The Watchman: Better Call Jimmy, and TV Land Gets ‘Younger’
Scofflaws in and around Albuquerque can call Saul when they’re in a pinch, but who does Saul call when he needs a hand? TV station KKTV, of course. A recent episode of Better Call Saul on AMC saw Jimmy McGill—it being a prequel and all, he’s not Saul yet—needing to reach scads of retirement home residents in Colorado Springs. So he places an ad on KKTV—during the first break in an afternoon airing of Murder, She Wrote.
The result? His law firm’s phone system lit up like the desert sky.
So did KKTV’s Facebook page, says Nick Matesi, station general manager. “The best part was that Jimmy got 132 calls,” he says. “Obviously local TV works!”
Alas, KKTV does not air Murder, She Wrote; Dr. Oz owns the 3 p.m. slot.
Speaking of murder, we got to chat with the man known as “Knick-Killer” for his penchant for socking it to New York’s NBA team across a long NBA career. Reggie Miller will be in Houston for Turner Sports when the March Madness Final Four goes down next month; the so-called “First Four” tips off on truTV March 15.
Miller’s fondest March Madness memories involve those legendary North Carolina-Georgetown matchups of the early ’80s, with the likes of Michael Jordan and James Worthy leading the Tar Heels. “Those teams were so stacked and loaded,” he says.
But man cannot live on basketball broadcasts alone. Like many, Miller is bingeing the new season of House of Cards—judging by his excitement, he’s probably done by now.
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“I’m blown away,” he says.
He had a similar take on Billions. (Really, it wouldn’t be a Watchman column without someone raving about Billions.) “If our economy is really run like this—if this really happens on Wall Street,” says Miller, “we’re in trouble.”
Meanwhile, Carter Covington, showrunner on MTV’s Faking It, loves bingeing TV Land comedy Younger with his husband, Patrick Sean Smith, who was showrunner on Chasing Life.
“It’s Darren Star’s best work since Sex and the City,” says Covington. “I forgot how much I missed Sex and the City until I started watching Younger.”
Younger’s season finale airs March 23. With season three in the works, TV Land is indeed getting younger—with apologies to the Jessica Fletcher fans at the old folks’ home.
Michael Malone is content director at B+C and Multichannel News. He joined B+C in 2005 and has covered network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television, including writing the "Local News Close-Up" market profiles. He also hosted the podcasts "Busted Pilot" and "Series Business." His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The L.A. Times, The Boston Globe and New York magazine.