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Before we get to the first day of Fox's TCA presentations (held Monday, July 24, at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, Calif.), let me preface by explaining that this was also pretty much my very first day at the Television Critics' Association summer press tour — like, ever. (Okay, I did have lunch with Megan Mullally and about 300 other journalists on Friday, but that wasn't much more than noshing on overcooked French fries.) I bring this up to warn you that I could be quite wrong when I report that the day was surprisingly un-Fox-like — i.e. mostly low-key and even, at times, a bit dull. But then again, I have nothing, really, to compare it with — those crunchy French fries aside (at least they had some snap). Having read my esteemed colleagues' witty and interesting dispatches from this past week, however, I'm guessing (read: hoping) my instincts aren't completely out of whack.
The rise of fall The day began promisingly enough, with a polished and very, very tall Peter Liguori, Fox's entertainment president, admitting right out of the gate that while ''Fox does an outstanding job from January through August... the whole ball of wax is really about improving our fourth quarter'' — which was exec-speak for ''Other than baseball, our fall season has generally bit the big one until Idol and 24 swoop in and save us in January.''
The solution? Remember how Prison Break premiered before baseball playoffs, came back strong after the World Series, took a huge hiatus while Jack Bauer saved the world again, and then finished up its run in the spring? Yeah, expect more of that. Which also explains the 16-episode order and November premiere of The O.C. Liguori said the soap will play continually through sometime in March, and if it manages to weather the Grey's Anatomy vs. CSI Thursday-night ratings bloodbath relatively unscathed, it may even get extended to 24 episodes. At which point Mischa Barton's Marissa will come back from the dead. Kidding! (We hope.)
Let the music (and The Simpsons) play Other news from the early-morning session: Patti LaBelle, Cyndi Lauper, Dionne Warwick, Macy Gray, Brian McKnight, Chaka Khan, Clint Black, Michael Bolton, Smokey Robinson, Kenny Loggins, Randy Travis, Aaron Neville, and Richard Marx will be among the music stars paired with (as yet unannounced) celebrities in Celebrity Duets; Hell's Kitchen and So You Think You Can Dance? have both been picked up for another season; and Liguori joked that he'll be ''dead and buried'' before the long-long-looooong-running Simpsons ever leaves Fox's airwaves. (Whether all of that is absolutely terrific news or yet another sign of the End Times, I'll leave to each of you to decide.)
Sex and violence Standoff is a series about FBI hostage negotiators in which the central plotline of its pilot concerns a suicide bomber in an L.A. coffee shop, so which show do you think came up most often? Didja guess Hart to Hart? Or Moonlighting? How about Sex and the City? Indeed, much was made of the chemistry between stars Ron Livingston (Band of Brothers) and Rosemarie DeWitt (Cinderella Man), who play partners on the job and budding paramours off it. Still, there was time for a reporter to ask Michael Cudlitz, who plays the head of the S.W.A.T.-like Hostage Rescue Team, if the sniper gear he wore in the 1998 thriller The Negotiator was too small for him now. The nerve! (For the record, no, it wasn't.)
Death ringer Brad Garrett is constitutionally incapable of being unfunny in front of an audience, and yet other than his random Bill Cosby imitation, the most memorable moment from the panel for 'Til Death, Fox's seemingly standard old-marrieds-teach-lovey-newlyweds-about-the-pitfalls-of-matrimony sitcom, was when a reporter pointed out that costar Eddie Kaye Thomas (the American Pie movies) could be the clone of Everybody Loves Raymond mastermind Phil Rosenthal. The dude even sounds like him. I couldn't get over it.
Escape plans Prison Break's felons are now fugitives, and, first things first, we'll get to see Wentworth Miller actually smile! Just don't expect to see much of Stacy Keach's Warden Pope — production's moved from the Joliet, Ill., penitentiary to the wide open spaces of Dallas (which can double for the many different locations needed for the second season). The inmates will be spreading out too, as they enter what creator Paul T. Scheuring called their ''respective endgames'' —though Scheuring later said he started the show thinking it would be a 44-episode limited series, he now sees the first two seasons as the first chapter of a trilogy. If that makes any sense. In other news, brothers Lincoln and Michael will now be pursued by dogged alien sheriff Tom Underlay, uh, I mean, a dogged U.S. Marshall played by Invasion's William Fichtner. (Though maybe someone should take a closer look at heartthrob Miller; perfect diction, calm demeanor, and Inside the Actor's Studio-esque answers aside, the guy kept breaking into a truly freaky, wide-eyed stare. Is that how the guy always looks, or did the Ritz-Carlton Ballroom somehow resemble a prison yard?)
Conspiracy theories Most reporters seemed fixated on finding out whether the missing senator's wife of Vanished will always have to remain vamoosed (answer: maybe... or not... or it could be a conspiracy... but we're not going to reveal that... or we are... or not). I, on the other hand, became obsessed with a far more fascinating mystery: the age of series creator Josh Berman. Although he apparently went to graduate school on a Fulbright scholarship and subsequently spent six years working on CSI, no one is going to make me believe he is any older than 16 years old. Maybe a late-blooming 17. And yet no one else seemed to notice, or, at least, ask Berman to show some ID. So I'm convinced it's a conspiracy — and if I happen to disappear tomorrow, you'll all know why.
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