing characters."

That's precisely what we're afraid of.

Beverly Hills - Hey, networks are almost always happy to get a little pre-launch flak before a new show hits the air, but it's also always valid to ask - how much controversy? or what SORT of controversy? or can this controversy have the potential to humiliate both network, producer, cast member and viewer? This is the kind of stuff the new CBS reality show “Kid Nation" invokes because it IS about kids, and there AREN'T any adults involved, and there ARE such things as child labor laws, and, well, we could go on, but let Tom Forman tell you about all this stuff.

Tom's a reasonably well-regarded producer - talented enough to survive "Armed & Famous," his deliriously, deliciously bad creation, now thankfully cancelled. He was a top producer at "Extreme Makeover," and has a credit on CBS’s "9/11," and was once a network news producer, so maybe he deserves benefit of the doubt here.

Or does he?

There's not much to see with "Kid Nation" - CBS has released only a brief snippet - but it's still one of those shows that instantly prompts a visceral kind of response as in - "what were they drinking when they thought this up?"

The basics: forty kids spend forty days/nights in a New Mexico ghost town, Bonanza City, to "build a new world." They cook their own meals - and they are only about eight years old - haul water, run businesses, and create their own government. No one gets booted - this isn't "Survivor" - and at each episode’s end, the forty kiddies gather together for a town meeting where they hash stuff out. (By the way - no TV.) Seems harmless enough but there have been reports that the show somehow violated child labor laws, and Forman was even asked whether New Mexico was picked because the state has a loophole in said laws that he exploited.

"No," said he, "we picked New Mexico because it had the right location and...we checked with our attorneys, who said there was no problem." But - this persistent writer persisted - when the show started shooting, the New Mexico state legislature discovered the loophole and instantly closed it in response to “Kid Nation,” right? Foreman: "I don't believe that's true..."

"The truth is, it's less child labor laws than labor laws...the participants aren't acting, and we went ahead and made this show with he understanding they'll do what they do and we're not going to consider them actors" who get paid residuals.

He added, this kind of show would not have been possible in, say, California – where presumably the child labor laws have no loopholes.

Sometimes the answer is just that simple.

Josh Schwartz, who created "The OC," was asked this morning at NBC's Q&A session for his new sales-drone-turned-spy romp "Chuck" about one of this season's big trends. As has been written here, there and everywhere, the fall network schedules feature a lot of geek/nerds. Chuck of "Chuck" works in a big-box-store's "nerd herd." The CW's amusing adventure "Reaper" has another slacker sales dude pressed into the service of reclaiming escaped evildoers for the devil. And there's already "The Office," "Ugly Betty" and "Beauty & the Geek," among other showcases for those folks that "Chuck" title star Zachary Levi [in NBC photo, right] called the "cool-challenged" among us.

So how come this is?

"They say you should write what you know," Schwartz replied. "And I know a lot more people like Chuck than people like ['24' action-figure uber-hero] Jack Bauer."

But this early critical fave is also a finger-on-the-pulse of another trend. "I think big-box culture is very much a way we live our lives right now," said Schwartz. Yet we don't know what kind of future these stores' McJobs will provide the current generation. Executive producer McG (also "The OC," as well as the director of movies like "Charlie's Angels") said he sees "Chuck" as "a subversive but elegant commentary on 'Is this big-box culture really progress?' It's a way of connecting to a great many people and saying 'We understand.'"

Chuck ends up straddling the geek/spy worlds by accidentally having a whole supercomputer's-worth of international espionage secrets downloaded into his brain. (Don't ask. In this kicky comedy actioner, it makes sense.) The government drafts him into secret agentry alongside a gorgeous blonde female operative (of course), under the suspicious eye of a resentful agency dude who promptly joins the same store's workforce to "protect" (read: torture) America's most unlikely hero.

McG says "The Office" has already made clear the richness of that arena: "There's so much humor in the workplace, as much as in his work in the spy world." Schwartz noted "there are people trying to take Chuck down at work" already, including rival salespeople and aspiring assistant managers, whose scheming is played with ironic gravity. "It's almost as scary as when he has to go out in the field and do spy work."

