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Power Rankings: Cheers

5 Sep

(Power Rankings sum up:  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve done after the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well)

RIP Nicholas Colasanto.  That said, let’s go.

9. George Wendt (as Norm Peterson) – Wendt, along with Rhea Pearlman and Ted Danson, was one of the only three actors to appear in every single episode of Cheers.  It’s a good thing, because it’s been a pretty brutal stretch afterwards.  He got his own starring vehicle in the George Wendt Show in 1995 where he was a mechanic with a radio show, but after its failure, he didn’t get much else, except occasional TV movies and guest appearances.  He showed up in a couple of episodes of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

8.  Rhea Pearlman (as Carla Tortelli) – she appeared in the film adaptation of Matilda, a 1996 short-lived sitcom called Pearl where she starred a middle-aged woman going back to college, and another failed series called Kate Brasher, starring Mary Stuart Masterson in 2001.  She most recently appeared in a few episodes of Hung and an episode of Wilfred.

7.    Shelley Long (as Diane Chambers) – after leaving almost halfway through Cheers’ run, Long didn’t really take full advantage.  She appeared in Troop Beverly Hills, Frozen Assets, and a couple of Brady Bunch movies.  She showed up in Dr. T and the Women, and most recently featured as Ed O’Neill’s ex-wife in Modern Family.

6.  Bebe Neuwirth (as Lilith Sternin) – Neuwirth, outside of Cheers, may best be known for her theater work, most notably Chicago, where she originated the role of Velma Kelly in the mid-90s revival, and won a Tony (with a couple of Emmys for Cheers, she’s halfway to the EGOT).  She co-starred in Oliver Platt one season series Deadline in 2001, and showed up in a few episodes of David Morse series Hack.  She also starred in attempted Law & Order spin-off Trial by Jury, which lasted a season, and appeared in a dozen episodes of Frasier.  Amusingly, her wikipedia also contains the sentence, “ She is not easy in groups, and the thought of a cocktail party where she must meet a lot of new people strikes terror in her soul.” which is clearly a case of “citation needed”.

5.  John Ratzenberger (as Cliff Clavin) – Ratzenberger’s main claim to fame post-Cheers is his appearance in every single Pixar film, sometimes in bigger roles than others.  His bigger roles include Hamm, the piggy bank, in the Toy Story films, and Mack the Truck in the Cars movies.  He appeared in Dancing with the Stars, Season 4.  He also appeared in a few episodes of 8 Simple Rules.

4.  Kirstie Alley (as Rebecca Howe) – Alley had the unenviable task of replacing Shelley Long in Cheers, but performed admirably for six seasons, winning an Emmy.  In the mid-90s, she appeared in some lackluster movies, including Village of the Damned, It Takes Two, and For Richer or Poorer, along with being part of the ensemble in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry.  In 1997, she started the first of three seasons as the star of Veronica’s Closet, in which she portrayed the head of a lingerie company.  The series met with middling reviews and ratings, but earned her an Emmy nomination.  She appeared in one season of sitcom Fat Actress in 2005, and now is starring in her own reality show, Kirstie Alley’s Big Life, about her attempts at weight loss.  She also appeared in Season 12 of Dancing With the Stars in 2011.

3.  Kelsey Grammar (as Frasier Crane) – this is mostly predicated on one role, in fact, the same role that he played for 9 seasons on Cheers, that of Frasier Crane.  Frasier, his spin-off, in which his character moved back to Seattle, lasted for 11 seasons and was a critical and commercial success, earning Grammer four Lead Actor in a Comedy Emmys for his work.  Since Frasier, his career has suffered a bit, as his two attempts at new sitcoms, 2007’s Back to You with Patricia Heaton and 2009’s Hank both failed quite miserably.  His second most famous role is probably an animated one – the villainous Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons. Grammer has appeared 12 times as Sideshow Bob in such classic episodes as Cape Feare and Sideshow Bob Roberts and he won an Emmy for the role in 2006.  He also appeared as Beast in X-Men: The Last Stand, and as himself in a 30 Rock.

