TV News and Reviews

According to TV.com, the NBC drama Kings is being shifted to Saturdays after last weekend’s low ratings. I’m starting to wonder why the networks even order pilots anymore. Kings is an expensive show with an excellent cast and yet NBC stopped advertising it after the vague tidbits they ran prior to the premiere. Originally slated to air in ERs old time slot on Thursday nights, NBC instead chose to go with Southland–a gritty cop drama–because we don’t have enough of those on the air. While Southland gets minute-long commercials every 5 seconds on NBC, Kings languishes unnoticed on Sunday. You can’t get viewers for a show if they don’t know it exists.

TV.com conjectures that Kings will run its course on the chance it may garner Emmy noms. Because it says a lot of great things about a network who cancels its Emmy-winning shows. And I’m not saying that TV.com is wrong, I’m pointing out how lame these network execs’ thinking is.

Why the shift to the dead zone Saturday where they sent Crusoe to die? Who knows? They’re not even replacing Kings with anything on Sundays, just extending Dateline. If people don’t know about Kings, I’m not sure that moving it to another time is going to help the cause, but I’m guessing NBC has just written this one off already. Hopefully they will air the remaining episodes before cancellation. And we can always hope for a miracle, but this season doesn’t seem to be one for that anymore. I’m just sorry this show didn’t start out on cable where it may have had better luck at gaining an appreciative audience.

It seems that lovers of good TV only have one thing to hope for these days–that their beloved shows at least get the chance to have a decent ending penned before they get shipped off to never-never land after a full or even half season.

NBC still lists the next Kings episode as airing on Sunday, April 12. Check your local listings to watch for when the shift to Saturdays occurs, perhaps on the 18th.

PHOTO: Ian McShane as King Silas, Christopher Egan as David in Kings, screencaps c2009 Universal Media Studios, NBC.

*SPOILER ALERT* Things go from bad to worse in Kings, “Insurrection”, as King Silas (Ian McShane) offers more of his lands in Gilboa in an effort of good faith of peace with Gath. These lands of course include David’s ancestral home, thus displacing his entire family and friends. David (Christopher Egan) ends up in the middle, being forced to choose between standing up for his family and standing by the King. Silas asks for David’s trust, and so David goes to try and stop an uprising led by his brother–unsuccessfully.

The protests over the land deal quickly get out of hand, while the King acts disinterested and unconcerned. He goes off fishing in the countryside while his kingdom seems on the brink of Civil War. In the meantime, his plotting brother-in-law William tries to get Prince Jack (Sebastian Stan) to be the new King when they overtake the government. Jack asks for something to sweeten the deal–control over the press conglomerate William has just purchased. He wants the power to keep the cameras on his father, to show all of the mistakes the press are usually ordered away from.

The insurrection soon leads to bloodshed, and the King’s daughter gets taken as a hostage. At the same time, the King’s handler Thomasina (Marlyne Afflack) takes a leap from her usual stoic acquiescence to tell the King he seems to have lost his heart and therefore his ability to rule as a fair king. It’s a wonderful scene, and we don’t know what his reaction will be to being spoken to so plainly. The King does snap into action, sending in the troops and snipers to kill whomever it takes to get his daughter out safely.

Desperate to save his brother, David gets the King to give him enough time to try and talk the rebels out of their hostage situation. David and his brother fight, and once they hit the ground, the King orders the snipers to fire. In the ensuing scuffle, one of the wounded rebels tries to shoot the King’s daughter, but David’s brother shoots him first.

The King releases David’s brother into his custody, though the caveat is that his brother will have to stand trial. As he feared, David gets disowned by his family for taking the King’s side. And David gets once again thrown for a loop as he realizes the King had the whole thing planned from the beginning–to let the coup happen and appear to let things slip in order to draw his enemies out. What the King doesn’t know, however, is that his brother-in-law was able to avoid capture by the police because of a tip from General Abner (Wes Studi) who feels the King has become weak. The plot thickens.

Back on the royal front, the King gets a new ally to buy out the press again and shuts Jack’s newly found power down. But when Jack protests to his father that every attempt he makes to stand out gets squashed, the King offers him a ministry position–a position that has all of the work and none of the glory because he’ll be the brains behind the face. Turns out that face will be the woman who bought out the news station. This should set up an interesting dynamic for future episodes.