In other words, says Schwartz, "everybody in the audience sees themselves in the character of Chuck." So do members of the cast. Right after star Levi played a scene in which Chuck's hands are injured from too much Call of Duty -- the video game, not the spy gig -- the actor showed up on-set with his own off-camera bandaging. "He was playing tennis with Wii," Schwartz recalls, "and put his hand through a light fixture," requiring 14 stitches.

Is that what they call method acting?

(Watch "Chuck" video previews/interviews here.)

We're off to see the Wizard, again. In its December cable miniseries "Tin Man," Sci Fi takes another pass at that modern American myth created a hundred years ago by L. Frank Baum.

We've all seen "The Wiz"and TV movie remakes and concert versions, none coming close to the magic of Judy Garland's classic 1939 movie musical "The Wizard of Oz." That tube perennial and DVD fave continues to embody the tale for most everybody. But the makers of Sci Fi's elaborate six-hour epic think "the problem with previous attempts was that they haven't reinvented the world to the point where it could stand on its own," cowriter Steven Long Mitchell told TV critics this morning. "The movie's out there and that's what people really know," so imitation won't cut it. Yet, said his writing partner Craig Van Sickle ("The Pretender"), it's the "iconic nature of the characters" we've all embraced for decades that actually "allows itself to be reinvented" through freshened-up details.

Sci Fi's press release promises a "darkly menacing world" with a thoroughly modern population of "cowardly psychics, brain-drained inventors," an ex-cop who lost his heart witnessing the torture killing of his wife, aboriginal people clinging to their threatened culture, and a dog/human shape-shifter (Toto, too!). It's a bizarre parallel universe called The O.Z. (Outer Zone) into which a tornado hurls star Zooey Deschanel's ordinary contemporary waitress named DG. (Dorothy Gale, perhaps?)

Sounds weird -- and potentially disastrous (still in post-production, "Tin Man" wasn't screened for critics) -- but the builders of this semi-fantasy/semi-gritty universe were certainly waxing lyrical as they discussed it. "All the characters are so rich and different and modern, and yet old-fashioned," said title player Neal McDonough, a critical fave from NBC's late, lamented "Boomtown" and "Band of Brothers" on HBO. "This is probably my favorite thing I've ever done," McDonough said. "I'm so damn proud of being a part of this," no easy deal since an Oz show "was the first thing I ever did in high school and the movie is a near and dear thing to my heart."

The new miniseries "tips its hat to the original book," said director Nick Willing (he did NBC's 1999 "Alice in Wonderland" with Martin Short and Whoopi Goldberg), "yet it creates its own world." The resulting special-effects-fueled amalgam melds "the flavor of a nostalgic world and a half-remembered world gone by" with a modern approach that makes it "a strange, grungy fantasy," Willing said.

Wicked witch/O.Z. sorceress portrayer Kathleen Robertson (Clare on "Beverly Hills 90210") extolled how "Tin Man" comes at the tale from what she called "a psychological way and a character-based way. Why would someone be this evil? We approached it from the inside out. It's about understanding why the characters did what they did, what their hopes were and what their dreams were."

Director Willing contends that harks back to "the emotional idea of the original book, that we have inside us all already what we're searching for." Despite "Tin Man's" flashy effects and elaborate costumes, "what sets this apart," he said, was the ambition to "try and create a modern version of the original idea. At its heart, this is a film about simply very pure values that are still important today."

[Above: Neal McDonough, Zooey Deschanel, Raoul Trujillo, Alan Cumming in Sci Fi photo by Alan Markfield.]

Would you trade worldwide music fame for Long Island domesticity?

That's what Cheryl James Wray did. Formerly Salt of Brooklyn rap's titanic Salt 'N Pepa act, she shook her partner loose back in 2002, calling on the cell phone while Sandy "Pepa" Denton was at the salon getting a pedicure, to say "basically 'I don't wanna be joined at your hips anymore,'" as Denton recalled to TV critics during VH1's session for a fall reality series tracing the duo's current attempt to reunite.

"A lot of things led up to that point," explained Wray, who's found God and now lives quietly with her family in a tidy new Melville development. "It was all fun for her, but I felt like I didn't have control of my life. I felt like I was compromising in a lot of ways, and I was just tired. I needed to do some soul-searching. Then I married my daughter's father. We had another child. I kind of cleaned up my personal life, and I needed that time to do that."