2.  Woody Harrelson (as “Woody” Boyd) – the only Cheers cast member to become a bona fide film star, Harrselson is continuing to bank major film roles.  Immediately after Cheers, he starred in White Men Can’t Jump, Indecent Proposal and Natural Born Killers, cementing his status as a movie lead.  He followed these with Money Train, Farrelly brothers comedy Kingpin, and The People vs. Larry Flynt, for which he gained serious critical acclaim, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.  He played supporting roles in Wag the Dog and EDtv, closing out a very successful 1990s.  The first half of the ‘00s was a bit slow for Harerlson, as he took no films roles until 2003, though he appeared in a few episodes of Will & Grace.  After taking these couple of years off, he had supporting roles in Anger Management and After the Sunset.  In 2007, he had a small but important role in No Country for Old Men, and in 2009, he earned another Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Supporting Actor for The Messenger.  He most recently starred in Zombieland, and appeared in Friends with Benefits.  He’ll be in a Zombieland sequel and in teen book adaptation Hunger Games.

1.  Ten Danson (as Sam Malone) – His first attempt at a sitcom after Cheers was the unsuccessful Ink with his wife Mary Steenburgen.  He then starred in an acclaimed adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels, in minseries form.  For a remarkable six seasons, he starred in Becker, featuring him as a pain-in-the-ass doctor who cares deep down inside.  After another failed sitcom called Help Me Help You, Ted Danson began a string of successes which hasn’t abated yet.  He started appearing in Curb Your Enthusiasm as himself, and has appeared in a number of episodes.  He became a regular in the first season of Damages, playing the villainous Ken Lay clone Arthur Frobisher, who appeared in several episodes of the second and third seasons as well.  In addition to that, he appears  in HBO’s Bored to Death as magazine editor George Christopher, a serial womanizer and pot-smoker.  Although the entire show is great, Danson may be the highlight.  If all this weren’t enough, Danson will be starring in CBS procedural giant CSI in this upcoming season.

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Power Rankings: The Daily Show

29 Aug

Okay, a few rules here.  There have been a trillion correspondents so we can’t handle them all.  We’re limiting it to correspondents no longer on the show, correspondents who were on during the Jon Stewart era, and we’ll tackle the top eight of them.  Let the games begin.

(Power Rankings sum up:  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve done after the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well)

8.   Mo Rocca – after leaving the Daily Show, Rocca worked as a regular correspondent on The Tonight Show from 2004 to 2008, and also filmed pieces for Countdown.  Rocca was a regular on VH1’s I Love the ‘80s. He hosted the short-lived television presence of web site The Smoking Gun, and currently hosts a program called Food(ography) on the Cooking Channel (I don’t think I have that channel either).

7.  Rob Riggle – Riggle appeared on a number of terrible Budweiser ads, and won supporting roles in Step Brothers, The Goods, The Hangover, and The Other Guys.  He had a recurring role in CBS’s Gary Unmarried.  Riggle now appears in Childrens Hospital kind of spin off, NTSF: SD: SUV.

6.  Rachel Harris – one of three list members to appear in The Hangover, Harris also had film roles in Kicking and Screaming and License to Wed.  She co-starred in Kirstie Alley’s Fat Actress for a season.  She appeared in six episodes of Reno911, and single episodes of many shows, including CSI, Pushing Daisies, Cougartown and Party Down.  In addition, Harris co-starred in two seasons of ABC sitcom Notes from the Underbelly.  Like Rocca, she appeared in VH1’s I Love the ‘80s and I Love the ‘90s.  In 2010, she appeared as the mom character in the film adaptation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

5. Nate Corddry – Rob Corddry’s younger brother, Nate was a correspondent for just a year on The Daily Show.  He was a member of the cast in the ill-fated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  He had a recurring role, appearing in 10 episodes, on The United States of Tara.  Currently, he is a regular cast member in the surprisingly successful Harry’s Law, starring Kathy Bates, which will be coming back for its second season in the fall.

4. Rob Cordry – Corddry originally left to star in The Winner, a sitcom executively produced by Seth MacFarlane, which was set in the mid-90s, about a thirty-something man living with his mother who has a crush on the single mother next door.  It was an abject failure.  After that he played supporting roles in a number of movies, such as The Heartbreak Kid and What Happens in Vegas, and as part of an ensemble in Hot Tub Time Machine.  In 2008, he created the web series Childrens Hospital, in which he also appears, and it was such a success that it was picked up by Adult Swim and is currently airing in its third season.

