Will Ferrell Joins The Office

It was announced this week that Will Ferrell will be joining The Office for at least a four episode arc.  I think Will Ferrell will be absolutely perfect on this show.  I actually think he would have been a better Michael Scott than Steve Carell, so my question:  is there any chance he could replace Steve Carell next year?

The main question is: why would he go to television when he is a bona fide movie star?  Well he makes about 20 million per movie, so if he shoots 2 or 3 films that would be 40-60 million a year.  For television I would guess he would make more than Charlie Sheen’s 1.25 million per episode right?  At 1.5 per that would come to 36 million for a 24 episode season.  He’d still have time to shoot a movie…Steve Carell did, so let’s add 20 million and we get 56 million.  Money shouldn’t be a factor.

How about television being “beneath him”.  It seems there are more and more movie stars going back to television these days.  Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Gary Sinise, Keifer Sutherland, Rob Lowe, Charlie Sheen, Sally Field, Kathy Bates, the list goes on and on.  Granted, none of them are anywhere close to the celebrity that Will Farrell is, but it shows that there must be benefits to working television as opposed to movies.  Steady, predictable work schedules.  Filming in one location for the most part.  More time with family.  Being able to flesh out a character over years as opposed to fleshing out a character in a two hour movie.  Television sounds pretty appealing.

Do I think Ferrell will join the show permanently…no.  I do think he would be perfect and would be worth whatever payday the producers would give him.  The Office has been going downhill pretty quickly over the last couple seasons, and with Carell leaving this could either put a nail in the show’s coffin, or breathe life into it that it wouldn’t have had.  The producers have many, many directions they can go, so it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds, but I don’t think there is any reason they shouldn’t aim high and possibly get a Will Ferrell, or another well know star.

The Cape, Lights Out, and Other Mid-Season TV Thoughts

A week or two ago I wrote a post about a couple of TV shows that were premiering this winter season.  One was The Cape and the other was Lights Out.  I have to admit that I ended up never watching The Cape.  Leading up to the premier the commercials for it were NON STOP, and the more I saw the commercials the worse it looked to me.  Then I found out it was a two hour premier episode so I kind of put it off until a friend of mine told me that he watched it and thought it was stupid.  So, that coupled with those bad commercials really took away my desire to watch it.  Now I see the ratings are heading south so I’m glad I didn’t waste time on a show that probably won’t be around next year.

Lights Out I did watch.  At this point two episodes have aired and I watched both of them.  The first episode had a couple things that occurred toward the end which I wasn’t expecting.  The beginning was good, the end was intriguing, but the middle was pretty blah.  Episode two really didn’t do anything for me.  It is hard to explain, but the main character has so many things going wrong for him and for some inexplicable reason he decides to keep ALL of them to himself without telling his wife.  I’m not sure if he thinks she is too fragile to take the news or what his reasoning is, but it is getting annoying to me.  I think I’ll give the show some more time because it does have some promise, but right now it just isn’t going anywhere.  Jury is still out on this one.

Several existing shows returned for the first time since last May.  American Idol, and Parks and Recreation are two that I was really looking forward to.  American Idol I write about in its own post, but I’ll touch on Parks and Rec right now.  I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that watched this show when it first came on the air a couple years ago, but let me tell you the show is actually really good now.  The characters weren’t developed back then, and the interaction between characters was pretty disjointed.  Now the whole cast is cranking on all cylinders.  It isn’t Modern Family good, but I think I get more laughs out of Parks and Rec than the rest of the comedies that I watch.  That list includes The Office, Big Bang Theory, and The Middle, all of which I really enjoy.  Also, the addition of Rob Lowe and Adam Scott is nice dimension the show didn’t have previously.  It has only been one episode, but Rob Lowe’s character is definitely funnier than last season.  Below is a promo for Parks and Recreation where Rob Lowe goes on a bit of a tirade.