"Which is fine," added Denton [left in Getty Images/VH1 photo], but she expected to have her longtime partner "actually sit down and kind of prep that other person that this is your next step. To me, it was just the way that she did it. I've just been bitter about it, and upset, and we just never really spoke about it."

"And I have apologized for that many times," replied Wray. "Even in writing."

So the tension still simmers, on stage and off, which VH1 is undoubtedly counting on to fuel "The Salt 'N Pepa Show" premiering Oct. 15. In on-camera footage, Wray/Salt expresses her dismay when Denton/Pepa's act gets too wild and sexy for her taste. "I'm a mom of a 16-year-old," Wray told critics. "I feel like I have a responsibility to my daughter to present myself in a certain way." "I'm also a mom," noted Denton, but what Wray viewed as lascivious performance behavior, "I took that as dancing."

Even when (perhaps especially when) they disagree, the VH1 show is "a way to explore to new ways to work together," says Denton, "and also tap into some of those reasons for even breaking up in the first place." Wray says she's "trying to figure out how I can live my life without feeling like I'm compromising the new person that I am, and still work together."

Sounds like a show to me.

Take that, Bill O'Reilly! You think you know hip hop? You don't know hip hop, the Rev. Al Sharpton said today at TV critics' press tour, discussing BET's fall "town hall" program "Hip Hop vs. America." That lively cable debate, planned as a two-hour special, has turned into a "multi-episode" event, announced BET programming chief Reginald Hudlin, because the conversation among a broad spectrum of black voices proved so fruitful.

"To have Nelly and I on the same stage," Sharpton said, "to have TI and Stanley Crouch on the same stage, and talk, that could only happen in this kind of a format. You can't get that on Bill O'Reilly."

Ever-thoughtful Roosevelt rap pioneer Chuck D [right] of the influential '80s group Public Enemy sat alongside Sharpton at the press conference, and they're joined in the BET show by a virtual who's-who of contemporary music and cultural commentary. In addition to those mentioned above, the 30-person slate includes Master P and MC Lyte, NPR's Farai Chideya and journalist/filmmaker Nelson George, TV judge Mablean Ephraim and religious leaders, magazine editors, DJs and activists.

It's an inside-the-community extension of the debate unleashed this spring by white radio host Don Imus' insensitive "comedy" routine about the largely black Rutgers women's basketball team. The syndicated morning personality said he believed he could employ the racially and sexually incendiary descriptions, which eventually got him fired, because they had become such common language in hip hop culture. Fingers of blame were then pointed every which way -- yes, even on "Oprah" -- but often without much understanding of how that language became so pervasive and how its impact might resonate.

Chuck D said he and other BET debate participants from the music world were able to finally hash over "things we felt deep inside these issues. There are some areas of their music they wanted to talk about, and some areas the record companies wouldn't allow them to deal with. The show has great potential because it deals with the inside of the artist." He also appreciated the opportunity to explore "accountability" for cultural depictions. "These artists signed mainly with a corporation to be broadcast," he said. "You have a lot of hidden hands and a lot of hidden faces in the history of this hip hop genre. That's why I nodded my head yes [to join the debate], as a progressive step."

Sharpton thinks today's controversy over hip hop echoes those of groundbreaking pop culture genres from previous generations, where the new form can be misunderstood by those to whom it feels so alien. Diverse exponents tend to be lumped together, this time under the "hip hop" umbrella. "It's not true that there's one monolithic messenger," Sharpton said. "There never was, and there never will be. The genius of this program was that it got every messenger on stage to say what they had to say, and say it to each other."

Star Jones plans to "interrogate" guests in a witness box on her live Court TV afternoon hour debuting Aug. 20, in addition to having cozy conversations in chairs and topical discussions across a news-style desk.

But the onetime Brooklyn prosecutor, who made her name on ABC's contentious daytime talkfest "The View," didn't do so great under her own interrogation this morning at TV critics' press tour. Jones deflected questions about her dramatic weight loss and sleek new look, admitting only "you've seen me gain a whole person and lose a whole person." [See current Court TV promo photo, right.]

