Mike O'Malley Wants You To Watch His Show

Every fall a mind-numbing number of new shows hit the airwaves, and what people watch and why often has to do with expectations. People want to see a new show because it's written by someone familiar, because it stars some hunky actor or femme fatale hottie, or just because everything else that's on at the same time really sucks.

And it also has to do with the reviews, and the press and the way stories are spun. If you read enough glowing reviews of a new series, you'll watch it--at least once. But if you don't see much press about the show, or even worse, some bad stuff, you'll just blow it off. If it's still around in a couple of months when your favorites are in reruns, or if you start to hear a buzz about it, then you'll tune in. But oftentimes, why a person watches one show and not another is a mystery to even the most veteran of television folk.

Which is why people like Mike O'Malley get frustrated. Here's a guy who's plugging away, doing the show he thinks everyone would want to see, and he just can't catch a break.

Part of it has to with the press coverage surrounding his series--The Mike O'Malley Show. To be kind, the word of mouth from television critics has not exactly been glowing. While over-the-top productions such as Snoops garnered glowing reviews from everybody who could even spell David E. Kelley, Mr. O'Malley's show has been receiving reviews along the lines of "well, it's not as lame as I thought it would be." Not exactly a vote of confidence.

According to O'Malley, the reaction from the TV critics have been more than a bit surprising. "I'm tremendously proud of the work we've done," he told me in a phone interview on Friday. "I don't know what the problem, but for whatever reason, it's just brought out this...anger. Maybe it's because the old pilot was floating around for a long time, maybe it's just people's perceptions. It's as if they wonder why I deserved to have my own show. Why does this guy who nobody knows have his own show?"

To be fair, it's not exactly as if no one knows him. Although most TV viewers probably recognize him from his ESPN spots, and from hosting Nickelodeon's Get The Picture. He's also had a series before, the WB's Life With Roger.

But what's frustrating for O'Malley is that, even when people think they know a bit about him, they're generally mistaken. "I read all these reviews that say, 'Why do we need another series starring a stand-up?' Which is wrong. #1, I've never been a stand-up. My background is playwriting. I don't know, maybe we shouldn't have put my name in the title. But part of the reason was because it was distinctive. I read this article in the L.A. Times about shows that had similar names..Now And Then, Then And Again, whatever. It wasn't an ego thing. We thought this made sense."

It certainly hasn't helped that most of what little press coverage the show has gotten has focused on behind the scenes machinations. If the press reports are to be believed, O'Malley ended up in an argument with Les Firestein, the show's runner about a "co-created by" credit. A disagreement which ultimately led to a decision by the Writer's Guild that the two would share the billing.

And then there was the matter of the memo. Apparently O'Malley sent a 19 page memo to his writing staff, laying out the direction he thought the show should take in the future. Unfortunately, the memo wasn't received with quite the expected reaction, and the thing was leaked to the press quicker than you can say, "Brittany Spears has fake breasts." In fact, after we posted a review of the show last week, we were emailed hunks of the memo, along with a long, rambling note about O'Malley and his alleged horrific behavior.

O'Malley says that "this so-called 'memo,' was blown out of proportion. "I'm in charge of a multimillion dollar show, and you want to make sure you don't lose part of what got you there. Much of my writing involves a man questing for the right way to do things...in friendship..in love..what have you. And I want to make sure they understand that."

It's obvious that his method of expressing himself to the writing staff might have hurt his cause. But O'Malley says he doesn't have any regret about writing it. "If this show fails, it won't be because of any memo. Just like if the show succeeds, it won't be because of any positive reviews. And I'm sure there must be a few out there somewhere."