This week in TV news, David Lynch tweeted his departure from Twin Peaks while Eddie Huang tweeted his disappointment in Fresh Off the Boat. Plus Marvel’s Daredevil promises tons of Easter eggs, Fox renews The Last Man on Earth, and the internet goes crazy for Golden Girls LEGOS!
Your Easter basket may be out of eggs by now, but Marvel’s Daredevil showrunner Steven S. DeKnight promises plenty in tomorrow’s new Netflix series. “There are a ton of Easter eggs in this series,” DeKnight told Collider this week. “Some will be very obvious — a reference to the Battle of New York — and there are Easter eggs that are so obscure that I didn’t know what they were. Often times we need a sign in the background, and we always try to use those opportunities to dig into the Marvel universe.” Fans should not expect, however, that Daredevil will have Easter eggs for upcoming Marvel/Netflix series, AKA Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. “We were the first one and running and gunning to get it shot and didn’t have any scripts for the other ones,” DeKnight said. “No one had been cast for the other ones, so we had to exist in this bit of a bubble.” Marvel’s Daredevil will drop on Netflix on Friday, Apr. 10. Read season one reviews here.
The first season of The Last Man on Earth will not be its last. Fox, touting Last Man‘s ratings as the highest for a new comedy with adults 18-34 and men 18-49 since its March premiere, is giving the show another season of 13 half-hour episodes. Early criticism of the post-apocalyptic series asked how long it could go, given the premise (that in which Will Forte plays the titular last man on earth). But an ever-evolving cast that now includes Kristen Schaal (Bob’s Burgers), January Jones (Mad Men), and Mel Rodriguez (Better Call Saul) has kept things interesting. “We knew we had something special with The Last Man on Earth,” said Fox Broadcasting Company entertainment president David Madden. “It’s one of those rare shows that continues to add depth and dimension to its unique premise, week after week.” Fox will air two new back-to-back episodes of The Last Man on Earth on Sunday, Apr. 12 at 9 p.m. Season one is Certified Fresh at 84 percent; see reviews here.
The Twin Peaks revival that has had fans in a tizzy since October when Showtime announced the news, is now in peril. On Sunday, David Lynch, who created the cult favorite ABC mystery in the ’90s and who was set to direct the reboot, fired off a bunch of tweets on Sunday, announcing his departure from the project. “After 1 year and 4 months of negotiations, I left because not enough money was offered to do the script the way I felt it needed to be done,” Lynch said. Since then, Twin Peaks cast members started an online campaign known as #SaveTwinPeaks with Madchen Amick, who starred as Shelly in the series, posting a video to her Facebook page
on Tuesday. Cast members including Dana Ashbrook, Sherilyn Fenn, and Sheryl Lee, along with co-creator Mark Frost, spoke on the video about what Twin Peaks would be like without David Lynch, using many Lynchian references, including a doughnut without a hole and a pie without cherries. Still no word on whether or not Lynch and Showtime can work out the contracts, but Variety reports that David Nevins of Showtime has reached out to Lynch to discuss the series budget.
After an online campaign for a Golden Girls-themed LEGO set went viral this week, the proposed idea had no problem reaching its necessary 10,000 supporters goal in order to be presented to LEGO executives for review. The playset, called “The Golden Girls Living Room and Kitchen Modular Set with Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, Sophia, and Stan” and pitched by a designer known as LostSleep on the LEGO ideas site, is described as “built like a TV set, with one wall removed and a full view into the space.” The Golden Girls mini figures include Dorothy, Rose, Sophia, Blanche, and Stanley, and LostSleep wrote in the original pitch that he or she also recreated classic moments from the show, including “a visit from Burt Reynolds, Rose shooting Blanche’s Vase, Dorothy Playing ‘Grab That Dough’ and Rose rescuing her Teddy Bear from a mean little girl.” With 5,000 more supporters, LostSleep plans to also pitch a design for the lanai so that the girls have a place to play cards.
Fresh of the Boat author Eddie Huang has made it clear multiple times
that he is not happy with the ABC sitcom based on his memoirs about growing up as a Taiwanese-American kid obsessed with hip-hop music. His most recent rant came in the form of a series of tweets this week, in which he said that he doesn’t watch Fresh Off the Boat because, after the pilot, the series strayed too far from his life. “My relationship to hip-hop & black culture rose from being the victim of domestic violence. It’s not a game. That music meant something to me,” Huang tweeted. He also said that he was happy people of color are “able to see a reflection of themselves in the show,” but that he didn’t recognize it. “My only goal was to represent my Taiwanese-Chinese-American experience and I did that. We also proved viewers want diverse content so make it!” Season one of Fresh Off the Boat, starring Randall Park, Constance Wu, and Hudson Yang, is Certified Fresh at 90 percent.