She shied away from explaining where she's been since her stormy departure from "The View," too, preferring to emphasize her new show's focus on "the most important political, news-making and cultural issues that affect our nation," she said, "from the Don Imus controversy to Ms. Paris Hilton and her Biblical studies, from airport security to why in the world are we still so obsessed with [the VH1 reality series] 'Flavor of Love.'"

That might make sense, except her new Court TV weekday series is titled simply "Star Jones." Even if "it's not all about me," as Jones stressed yesterday to persistent reporters, her own controversial reputation certainly serves as the hook to lure viewers to the table, or the chairs, or the witness box.

Jones finally got the message and got personal, after show producer Gail Steinberg ("Donahue," "Ricki Lake"), sitting on the press conference stage alongside Jones, urged her to discuss "the reason why you took a year off." Then Jones opened up, saying "I spent some time getting to know Star. Getting fired will make a person want to learn a little bit about themselves."

That introspection, which she said included teaching a civics class in an East Harlem school, brought her back to what sent her to law school in the first place, she said, "because it's about serving people." In moving to TV, initially in 1991 as a Court TV trial analyst before her big "View" splash in 1997, she said she "was trading in one jury for a bigger jury. And I think for a long time I lost sight of that. I enjoyed a little bit more of that which was around instead of that which is in." Jones was even frank about "correcting some of the misconceptions about who I am, and correcting myself so that there would not be misconceptions. Because people can only take you for what you give them."

But this new Star isn't completely a changed Star. Producer Steinberg said that if the most successful TV personalities "take a clear stand on issues and what they think, with Star you'll never be left to wonder." Jones proved it by telling critics that, despite her residual warm feelings about "The View" having given her "the opportunity of a lifetime," she's "disappointed" that "no person of color has been permanently placed" on the show's high-profile panel since she left in June 2006. That's important, she said, for the show's "editorial purpose. We all sat in the back [production meetings] and brought different values to the table. We need to make it look like the fabric of society, not just to look like that from the outside but to feel that way from the inside."

Recently departed panelist Rosie O'Donnell was an asset to "The View," Jones said. "I really think she's one of the smartest people that I've ever seen on television. She knows how to make people talk about her and the things that she does. I didn't get to work with her, as you know. I actually think that probably would have been good TV."

On press tour, there are no days off. Heck, there are no meals off. GSN sponsored lunch today, and its execs and talent jabbered on from the stage about two upcoming game shows while my fellow critics and I downed some sort of Mexican wrap thingies laid out on restaurant tables in the Beverly Hilton hotel ballroom. We don't ask what it is, we just shovel it in to fuel up for the next session.

You go to 10 press conferences a day seven days a week for three straight weeks, and you learn a lot about the goals of upcoming shows, the shape of the fall season, who's side-splitting even out of character ("Curb Your Enthusiasm's" Larry David) and who's not (Hallmark mystery-movie star Dick Van Dyke; a lovely man, however). But you don't actually get a lot of stop-the-presses news. This is Hollywood, and they're too much on-script to let things slip.

Until just now, when in the 10th hour of today's events, five minutes before it was over for the afternoon and we could head upstairs to compose breathless dispatches to You The Reader, David Duchovny just happened to mention, in Showtime's session for his new self-destructive-writer half-hour "Californication" (yes, the series deserves that title; it is, after all, on Showtime), that he was, by the way, expecting to see a script this week for another "X Files" movie.

Say what?

Duchovny continued that it's been written by "X Files" creator Chris Carter and longtime collaborator Frank Spotnitz, and that "Gillian is on board" to do it, too, meaning costar Gillian Anderson. So that sounds like it's actually going to happen, nine years after the previous theatrical film and five years after the Fox series' end.

You know. No biggie.

Just thought you might wanna know.

Who'd have thought the biggest mob scene at TV critics' press tour would be for a Disney Channel presentation?

Only anyone who's ever been in the vicinity of a kid fallen under the all-encompassing spell of the pop culture phenomenon that is "High School Musical."

Dozens of reporters swarmed the TV movie hit's six young stars Saturday morning after their press conference about the Aug. 17 debut of "High School Musical 2." The rush created gridlock in a Beverly Hills hotel ballroom of the ginormous scope awaiting anything remotely having to do with the hotly awaited "HSM2."