At the premiere I hadn’t been entirely sure how Sebastian Stan was going to work out compared to powerhouse actors like McShane and the Queen, Susannah Thompson. I’d also been pleasantly surprised at how engaging Christopher Egan was, despite his doe-eyed prettiness. What has happend over the episodes, however, is I find myself ever more engaged by Stan. He has multiple layers of ego, lust, ambition, anger, frustration, and pain. He can appear ruthless and vulnerable all in one breath, and the audience is never sure exactly which way he’s going to turn. He hates David as an enemy, but is also jealous of him, and there might be a grudging admiration in there somewhere as well. That hasn’t quite been explored yet, but I’m interested to see where it goes.

I’m also ever more impressed by Marlyne Afflack as Thomasina. She’s this wonderful presence onscreen, wielding power from the shadows, ever watchful and careful and clever. She has a great rapport with Ian McShane’s King, and it’s intriguing to learn more about this intense relationship. Thomasina is intelligent, and efficient, and capable, but she’s not as icy as we would have thought originally. She does her job because she cares about the King and the kingdom and believes in what they’re doing. It’s a perfect end to the episode that the King brings up the fact that she spoke to him so candidly and said more than she ever has before. When pressed, she confesses she knows exactly how long she’s been in the King’s employ, “ten years, eight months…and some days.” We can see on her face that she knows she will be dismissed for speaking out of turn, but then the King tells her it’s time for a promotion. We then can see the joy in her eyes as she carefully tries to suppress any unseemly display of emotion. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Thomasina’s role in the future.

Read all of my Kings posts here.

Watch all the drama of Kings on NBC Sunday nights at 8/7c.

PHOTOS: Sebastian Stan, Ian McShane, Marlyne Afflack, and Christopher Egan in Kings, screencaps c2009 Universal Media Studios, NBC.

Evil, thy name is Rose. I spoke last night about all the machinations in Kings. Tonight’s episode, “First Night”, dug us in even deeper. While many characters have done questionable things, Rose (Susannah Thompson) is starting to appear the most ruthless and frightening of all. Not only does she lie, but she tells each person she speaks to a different lie to explain the same event–thus manipulating everyone to some terrible degree. She’s not content to trample one person, she’s got to trample them all.

*SPOILER ALERT* And what her daughter discovered tonight is that her mother might not have any gentler side at all. After pretty speeches about her childhood love of the ballet and her excitement over this huge milestone of having the ballet return to their new kingdom, it turns out that Queen Rose cares nothing about the ballet. It’s all about the spectacle, the grandness of royalty, and keeping the people in awe of them. Apparently even her interest in the arts is part of a grander manipulation.

Rose also manipulates her son, Jack, by tormenting him with everyone’s favoritism towards David Shepherd. This starts a chain reaction, causing him to in turn start his own plot against David. Although it would seem natural to hate Jack for his actions against the innocent David, I feel more sorry for him than anyone. An actual accomplished soldier who has the respect of his men, he still gets constantly shoved aside and ridiculed by his parents. They make it clear to him that the only way he can ever reach power is to be molded in their image, to be someone he’s not, to be as ruthless and jaded as they are.

Since previous episodes made mention of Jack’s homosexuality but never so much as hinted at it in action, I was wondering if this was going to be an aspect of his personality that was strictly off screen. It is Sunday night, after all. However, tonight’s episode, “First Night”, allowed us a glimpse into Jack’s hidden life. As he takes David out on the town to get him drunk and stupid and hopefully into the tabloids the next day, Jack finds himself pursued by a persistant boyfriend–a boyfriend who tells Jack he loves him. Jack of course rebukes him, trying to follow his father’s command to make the proper sacrifices for his political position.

We see the cool veneer crack, however, when he is taunted yet again by David’s pure heart and love for Jack’s sister. Once again, David seems to be able to have what Jack cannot. And we understand why he hates him even more now.

As a parallel to his son’s sacrifice of love, we see King Silas (Ian McShane) also making a sacrifice. After speaking in secret with the combative Reverend Samuels (Eamonn Walker), Silas learns that he may win back God’s favor and save his illegitimate son’s life by giving up what he covets most–his girlfriend and son. So tonight both father and son have forsaken those whom they care for the most.

Watch all the drama on Kings Sunday nights on NBC, at 8/7c.

PHOTOS: Susannah Thompson, Sebastian Stan, and Ian McShane, Kings “Prosperity” screencaps, c2009 Universal Media Studios, NBC.