3. Ed Helms – Helms may be poised to follow in Steve Carrell’s footsteps almost exactly.  He joined The Office in the third season as lovable WASP Andy Bernard and has remained ever since, with his role growing more prominent each season.  Recently, he finally got his name into the main cast.  Helms, after showing up in small roles in a number  of films, like Walk Hard and Semi-Pro, finally got his big break in The Hangover, which became a smash of unexpected proportions, and made Helms, Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis stars.  The Hangover 2, while far less successful critically, was just as much of a smash commercially.  With Carrell off the Office, Helms is likely to get more screen time.

2. Steve Carrell – a bona fide movie and television star, an argument could easily be made for #1 on this list.  He only starred in one of the most influential, culturally, critically and commercially successful tv comedies of the last decade, The Office.  His movie record is a little more spotty, but it has more than its share of hits, and he gets top billing in almost every movie he films now.  He had a breakout supporting role as the mildly retarded Brick in Anchorman, and a breakout leading role as Andy in the Judd Apatow The 40-Year Old Virgin.  He had a prominent supporting role in Little Miss Sunshine, and then starred in Evan Almighty, Date Night, Get Smart, and Crazy Stupid Love.

1. Stephen Colbert – Colbert’s work consists primarily of one show, but what a show.  In October 2005, The Colbert Report launched, in an effort by Jon Stewart and Comedy Central to keep Colbert in house, as the other star of Daily Show correspondents, Steve Carrell, had gotten away.  From Day 1, Colbert has, by way of his show, made himself part of the zeitgeist.  The very first episode introduced the concept of Truthiness, which became a buzzword for the entire year and beyond.  In 2006, he spoke at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, and mocked President Bush to his face, getting a poor reception at the dinner, but becoming a youtube sensation.  His 2008 Presidential bid caused a stir, as well as his current SuperPAC, which, although satirical is having real world campaign finance impact.  He even has his own Ben and Jerry’s flavor.

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Power Rankings: Mary Tyler Moore Show, Part 2

22 Aug

Part 2 – Part 1 can be found by scrolling down, or by clicking here.


4.  Gavin McLeod (as Murray Slaughter) – Like Knight, McLeod’s post Mary Tyler Moore career is based around one role, but also like Knight, that role was no six episode series, but a big one, even bigger than Knight’s.  Gavin McLeod, for 9 seasons and 249 episodes, portrayed Captain Merrill Stubing on Love Boat, which lived on for years in syndication after its original run ended.  Afterwards, he showed up in guest appearances here and there, in shows like That ‘70s Show, JAG, The King of Queens and Murder She Wrote.

3.  Cloris Leachman (as Phyllis Lindstrom) -Leachman incredibly marks the third over-80 cast member to still be active.  She was one of the three characters with her own spin-off, Phyllis, which lasted two seasons, ending the same year as Mary Tyler Moore.  She appeared in an absolutely remarkable number of TV movies during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and a couple of Loveboat episodes before getting her next regular gig as Charlotte Rae’s replacement on The Facts of Life.  Unfortunately, the show didn’t have much left, and ended two seasons later.  She starred in a quickly failed series in 1989 created by Mel Brooks called The Nutt House in which she played a ridiculous hotel proprietress.  She voiced the first appearance of Mrs. Glick in The Simpsons, later to be replaced by Tress MacNeille, and her other voice work includes the English dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, and The Iron Giant.  She starred in another short-lived series in 1991 called Walter & Emily, as one of two grandparents who are in charge of their grandson, while their son, portrayed by Christopher McDonald travels for his job as a sportswriter.  Her next failed foray into the world of television was in an amazing sounding series Thanks, which ran for six episodes on CBS.  The show was set in 17th century Massachusetts and was about the everyday lives of a Puritan family.  This woman did not stop trying, though.  She next took part in Ellen Degeneres’ second sitcom, The Ellen Show, which also lasted one season.  She played a cantankerous grandmother on several episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, became the oldest contestant on Dancing with the Stars, and now costars as a grandmother in Fox’s Raising Hope.