And there will be plenty of those things. Disney Channel's web site premieres its first "HSM2" music video this week, with a second number getting an on-air Disney Channel sneak peek July 27. Radio Disney will debut the sequel's soundtrack, in a simulcast with Disney XD broadband. Already available is the film's online "supersite," which adds a debut-night "party planning kit" before the movie's official premiere. But Cablevision and FIOS subscribers can get access to a video-on-demand preview screening even before then.

The "HSM" machine rolls on. Luckily, the sequel itself, like the original January 2006 sensation, merits the mania. Screened in its entirety here, it's a quality musical spectacular with an uplifting message as well as catchy new songs, exciting dance moves and cute teen stars. "It's a cautionary tale about learning to pay attention to your own moral compass," said Disney Channel entertainment president Gary Marsh. Heartthrob star Zac Efron's young athlete character has his head swayed by Ashley Tisdale's spoiled rich witch during a summer working with his erstwhile school friends at a lush desert resort.

"It's summer and we're outdoors," director Kenny Ortega said of the colorful Utah location filming, which includes a huge baseball production number echoing the original film's basketball sequence. Athletics, academics, performing arts and youthful romance are all represented, with the familiar Wildcats also dancing through school halls and into a resort talent competition.

That clique-crossing mix of teen activities has spilled over into real life. Since the original "HSM" exploded, teachers report school plays have attracted a larger and broader range of auditioners, bringing athletes together with brainiacs and drama lovers. Disney has licensed more than 1,500 amateur theater productions of "HSM," a side-effect covered back on Disney Channel this fall in a documentary from Oscar-winning director Barbara Kopple that chronicles a staging by two Fort Worth high schools.

The musical's pervasive popularity has also changed the lives of its young stars. "The whole thing is still very overwhelming for me," said female lead Vanessa Hudgens, who's become a favorite of paparazzi when she's out with costar and now boyfriend Efron. Supporting player Lucas Grabeel mentioned getting "to travel the world and perform in front of 65,000 people in Sao Paolo, Brazil." Corbin Bleu, whose own subsequent Disney Channel movie "Jump In" set ratings records, said "everything done in the name of 'High School Musical' seems to create some kind of phenomenon."

So far, the cast members have managed to avoid Lindsay Lohan-style publicity for troubled behavior. "This is such an awesome opportunity, and such a special thing," said Monique Coleman, who parlayed her "HSM" splash into a "Dancing With the Stars" run. "Why would you want to ruin that?"

Director Ortega, too, accelerated his career, 20 years after choreographing the "Dirty Dancing" blockbuster. "This has turned on a whole new generation that has said to us 'We like musical storytelling,' and that is a thrill," said Ortega. He credited the late Gene Kelly as his mentor (they worked together on 1980's "Xanadu"), a dance legend from an old-Hollywood era when the musical was a hot big-screen genre. "This is the most successful original musical in like 25 years," Ortega said, "and the kids have made it that way. That's a wonderful thing for our industry, and a wonderful thing for people that enjoy working in musical film, and a great legacy."

[Cast photo courtesy Disney Channel.]

Elvis is still in the building. We can't, in fact, get Elvis to leave the building. Even 30 years after his death.

TV Land hawked its August "Elvis Month" -- yes, month -- at press tour this morning with a panel including Elvis Presley's "former girlfriend and 'Hee Haw' honey" Linda Thompson.

The Elvis industry rolls on.

Panelist Pamela Clarke Keogh is the "authorized biographer" of Elvis Presley Enterprises ("Elvis Presley: The Man, The Life, The Legend"). "Friend" Jerry Schilling mentions that he just wrote a book about Elvis ("Me & A Guy Named Elvis"). Who remembers Thompson from the old "Hee Haw" TV show? She dated Elvis!

Even tube-lovin' TV Land is strip mining the territory now, airing "a huge showcase featuring nearly 40 hours of Elvis-related programing," said TV Land president Larry Jones. In commemoration of Presley's death Aug. 16, 1977, they'll be running Elvis' music specials (the 1968 "comeback" and 1973's "Aloha From Hawaii"), Elvis movies ("Love Me Tender," "Speedway"), Elvis documentaries (including TV Land's new "Myths and Legends: Elvis"), Elvis on the web site (footage of TV Land's statue being unveiled in Honolulu), Elvis everywhere.

