FX Session Turns "Blue;" Secret Service Storms TCA; "The Daily Show" Named Best News!? Program

Los Angeles - FX's recent session at the summer Television Critics Association tour set a record for use of bad language during a TCA press conference, in much the same way that its signature dramas "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck" have pushed the boundaries of adult subject matter on basic cable.

The session was for "Rescue Me," a drama series about New York City firefighters starring Denis Leary and created by Peter Tolan that will make its premiere this Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET. Tolan has many broadcast series to his credit, including "Home Improvement," "Murphy Brown" and "The Larry Sanders Show," as well as "The Job," a well-received but short-lived filmed comedy about detectives that ran on ABC a couple years ago and starred Leary.

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Leary and Tolan were on hand to promote "Rescue Me," for which they both also serve as executive producers. They were preaching to the converted, in a sense, because the TCA membership overall is so impressed by "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck" that they welcome any new drama series on FX. Their comments about the show were noticeably peppered with four-letter words, but the floodgates opened when the subject turned to "The Job," a series both Leary and Tolan took great pride in and which was, in their shared opinion, grievously mishandled by a previous regime at ABC.

When one critic observed that ABC had "scuttled" their show, Leary cracked, "Good word, 'scuttled.'" But Tolan went nuclear.

"Those no good pricks," he said of past executives at ABC who controlled the fate of his show. Then he really went beyond the norm. "I'll give you names," he continued. "[Former ABC Entertainment chairman] Lloyd Braun, where are you now?" Tolan then spoke a truly nasty word generally used to describe a person who performs oral sex on a male.

Leary took aim at former ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne, without calling her unkind names. But he did insist that Lyne "obviously did not watch the fucking show." Then he belittled ABC's interest in finding programming with a family theme. "Yeah, ['The Job' was] a fuckin' family show," he raged.

Tolan couldn't be tamed. "You know, it's so rare when you do a show and it turns out to be the thing you wanted it to be, and that's what 'The Job' was. And then to have it treated like that. Those dirty, no-good bastards!" he fumed.

"Whores," Leary added.

"Whores and bastards," Tolan agreed.

Leary had nothing but praise for FX president and chief executive officer Peter Liguori and FX Entertainment president John Landgraf. And he used equally colorful language to express that admiration. "Even when they're a pain in the ass, Peter and John come up with some great fucking ideas," he exclaimed. "It makes me and Peter go, 'Fuck them. We should have thought of that!'

"This makes me happy, as opposed to ABC, who never gave us notes on anything," he continued. "And look where we ended up with that fucking show."

"The big difference at ABC was that you would get a note [that read]: 'That doesn't work,'" Tolan recalled. The constructive network criticism, he said, would go no further.

Asked about current government sensitivities toward program content, Leary once again turned the air blue. "We're basically saying 'fuck you' to them. Eventually we'd like to have an entire episode [about] Janet Jackson's left tit. It talks and puts out a big fire."

Then Leary got really crude.

"We have an episode that involves the word 'cock,'" Leary revealed, adding that they negotiated the number of times the word could be said. FX asked them to "use 'dick' or 'penis' or 'joint' or 'chubby,'" but not "the 16th 'cock,'" Leary explained.

"I just think this is a political thing and it's bullshit," he added.

"I'd like to apologize for anything I may have said during the course of this," Tolan offered as the conference ended, some twenty obscenity laced minutes later.

"We did mean what we said about ABC though," Leary said.

"That's true," Tolan continued. "Every word. We're going over to Disney right now to egg the building, if any of you would like to come with us. I know, given your job, you'd love to come with us," he said, to a roar of laughter from the press.

The Secret Service Meets the TCA

The National Geographic Channel was the beneficiary Friday of one of the most elaborate non-publicity stunts ever.

Shortly before the start of an early afternoon press conference about the network's upcoming special "Inside the U.S. Secret Service," TCA members began to notice men dressed as secret service agents milling about the Weston Century Plaza Hotel, site of the summer TCA tour. Indeed, several were actors in disguise, handing out secret service style sunglasses to reporters as a promotional gimmick for the show.

But all was not as it seemed. Minutes before the press conference began, I decided not to attend and made my way to the elevator, accompanied by two other reporters. My destination was my room, located twenty floors above the subterranean ballroom in which most TCA sessions have taken place. The elevator only made it as far as the lobby, two floors up.

The doors opened and two secret service agents dashed in, quickly doing something to the elevator with a key. They were carrying small communication devices of some kind and were mumbling about "taking command" of the elevator and "locking it down."

"Very funny," I said. The other critics and I weren't in the mood for any publicity stunts that involved elevator delays because the elevators at the Century Plaza have been maddeningly slow throughout our stay. "Aren't you supposed to be downstairs in the ballroom?" another critic asked the men in black.

"Are you going somewhere?" asked one of the men, without a trace of humor in his voice.

"Yeah, to our rooms," I replied.

"Not in this elevator," was his reply. We were then asked to exit the elevator immediately. We stepped into the hotel lobby, which was swarming with other secret service agents and confused and bemused TCA members.

We then learned that Sen. John Edwards was due to arrive at the hotel at any minute and would be staying there Friday evening, necessitating secret service patrols on all floors, the lockdown of at least one elevator and the clearing of most of the penthouse level of the hotel.

Meanwhile, in the press conference downstairs, one critic asked Peter Schnall, the executive producer of "Inside the U.S. Secret Service" who had been granted unprecedented access to the organization, if he had noticed anything unique about the way in which the secret service was working in the hotel.

"I can't tell you," Schnall smiled.

TCA Raises Eyebrows with News Award for "The Daily Show"

Every year at this time, the Television Critics Association hands out awards in recognition of the finest television programs and the best performances of the previous twelve months. Over time, the TCA Awards ceremony has evolved into a glamorous, star-studded affair, heralded in the television trade press and covered in mainstream media.

But members of TCA, all of whom are eligible to vote in each of eleven categories, had some observers buzzing this past Saturday during the 20th annual awards presentation when they gave the TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in News & Information to "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. "The Daily Show" had been selected by the critics as the best news program on television over such prestigious nominees (and real news programs) as CBS' "60 Minutes," PBS' "Frontline," NBC's "Meet the Press" and ABC's "Nightline."

Strangely, the TCA in 2003 honored "The Daily Show" for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy and gave the annual award for Individual Achievement in Comedy to "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart.

The absurdity was not lost on Stewart. In a taped message that was played at the awards, he cracked, "We won for what?

"We're fake!" Stewart continued. "Honestly, there must be some kind of mistake. Last year we won for comedy, this year for news. Next year we would like to win for children's programming. Hear that, Elmo? We're on your ass!"

CBS News president Andrew Heyward, who attended the TCA Awards on Saturday because "60 Minutes" creator Don Hewitt was honored with the Career Achievement Award, had a stronger response. "I felt fine about ['The Daily Show' winning the news award] at the time," he said on Monday. "Since then I've gotten cranky about it.

"I think Jon Stewart is brilliant and the program is fantastic," he continued. "If this sounds self-serving, please forgive me, but… to say that the outstanding achievement in news and information is a comedy program, which by Stewart's own admission is just for fun and makes things up… I suppose it's some kind of message to the news people. To me it just seems really odd. I think you can find a category that Jon Stewart deserves to win. Outstanding News Program probably isn't it."