2.  Ed Asner (as Lou Grant) – Asner spun his character off from the Mary Tyler Moore Show, a comedy, into Lou Grant, an hour long drama.  He was awarded Emmys for both – the only person to win an Emmy for both drama and comedy for the same character.  Back when miniseries were actually iconic, he won yet another Emmy for his role in Roots, as the captain who sold Kunta Kinte into slavery, and appeared as a villain in Rich Man/Poor Man.  He starred as an inner city do-gooder principal in the one season of The Bronx Zoo and as a retired race car driver in the one season of Thunder Alley (I swear these shows are real).  He had a recurring role on the short-lived Aaron Sorkin show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and on one season CMT sitcom Working Class.  He also starred in Pixar’s Up, and voiced characters in more animated series than I can name, including J. Jonah Jameson in the 1990s Spider-Man, and Hudson on Gargoyles.

1. Betty White (as Sue Ann Nivens) – who saw the giant Betty White renaissance of 2010 coming?  Not I.  There is far, far, far too much in her career to talk about even a fraction of it, but I’ll start with what I just leaned, that she got one season of her own show, aptly titled The Betty White Show, right after Mary Tyler Moore ended.  She played an actress who landed a role in a police series, Undercover Woman, which was a parody of the successful Angie Dickinson show Police Woman.  She was a game show regular in Pyramid, back in the era where game shows revolved around rotating celebrities, as she was a recurring character in Mama’s Family, spun off from a sketch on the Carol Burnett Show.  Of course, in 1985, she got the role she’s still best known for, Rose Nyland in Golden Girls, and won an Emmy for her trouble.  She then appeared in short-lived spin off Golden Palace.  She had a reoccurring role in Boston Legal as a gossipy elderly woman, and in 2010 won another Emmy for being the oldest person, by almost a decade, to host Saturday Night Live.  She now starts in TV Land series Hot in Cleveland.  The woman has had a busy life.

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Power Rankings: Mary Tyler Moore Show, Part 1

22 Aug

Power Rankings Retro Edition – Mary Tyler Moore Show edition.  Because this one is a little longer, due to having thirty years of career to cover, I’ve split it into two parts for aesthetic purposes with the second posted later in the day.  We’re also trying a system of counting down towards the top, rather than up towards the bottom.  On to the rankings!

(Power Rankings sum up:  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve done after the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well)

8.  Georgia Engel (as Georgette Franklin) – After Mary Tyler Moore, she appeared in the one season of The Betty White Show, and then in two short-lived shows with very different premises.  First, Goodtime Girls, airing in 1980, starred her alongside three other women (including Annie Potts) who were living together and making their way into the world in a big city in the wartime 1940s.  Second, Jennifer Slept Here, featured Engel as the mother of a family who moved into a house haunted by the old movie actress who used to live there until she was run over an ice cream truck.  Engel also did her time on Love Boat, and then had a recurring role on Coach.  She may be best known to modern audiences for her appearances in Everybody Loves Raymond, as Pat MacDougall, Robert Barone’s mother-in-law.

7.  Mary Tyler Moore (as Mary Richards) – It goes without saying here that The Mary Tyler Moore Show was an enormous success both culturally and critically and Moore had a lot of trouble following it up.  She first tried a variety series called Mary in 1978, which co-starred Swoosie Kurtz, Michael Keaton, and David Letterman, and it lasted all of three episodes.  A retooled version of the show, now called the Mary Tyler Moore Hour aired later that spring, with Moore portraying a comedian who hosted a fictional show, but it failed as well.  As she was putting together her string of unsuccessful follow up sitcoms, she had her most notable film role, 1980’s Ordinary People, where she was nominated for an Oscar.  She had two more shots at sitcoms.  In1985’s Mary (the woman had something about naming shows after herself, I guess), she played a 40 year old divorcee who lost her high profile fashion writing gig when her company went out of business, and now wrote a column at a lousy paper.  It lasted 13 episodes.  1988’s Annie McGuire lasted 10, starring her as a mother who must deal with the stress of both her children and the very different lives of her and her husband.  Since then, she’s done some guest starring in shows like Lipstick Jungle, That ‘70s Show (again), The Ellen Show, and The Naked Truth.