And unending Elvis hype. "He had such a terrific impact on our society and was representative of good and bad, the things that came about in his life," intoned Thompson. "I think he was an extraordinary human being and a great American, really," said Keogh.

All right, already. Let's get over the aggrandizing and just look at the entertainer. And icon. The TV Land promo reel shown on big screens in the hotel ballroom here actually was an impressive montage of moments we all know -- the hip swiveling '50s footage, the black leather '60s, the sparkly white jumpsuit '70s; the memorable songs, and the formula chick-chasing flicks MGM made Elvis churn out. Even fetuses in the womb probably recognize this stuff.

"You have to remember, Elvis was the first," Keogh pointed out. "There was no infrastructure of entertainment then. There was no one there to show him the way." True. Plenty of showbiz ground was broken by Presley Inc. Unfortunately, not quite enough. Elvis was only 42 when he died suddenly, of drugs and hard living. "This was before Betty Ford," noted Thompson.

We'll probably hear about that in August, too. Much of the press conference was taken up by talk about Elvis' sad final years. "In those days you turn 40 and you're on your way downhill," said ex-bodyguard and road manager Joe Esposito, "and it affected him tremendously." Magazines were poking fun at Elvis' fat-belly-jumpsuit look, and he was no longer taken seriously musically.

But now, "after 30 years, people are starting to look back at this man's body of work," said Schilling. "There are a lot of projects you're going to see in the next two or three years, and you're going to see the legend of Elvis Presley go to the next level."

Imagine what they'll do for his death's 40th anniversary. The Elvis Channel?

HBO went a long way toward getting its critical (and watercooler) mojo back at TV writers' fall-season press tour Thursday evening. The cabler presented a diversely ambitious slate ranging from showbiz sitcoms to sensitive sex, from saucy Shakespeare to the shattered limbs of Iraq war soldiers.

The impact of the session for September's "Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq," with five veterans sitting on stage missing various body parts, was so great that nobody asked the documentary's producer/interviewer, "Sopranos" star James Gandolfini, about his drama series' controversial blank ending last month. Critics wouldn't have gotten far if they'd tried. The always press-shy Gandolfini deflected questions about his personal reactions to the vets' tales by saying "It's not about me," instead shifting the spotlight to this war's unprecedented numbers of soldiers surviving catastrophic, used-to-be-fatal injuries.

"There are 12 functioning limbs among the five of us," noted Jonathan Bartlett, a 22-year-old former Army corporal missing both his lower legs. Even non-amputee Army staff sergeant Jay Wilkerson noted observers can't see the traumatic brain injury that forced him to relearn to talk.

Just as serious in a different "real" sense is HBO's fall drama series "Tell Me You Love Me," an exploration of interpersonal intimacy among three long-term committed couples that's raw both emotionally and sexually. The latter depiction dominated the press conference, as critics tried to ask tactfully about the 10 episodes' full-on portrayal of sexual activity. Some wondered whether computer imagery might have been used to create such apparently, uh, genuine lovemaking scenes.

"This is certainly turning out to get a lot more attention than I thought it would," said series creator Cynthia Mort. "The sex always was there in service of intimacy and in service of love." HBO's new co-president Richard Plepler said, "I've never seen intimacy dealt with that honestly and that bravely. It's quintessentially an HBO show."

The surprisingly graphic couplings are "integral to the storyline," said actress Michelle Borth. "We're not porn stars, we're actors, and you do the best you can to make it authentic." Agreed costar Ally Walker [in HBO photo with Tim DeKay], "It's an exploration of real intimacy that sex happens to be a part of." The emotional nakedness of the sex is actually what "does kind of upset some people," Walker believes. "It's not hot, steamy, grabbing the walls [sex]."

Larry David's panel for his self-portraying Hollywood comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm" became a lighten-up relief. That show returns in September for its sixth season, even though the fifth seemed to wrap things up. It could indeed have been the end. "Every season is my last season," said the famously neurotic David ("Seinfeld" co-creator and George Costanza inspiration), explaining it's the only way he can get himself psyched to design and star in another 10 episodes. Also on the lighter side is Kenneth Branagh's August movie version of Shakespeare's romance "As You Like It," featuring Kevin Kline and Alfred Molina and set in modernizing 19th century Japan.

