Mike and Marisa Roffman are just back from this year's Comic-Con, while Joe opted to once again take it all in from a distance. The gathering has evolved over the years, and while it can still be a great place for genre shows to connect with fans, the convention does have its downsides. For shows, it's expensive to stop production and fly their cast out to San Diego. But if they don't go, they run the risk of media-savvy fans throwing a digital fit. And from the perspective of someone covering the event, it's tough to get any actual news from Comic-Con. The focus seems to have shifted to primarily debuting trailers and sharing some casting news, although even those announcements are increasingly made before the panel discussions and presentations themselves.
And Comic-Con isn't the only fan festival in town any more. New TV events in Austin, Denver, Atlanta and other cities have reporters, producers and fans wondering just how many of these gatherings they really need to attend. It may be easy just to say you're going to bow out of most of them, but the power of FOMO (fear of missing out) keeps many coming back year after year, especially to Comic-Con.
It's been a news-filled summer, and a lot of that news has meant networks have had to decide what to do about shows connected to problematic people like Bill Cosby or Donald Trump. Cosby Show reruns were pulled last fall, but the revelation that Cosby admitted to giving women drugs with the intention of having sex with them makes one wonder if there's any possibly way the show could ever find its way back to television.
NBC cut ties with Donald Trump after he made racist public statements about Mexican immigrants, which means Trump's pageants will no longer appear on the network and Trump will no longer host The Celebrity Apprentice. But some people are wondering what took NBC so long to take action. The network only dumped Trump after Univision dropped him first.
Dukes of Hazzard also disappeared from TV Land because of the Confederate flag painted on top of the famous car, the General Lee. Was it necessarily to pull the whole show, or could there have been a way to digitally remove the flag from the car? Warner Brothers also stopped licensing General Lee merchandise, but if you really want that model car, there's always eBay.
Finally, gone are the days when summer was the time to catch up on TV shows you missed last fall. A batch of new, critically acclaimed shows like UnReal, Humans, and Mr. Robot are filling the void instead. There's too much good TV sounds like the ultimate first-world problem, but it could become an actual problem if networks continue to try and pump out shows at their current rate, which may not be sustainable long term.
End of show Downloads:
Marisa: Showtime's Masters of Sex has been majorly snubbed at awards shows in the past, but here's to holding out hope that the Emmy's will finally take notice this year. Marisa says the Season 2 episode "Fight," is one of the best hours of television in recent memory.
Joe: ABC is doing a game show revival right with Celebrity Family Feud. It's fun, it's retro, and Steve Harvey is the perfect host.
Mike: If you're overwhelmed at the thought of starting to watch yet another new show, check out the Amazon original Catastrophe -- it's only six sweet, funny, heartfelt episodes. Rob Delaney plays an American whose quick fling with a British woman turns into something much more when she discovers she's pregnant.