6.  Valerie Harper (as Rhoda Morgenstern) – she left Mary Tyler Moore halfway through to star in her own spin-off Rhoda, and that lasted four years.  She also starred in a whole bunch of TV movies, which I guess was big back then, and a couple of Love Boat episodes.  She then got her next chance to star in a sitcom with Valerie’s Family, but after a salary dispute, she left the show, was replaced by Sandy Duncan, and the show ran for four more years without her.  She played the city manager of an unnamed city, in, well, City, which ran for 13 episodes as mid-season replacement in 1990.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about City is that it was created by Paul Haggis, who would eventually go on to win an Oscar for writing Crash.  She co-starred in a six episode run of something called The Office, and since them has been showing up in guest appearances on TV shows left and right, including That ‘70s Show, Sex and the City, Touched by an Angel, Less Than Perfect, and Desperate Housewives.

5.  Ted Knight (as Ted Baxter) – Sadly, Baxter died in 1986 and is the only non-living major cast member from Mary Tyler Moore.  He didn’t have as much time to star in as many failed sitcoms as the others.  He did take advantage of the time he had though.  He did his duty and starred as a rival captain in six episodes of Love Boat, and then starred for six years in Too Close For Comfort, as a comic strip author penning a strip called Cosmic Cow.

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Power Rankings: Party of Five

15 Aug

’90s  teen drama Party of Five on the agenda this week:

(Power Rankings sum up:  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve doneafter the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well)

  1. Matthew Fox (as Charlie Salinger) – It’s fair to make it a close call between the first two, but there’s a one word answer for why Fox takes home the title:  Lost.  Simple, yes, but important as well – it’s just one TV show, but Jack was the first amongst equals in the ensemble cast, and though that’s really the only major project Fox was working on for years, it’s far more significant, culturally relevant, and memorable, horrible ending or not, than anything our second place finisher has come home with.  Honestly, that’s just about it – it’s just a really big one, but I should at least mention his role in colossal flop Speed Racer, short-lived pre-Lost UPN series Haunted, and in, what I suppose might be his largest movie role, We Are Marshall.
  1. Jennifer Love Hewitt (as Sarah Reeves Marin) – While Matthew Fox would wait a solid four years from the end of the Party of Five for the role that would make his career, Hewitt was the breakout star almost immediately, and her career has pretty much gone downhill from there.  Arguably her two best remembered film roles happened while she was still on Party of Five, with I Know What You Did Last Summer and Can’t Hardly Wait.  At the time same time as the last season of Party of Five was airing, Hewitt got her shot at a spin-off with Time of Your Life, co-starring Jennifer Garner, which failed after a single season.  From there, feature film pickings have been relatively slim, with two Garfield movies and The Tuxedo, and a whole lot of made-for-tv movies.  She lasted a hard-to-believe five seasons starring in her own show, Ghost Whisperer, which reruns on PAX constantly.  Does she have more on her resume than Fox?  Certainly.  That said, all combined, I still don’t think it equals one Lost.  And this is including her musical career, topped by single How Do I Deal which peaked at 59 on the Hot 100.