But it wouldn't be an HBO day at press tour without some project being delayed, as every season of "The Sopranos" seemed to be. "Deadwood" was the subject this time, with channel executives hedging on announced plans for movie(s) wrapping up David Milch's truncated adult western series. They promised to "revisit" the idea with Milch once they "know what the future of [Milch's current series] 'John From Cincinnati' is," according to new HBO west coast program president Michael Lombardo.

"We'd love to do it," added Plepler, but only if Milch is "fully motivated" and if the no-longer-under-contract cast can be gathered again. Execs refused to speculate on the odds of producing more "Deadwood." But critics wouldn't bet on seeing it.

Glenn Close and Ted Danson made quite an impact on American TV back in 1984 when they starred as an incest victim's parents in the groundbreaking ABC movie "Something About Amelia." Now they're poised to make another splash in the much-awaited FX series "Damages," debuting Tuesday, July 24 in a commercial-free hour at 10 p.m.

This New York-filmed drama isn't likely to be as socially controversial, but it packs just as big a character punch as Danson's shocking daughter-abusing turn did. Close plays a steely litigator who'll stop at nothing to nail Danson's corporate titan, who's accused of profiting handsomely while his company tanked, Enron-style. And he'll do anything to stop her. Deaths are plotted, twists get serpentine, and it's unclear in the two episodes seen by critics just who the bad and/or good guy might be between these two heavyweights.

Close and Danson have no scenes together in the riveting debut hour, but "that's something the whole season is building up to," series co-creator Todd Kessler ("The Sopranos") told TV critics at the fall-season press tour in Beverly Hills. "We're brick by brick building the expectation of that to come later in the [13-episode] season."

He describes "Damages" as "a thriller in the legal genre," where viewers are presented with both a murder mystery and the fallout of what co-creator Daniel Zelman ("The Inside") calls "power dynamics." Zelman says "power becomes a tremendous burden, and it can force people to do compromising things. We're interested in them discovering for themselves what they're willing to do and not willing to do."

"I feel very much part of an ensemble," said Close, who first starred for FX in a season of "The Shield" as a tough police lieutenant squaring off with Michael Chiklis' ruthless street detective. "I feel like I did in 'The Shield' that any of these characters could carry an episode on their own," Close said, including young Rose Byrne as a hotshot new legal hire and Tate Donovan as a veteran colleague of Close whom the newcomer fatefully decides to trust.

Close, who lives in New York, is doing the series to stick closer to home with her teenage daughter and to plumb the depths of a complex character over time. "She knows that she's not a good mother," Close says of another developing plot with the litigator's at-risk teen son, "and I can't wait for that particular storyline. I think she has spawned a child who can give it back to her the way she's given it to everyone else. He's a smart kid, who is already a master manipulator."

The actress says she's used to her work having "a beginning, middle and end, whether it's theater or film or other things I've done in television. The idea of not knowing everything at the beginning can be a challenge. But in some ways, it's very freeing because you just have to live in the moment." Danson agreed yesterday that "knowing a lot about your character is only necessary when the writing sucks." When it's good, as in "Damages," Danson said, "you commit yourself to the writing and you end up discovering who you are."

How do you refresh a show in its fifth season? On "nip/tuck" this fall, creator Ryan Murphy told TV critics today, the plastic surgeons played by Julian McMahon and Dylan Walsh [in FX photo above] "go from being big fish in a small pond to exactly the opposite" as they move their practice from Miami to Beverly Hills/Hollywood.

It's where "people come to sort of reinvent themselves and go after their dreams," says Murphy, who claims that's what he did coming out here from Indianapolis and first creating the WB cult fave "Popular" before his current FX hit. He'd originally wanted to set "nip/tuck" in Beverly Hills, "but it seemed a little bit too on-the-nose" as public awareness of showbiz plastic surgery surged, "and I was interested in doing something darker."

Now "nip/tuck" lightens up a bit. A big subplot in this first Hollywood season has the surgeons "get a job as medical consultants on a 'nip/tuck'-like plastic surgery show," Murphy said. "It's called 'Hearts & Scalpels,' and it's kind of the worst medical show that's ever been made. It's run by Oliver Platt, who plays me. In a weird way, it's almost to satirize ourself."

