The Hollywood Caller: Patton Oswalt to become Television’s Next Big Puritan-ist

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Patton Oswalt, funny human, will show us his “Salem Side” on the small screen; Star Wars gets another pair of Rockports; Julian Fellowes probably can’t multitask; Smash‘s Dramaturg got turdulent; Ke$ha thinks things apparently; Shia LaBeouf realizes that crashing robots are more fun than the whole thespian thing; Russell Crowe still has vocal chords.

Parks and Rec‘s Pawnee gets a new resident. Funny magic imp, Patton Oswalt, will be on an upcoming episode as a history enthusiast who believes all this modernization is for the birds. The 1800s with its puritanism, rampant tooth rot, and we dunno, gamey smelling out-buildings, was the place to be according to Oswalt’s character. Apparently at some point he tells Leslie that “any woman caught laughing is a witch.” So that should be interesting. It’s bound to get all Scarlet Letter and restrictive! Maybe he’ll get caught in a woodshed eating a bunch of blueberry pies or something as a form of release. We say this because puritanical weirdos always have some sort of nutterbag vice like sniffing toothbrushes or something. [Vulture]

Oh, geez. There’s more indication that the former stars of Star Wars will be coming back to reprise their roles in the new movies. Mark Hamill tells Entertainment Tonight that he’s set to have conversations with the new writer. He also tells how much he wants all of the old gang to go back to the galaxy far, far away. Everyone from himself, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher to Billy Dee Williams and Tony Daniels who played C-3PO. That’s right. It could really be like an all you can eat shrimp night and Denny’s on the Star Wars set. For what it’s worth Hamill sees himself following in the footsteps of his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. He says, “I’m going to be a lonely old hermit living out in some kind of desert igloo with a couple of robots.” Well, Mark! It’s either that or being a shriveled old man with a robotic respirator and milky eyeballs like your dad, Darth Flesh Sag! Take what you can get, old chap. [THR]

Are you upset about what’s happened to the Granthams and Crawleys this season on Downton Abbey? Like so upset that you’d like to throw creator Julian Fellowes onto a horrible network full of stupid ideas and television shows that are so ridiculous you can’t believe someone actually sat in meetings and planned to create them? Well, you may be in luck. Fellowes recently signed on to write and produce NBC’s period drama The Guilded Age and Fellowes fully admits that if the show gets picked up he won’t be able to write for both it and Downton simultaneously. After saying some blasphemous muckity muck alluding to the end of Downton he went on to say that more than likely he’ll just have to get new writers for the show. So does that mean Anna won’t be hit by a run-away trolley next season? And maybe Edith will finally get a boyfriend who isn’t a hundred years old or has a lunatic wife in an asylum, and we won’t get to witness Mary Crawley get addicted to opium and have an illicit affair with Mr. Carson?! So some good things for the Downton Abbey folks to come, right?! RIGHT?! Fantastic. [Deadline]

The most ridiculously liveblogable show ever, Smash, could be in trouble, guys. Apparently it just isn’t enough that people watch the show to laugh at all the insane JFK musical numbers or to wonder how anyone affiliated with this show thought that Katherine McPhee’s Karen is better than Megan Hilty’s Ivy at anything. The show plummeted in ratings last night. Like bad. Like Debra Messing could have run around the entire episode wearing taupe palazzo pants and the ugliest of scarves from last season and that would’ve been a bright spot. It was like even a horrible Bollywood routine may have given the show a spark or something. No, not really. There just isn’t enough mocking in the universe that can turn a pig booger into a silk purse or however that saying goes. Yes, Smash is rapidly becoming another pig booger in the stable of wastrel that litters up the hellscape that is NBC. [THR]

It looks like the docu-series we were all waiting for, you know the one starring pop singer, Ke$ha, will air in April. Whatever. Everyone knows you were waiting to find out more about the life and times of K-e-dollar symbol-h-a. There’s probably no telling what kind of super great shenanigans this person gets herself into. MTV, that network known for orange land mammals at the Jersey Shore and people who probably throw themselves down steep hills in port-a-potties in West Virginia, will air the show called Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life, we’re thinking because Ke$ha: My Flash in the Pan Moment of Relevance was probably already taken. [Deadline]

Shia LaBeouf, forever blinking wood nymph, will no longer have a Broadway debut in Orphans “due to creative differences.” HA! When we think of LaBeouf having creative differences during his first Broadway play we just imagine that he was a tiresome little shit who didn’t realize that doing the acting-ma-tazz in front of a live audience is different than Michael Bay telling you to put down your sandwich and pose with the vomiting robots for five minutes so he can get the shot of you grimacing and squealing about Megatron’s balls or whatever. [Deadline]

Good God. Russell Crowe will sing at the Oscars. This sounds like a punishment, or a threat, or a promise from the NRA! We don’t want this. We don’t want this at all. Did you hear him in Les Misérables ? “My name, my name is Javert…stammer, stammer, blank stare, throat hitch, mumble, mumble, something, something….” Yeah. This should be stupendous. Seth McFarlane has opened the flood gates to all kinds of noxious things at the Oscars.[Vulture]

Image: Wikimedia

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