  1. Scott Wolf (as Bailey Salinger)– Never with the starpower of either of the first two actors on the list, Wolf has nevertheless put together a workmanlike career of appearing in the main cast of relatively unsuccessful but at least vaguely remembered shows.  First, four years after the end of Party of Five’s run, he joined the cast of the third and fourth season of Treat Williams-led drama Everwood.  Next, he was in the main cast of the ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful The Nine (constantly confused by me with other failed pilot that year Six Degrees).  Most recently, just these past two years he was a key member of ABC’s ‘80s Sci-fi reboot, V.  Nothing spectacular, but steady, solid work.
  1. Neve Campbell (as Julia Salinger)-  talk about Jennifer Love Hewitt, squared – Campbell was as big as Hewitt at the time of the show, starring in Scream, the movie that inspired Hewitt’s hit, I Know What You Did Last Summer, along with Wild Things, The Craft, and Scream 2, all before the end of Party of Five’s run.  At that time, Campbell’s theatrical career took off in the wrong direction, but she still had some things going on, as she appeared in Scream 3, as well as the small-budget but well reviewed Panic, in 2000, and The Company in 2003.  After that, well, it’s a lot of TV movies, and projects you’ve definitely never heard of, rescued only by the resurrection of the Scream franchise and a main cast role in an extremely short-lived NBC series in 2009 I don’t remember existing called The Philanthropist.
  1. Scott Grimes (as Will McCorkle) – So here’s where it gets interesting – I wasn’t even necessarily planning on ranking Grimes – he was only a main cast member for half the seasons of the show, and frankly, I had, unfairly, it turns out, figured that he hadn’t really done much else.  Turns out he put out quite the nice little career.  He played a main character in ER for its final six years, from 2003 until 2009.  He also voices Steve Smith in American Dad, which has now run for six years itself.  He played a supporting role in Band of Brothers as well, appearing in every episode.  Oh, and he charted two top 40 adult contemporary singles in 2005, and appeared as a killer in a fifth season Dexter episode.  Not shabby at all.
  1. Lacey Chabert (as Claudia Salinger) – She’s got one very prominent movie role, as one of the Plastics in 2004’s Mean Girls, and she appeared in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and, well, Daddy Day Care, and a bunch of things even worse than that.  That said, voice roles keep her a little more occupied.  She played Meg during the first season of Family Guy, before being replaced by Mila Kunis.  She voiced one of the Wild Thornberrys for that show’s six year run, and in the feature film and she voiced Gwen Stacy in two seasons of a recent Spider-man kids show.  Not great work by any means, but work, and pretty good for the sixth most accomplished cast member in Party of Five.
  1. Paula Devicq (as Kirsten Bennett Thomas Sallinger) – We start getting closer to scrub territory.   She was in the one season produced of the A&E Sidney Lumet created legal drama called100 Centre Street, starring Alan Arkin.  She was in six episodes of Rescue Me.  And she was in the pilot of the Dylan McDermott led TNT miniseries The Grid (of which I own a T-shirt, my favorite random pop culture shirt).  Wikipedia also describes her as “starring” in the upcoming Richard Gere movie Abritrage, and their definition of starring apparently now includes being the eleventh cast member listed on IMDB.  Moving on.
  1. Jeremy London (as Griffin Chase Holbrook) – he was a regular in two seasons of 7th Heaven, and according to wikipedia, he seems to be killing it in a whole bunch of TV movies that don’t even have their own entries.

