This year's TCA press tour has nearly come to a close, and only a few set visits stand between me and my next adventure: Comic-Con! But before I get too far from the Beverly Hilton ballrooms, I wanted to share just a few more funny tidbits from the past week-plus of panels and parties. Here goes:

  • Hell hath no fury like an Ian McShane scorned. The setting for the former Deadwood star's outburst: the final session of TCA, for McShane's new NBC series, Kings. After we watched a well-produced but fairly confusing clip, one reporter tried to get some clarity about the setting of the show. A somewhat convoluted answer from the producers followed, and the reporter said "now you're not making sense." McShane wheeled around in his chair, turned to face the reporter, and proceeded to berate him for his "ignorant remark." I would have a fuller transcript of the exchange, but I stopped typing for fear that McShane would devour me whole.


  • At TCA, reporters adopt different strategies for forecasting how the networks will do in the coming year. Some people interview the executives. Others comment on the quantity and quality of food at the parties. Me, I listen to the music the networks' DJs spin in between sessions. For the record, Fox, ABC, and The CW all played a steady rotation of "song of the Summer" candidates (Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl," Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful of Sunshine," Estelle's "American Boy," etc), while CBS hit the smooth jazz and NBC played a boatload of recent-but-five-minutes-ago songs ("Suddenly I See," "Rehab"). Innnnnteresting.
  • Need a party game? Here's a good one: Can you think of any old TV shows that have gone off the air but been successfully brought back? This came up during the session for 90210, and so far, I have two satisfactory answers: Battlestar Galactica and Degrassi: The Next Generation.
  • Hey, special joke for Buzz Book Club readers: Ben Silverman used the phrase "the creative" so many times during his executive session that all I could think of was the "creative creatives creating creative creative" bit from Then We Came to the End.

    • To see which sessions would get my award for funniest, strangest, most inspiring, and most deadly of the tour, just read more.

    Sure, there are real TCA Awards (see?), but here, a few of my own:

    • Strangest Session: the panel for Oxygen's Coolio's Rules, which started with the rapper and his family performing "Fantastic Voyage" and ended with him announcing to the world that his daughters were all virgins. (Notably, he didn't comment on the status of his son's sex life.)
    • Biggest Letdown: the Showtime "Showstoppers" panel. You'd think a stage filled with David Duchovny, Mary-Louise Parker, and Michael C. Hall (plus poor, neglected Jason Clarke from Brotherhood) would crackle with energy, but — other than a precious few sexually suggestive comments from Duchovny to Parker — it just fizzled.
    • Best Scandal: Oh, I think I'm gonna go with this one!

    • Best Under-the-Breath Comment: Ugly Betty showrunner Silvio Horta, when the Katherine Heigl issue surfaced yet again during ABC's showrunner panel: "I'd put her in a coma, that's what I'd do."
    • Best Quote: There are a few candidates: Jessica Walter's scotch vs. vodka line; Josh Schwartz saying that there was so much reflection on the Chuck set these days that "every day is like Yom Kippur"; and Showtime Entertainment President Robert Greenblatt's "I don't think we show nipple in every show, but we're striving to get there." But the winner has to go to the wildly awkward moment from Michael C. Hall, who imitated his family's reaction to his Dexter role thus: "As long as you're not kissing a black man!" (a reference, of course, to his Six Feet Under role). Hall then added: "But if I hadn't kissed the black man, I wouldn't be the serial killer."


    • Best Party: Fox wins easily. Where else can you play carnival games with the stars?
    • Biggest Laugh: It's a tie between the Scrubs panel and Diane Ruggiero's overwhelming awesomeness.
    • Best Sport: Tristan Wilds, who got asked time and again from skeptical critics just what it was like making the jump from The Wire to 90210. Special runners-up: Oscar Nunez and Kate Flannery of The Office, who had the unenviable task of introducing an Office trivia game to a roomful of flagging reporters who'd really just wandered into the room for the free candy in the waning hours of the tour.
    • Whitest Sneakers: Paul Adelstein of Private Practice. Actually, he should also be a Best Sport nominee for his kind reaction when I totally called him on his fresh-from-the-box gym shoes after his show's session.

    I still have lots more to come from my days at TCA, including tons of exclusive interviews, so don't go far — you'll see them all in the coming weeks.

    Photos courtesy of NBC and copyright 2008 ABC, Inc.

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