Rosie O'Donnell comes back, too, as uncouth lottery winner (and unlikely lover) Dawn Budge. "She returns in episode 4, and she's doing several episodes this year," Murphy said. A rumored spinoff series with the guest character remains "an ongoing discussion."

But not all happenings are light in Hollyweirdland. Murphy wonders about this sunny playground, "Can you retain your soul when you're surrounded by all these great temptations? From a moral point of view, it's been very interesting to write to."

They can announce all the brilliant, deep and profound TV shows they want while we're out here at press tour. We already know what most impresses us.

"Car Talk" takes those wacky automotive mavens Ray and Tom Magliozzi from their laugh-out-loud National Public Radio call-in show into the brave new world of tube animation. We'll have to wait till summer 2008, but just knowing their cartoon selves are on the way gives us reason to smile.

The to-be-titled half-hour series -- they'll be taking suggestions from listeners -- follows the Click and Clack brothers into their fictional Car Talk Plaza garage, where they do their best to goof up and slack off amid a cast of quirky types including fellow mechanics, a receptionist and an eager-beaver radio producer.

Making the announcement, PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger told critics, " It will be unlike anything you've ever seen before on PBS." Guess so, unless "Masterpiece Theatre" also employs a Russian chauffeur named Pikop Andropoff.

"I'm very Jewish," says comedy legend Carl Reiner, creator of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and the sidekick interviewer of Mel Brooks' classic 1960s comedy character The 2,000 Year Old Man -- one of mainstream entertainment's first big "Jewish-sounding" characters.

"But I'm an atheist Jew," Reiner said today during PBS' press tour. "And that shocks a lot of people."

So, it seems, will "The Jewish Americans," a six-hour, three-part history debuting on PBS in January. Producer David Grubin said at the production's press conference that most people seem to think of the American Jewish experience as starting with 1880s immigration to Manhattan's Lower East Side. "Most people don't know this is a 350-year-old history," Grubin said. "Jews first came here in 1654." They were part of the nation's westward migration, the project explains, and Jews in the south "had slaves like other Southerners," Grubin said. "It's a series that shows all sides of the Jewish experience, warts and all. What you see in our film is that there are many ways of being Jewish in America."

And "America has absorbed much of what it means to be Jewish," said executive producer Jay Sanderson. Singer-actor Mandy Patinkin explains in the film that a tune as all-American as Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" is "a Yiddish song. You can hear the shtetl." (Patinkin was supposed to be at the session, but called in sick.) Reiner told critics he thought so many Yiddish/Hebrew words had crept into Americans' vocabulary -- chutzpah, for instance -- "because it has a funny sound to it. There's an onomato-poetic silliness to them."

"It's these last 50 years that have made the difference," said Grubin. After World War II, early television spread Jewish-influenced New York urban entertainment across the country, and, Reiner says in the film, Jews finally felt comfortable "making fun of their own accent" in routines like The 2,000 Year Old Man. He and Brooks had been doing that particular shtick (another Yiddish word) at New York parties for 10 years before they felt comfortable enough to commit it to a (soon-to-be bestselling) LP record. Grubin says "The Jewish Americans" is "the story of how a tiny minority made their way into the mainstream of American life."

Dateline: BEVERLY HILLS

When you walk into a Hollywood-area hotel and the first thing you see in the lobby is Tim Conway – or a buff athlete standing there on two exposed high-tech artificial legs – you gotta figure you're back at press tour.

This is why we love TV. It gives us everything. (And Tony Orlando.)

The Television Critics Association brings together disparities like that twice a year, as members gather for a couple of weeks to preview what's hot (or not) in future months all over the tube.

PBS is kicking things off this go-round with two days (Tuesday-Wednesday) of press conferences for documentaries, Jane Austen adaptations, the inevitable Ken Burns, "The Jewish Americans," and a dash of showbiz, too. Conway was here, along with Orlando, Betty White and some other vintage entertainers, to talk about public TV's ongoing "Pioneers of Television" series.

Carl Reiner and Mandy Patinkin arrive shortly for "The Jewish Americans," a January study of, well, Jewish life in America. Burns does lunch for his September-starting opus, "The War," about, as Archie Bunker would say, The Big One. And Carol Burnett closes out the afternoon today as one of PBS' latest "American Masters."

So stay tuned. We'll be right back . . .