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Power Rankings: That ’70s Show

8 Aug

Considering the utter mediocrity of this show, it’s astounding how successful some of the cast members have been after its end.

  1. Ashton Kutcher (as Michael Kelso) – this choice was by no means obvious. I think the first two are pretty clearly the first two, but the order is not clear at all.  A couple of years ago, I think it would have been a runaway, but the second place finisher has made it a race.  Ashton Kutcher’s movie career, in which he’s starred in a number of movies, but has largely been more famous than successful, may or may not be enough.  However, the fact that he’s the new star of Two and Half Men, combined with his past, but still noteworthy work on Punk’d, and his other production work with Beauty at the Geek keeps him at the top (Actually, I looked again at how some his movies did, and they were more successful than I thought – While Killers kind of bombed, What Happens in Vegas and No Strings Attached, although tepidly reviewed at best, made a ton of money – Ashton is a clearer #1 than I realized).
  1. Mila Kunis (as Jackie Burkhart) – she came so close to taking the top spot for me, but I thought she didn’t quite have the body of work.  That said, she’s been on the rise the past couple of years, highlighted by her performance in The Black Swan.  While she wasn’t the lead, she was highly acclaimed as the second star in one of the most talked about films of the year.  She also appears this summer in Friends with Benefits, the direct copycat to Ashton Kutcher’s earlier-this-year No Strings Attached, which featured Kunis’ Black Swan co-star Natalie Portman,  so the first two spots have more in common than That ‘70s Show (their characters also dated on That ’70s Show for most of the first four seasons). Perhaps the relative success of the two films will give us a more concrete judgment.  Forgetting Sarah Marshall was her first big, successful movie role, and afterwards she had a couple of fallow years, but has rebounded in a big way.  Bonus points for being the voice of Meg Griffin (yes, I know, it’s Meg, but still) in Family Guy almost since its inception (replacing Lacey Chabert).
  1.  Topher Grace (as Eric Forman) – there’s a big of a dropoff after the first two.  Grace keeps trying to force his way into starring roles, but every time he makes progress, he seems to take a step back.  Way back during the run of That ’70s Show, he starred in the light Win a Date With Tad Hamilton! and the significantly darker In Good Company.  After that there was a break until he filmed his role as Venom in Spiderman 3, which came out after the last season of That 70s Show, in which he showed up only in the finale.  From there, he’s had one of the fifty bajillion roles in Valentine’s Day (alongside showmate Kutcher), and starred in the retro-’80s flop Take Me Home Tonight.  He’ll be costarring with Richard Gere in a political spy thriller as his next chance.
  1. Laura Prepon (as Donna Pinciotti) – Propon’s work has pretty much been relegated to the small screen, with guest star appearances here and there, including most notably for me, a three episode stint in How I Met Your Mother as Ted’s college ex-girlfriend.  She apparently starred as one of the main cast in the one season October Road, which I vaguely remember (but may just be thinking of space movie October Sky or one-hit wonder Blue October) and was about a 30-year old who went off to Europe for a trip, ended up staying there a decade, and is just coming home to deal with his old hood.  Prepon is getting her biggest opportunity in years with the starring role in the new sitcom based on Chelsea Handler’s life, named after her best-selling autobiography, Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea.
  1. Kurtwood Smith (as Red Forman)– the actor who came into the show with the most renown (a lot easier when you’ve had thirty or so more years to work with) has had a relatively decent amount of work, mostly in television.  He starred as the father in the American clone of British Worst Week, which actually lasted its whole one season run on the air.  He was a major character in 24’s second to last season as a liberal senator, and he starred in the short-lived 2011 series Chaos, as the director of a bunch of rogue CIA spies.  He also appeared in two of the best episodes of personal favorite Childrens Hospital.
  1. Wilmer Valderama (as Fez) – he’s had a little bit of work – in 2006, he was one of many characters in the not incredibly successful Richard Linklater attempt to make a fictionalized version of Eric Schlosser’s classic tale of the tragedy of our food system Fast Food Nation (right up there with Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma) .  For two years, he hosted MTV insult-fest Yo Momma! In 2008, he was in a crime drama called Columbus Day with Val Kilmer which did not actually make it to theaters, and sounds more like it should be the sixth sequel in the Valentine’s Day franchise.  In 2011, he was the fifth lead in Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts kind-of-flop-but-at-least-it-didn’t-cost-that-much Larry Crowne.  Yeah, we’ve fallen a long way from the top two.
  1. Deborah Jo Rupp (as Kitty Forman)– and the entries get shorter yet.  Rupp worked plenty in the years before That ‘70s Show, with key roles in Friends and Seinfeld in the ‘90s.  Afterwards?  Well, she was in an SVU episode (who wasn’t?), she played Jay Baruchel’s mom in She’s Out of My League, and she was the mom in Better Than You, a sitcom I don’t remember at all existing which ran this past television season on ABC before being cancelled.
  1. Danny Masterson (as Steven Hyde) – he was in Jim Carrey vehicle Yes Man, and an episode of well-reviewed Fox sitcom Raising Hope.  He’s also way into DJing, and DJed sets at Lollapalooza the last three years.  That’s kind of cool.
  1. Josh Meyers (as Randy Pearson) – his older bro is SNL head writer Seth Meyers.  He appears in The Pee Wee Herman show on Broadway.  That’s also kind of cool.
  1. Don Stark (as Bob Pinciotti) – it’s pretty slim pickings here, and I consider it a courtesy for me just to list him.  He has been in single episodes of Supernatural and Dirty Sexy Money and a couple of episodes of Disney web series Cory and Lucas for the Win.

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Power Rankings: Arrested Development Edition

1 Aug

Here’s a feature which will be regularly displayed weekly which we (the royal we, mostly) call Power Rankings.  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve done after the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well.  And with that, I present:

POWER RANKINGS:  Arrested Development Edition:

  1. Jason Bateman – two years ago this spot would have surely been taken by Michael Cera, but oh, how times have changed.  I submit that no single person benefited more from Arrested Development – outside of an appearance in The Sweetest Thing, Bateman’s career was more or less moribund until the appearance of AD, and while the show failed to crack the commercial mainstream while it was on, the critical buzz combined with the cult formed as the show was ending and after it was over, Bateman’s career was born anew.  Important supporting roles in The Break Up, Juno, Hancock and Up in the Air have led to starring roles in a series of largely mediocre films, such as The Switch, Couples Retreat, The Change Up (which should also be called The Switch, really) and Horrible Bosses.  It’s hard to say where Bateman’s career is headed, if he keeps doing such fare, but right now, he’s starring in movies, some of which are successful, which is more than anyone but the next person on this list can even say, and hey, maybe he can still be the next Paul Rudd.
  1. Michael Cera – how times have changed, part 2.  Just two years ago, Cera was still the clear breakout star of Arrested Development, having leveraged an extremely successful role in the critical and commercial smash Superbad (the beginning, with Knocked Up, of Apatow-mania) and as a supporting character in critical and commercial darling Juno into a position of top billing in movies like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Year One, Youth in Revolt and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  The last three were more or less flops, though the last two received some positive notice.  Still, it doesn’t seem as if Cera is quite in the position of strength he once was.
  1. Will Arnett – well, his successful turn as G.O.B. Bluth hasn’t quite made him a movie star, but people at least keep trying to make him a television star.  He played supporting roles in a number of movies that weren’t particularly successful, from Let’s Go To Prison, to Blades of Glory, to Hot Rod, to the Brothers Solomon, most of which were tepidly reviewed at best, and not financially successful.  He’s had a little more luck in television, where he’s had a recurring role as Alec Baldwin’s rival, Devan Banks, on 30 Rock, and got his own show written by Mitch Hurwitz, Running Wilde, which was cancelled fairly quickly, but which individually earned him decent enough reviews.  He’s get another shot at it this upcoming fall as one of the stars of Up All Night, working aside Christina Applegate and Maya Rudolph.
  1. Jessica Walter – older actors and actresses are at a disadvantage, compared to their younger brethren, and actresses in particular.  Walter, however, has managed to buck the trend, a little bit anyway, starring in TV Land sitcom Retired at 35 (yes, TV Land has original shows – I can’t imagine how many people actually watched this, but it got picked up for a second season, so that has to say something) and she is a voice regular on FX’s Archer as intelligence agency ISIS’s head, which is only a voice role, but is quite culturally relevant.  Really not bad at all, especially compared to those that come after.
  1. David Cross – unlike the other cast members, Cross has his primary career in stand up comedy to fall back on, even without any acting.  That said, he’s done a bit of acting as well, currently starting in his own sitcom The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a mildly well reviewed show, co-produced by IFC and the BBC.  He also helped fill the coffers of his bank account with roles in both of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies and both of the Kung Fu Panda movies.  In between, he wrote and produced a pilot for Adult Swim called Paid Programming which wasn’t picked up.  He also appeared as a reoccurring character in Will Arnett’s now-cancelled Running Wilde.
  1. Jeffery Tambor – he hasn’t had anything close to a starring role in anything, except for the extremely short-lived sitcom Twenty Good Years (which aired four episodes in the fall of 2006).  That said, he’s gotten relatively steady work, which counts for something.  He’s had voice work in Tangled and Monsters vs. Aliens, and non-voice work in The Invention of Lying, Paul and both Hangovers, as well as a couple of spots in Entourage as a crazy version of himself.
  1. Tony Hale – he’s appeared in a couple of relatively well-known movies, such as Stranger Than Fiction and The Informant!, and a lot more less well-known movies.  In television, he was a series regular in Andy Richter’s second of three attempts at a successful network sitcom, Andy Barker PI, was a reoccurring character on Chuck and on the last season of Numb3rs (I wasn’t initially sure where the 3 went) and an NBC-backed web series called CTRL which I had never heard of before.
  1. Portia de Rossi – she was in 10 episodes of Nip/Tuck and starred in the one season of surprisingly decently reviewed Better Off Ted.  That’s about it.
  1. Alia Shawkat – more projects than de Rossi, but less prominent in those projects.  Her most relevant was probably her role in Whip It, and she had a decent role in The Runaways and in Cedar Rapids.  Then she appeared as a one off in a bunch of TV shows.

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