This week's "Survivor: Redemption Island" exit interview was with Steve Wright, 51-year-old former NFL veteran and yet another member of the nearly depleted Zapatera tribe.

 

And that, of course, meant only one thing: Lots and lots of talk about rice, or at least the circumstances through which a war over rice led to a war over race between Steve and Phillip.

 

Not surprisingly, Steve still thinks that Phillip is crazy and still insists that calling Phillip crazy is a reflection on the Former Federal Agent's sanity and not the color of his skin.

 

What else did Steve have to say about The Incident and about how he plans on treating Phillip at the live reunion? 

 

Click through...

I may be the only person alive who kinda likes the romantic comedy "Keeping the Faith." It's not a great movie. It features Jenna Elfman as an apparently irresistible love interest, so it's at least partially doomed from the start. And Edward Norton somehow got it in his head that 128 minutes was an appropriate length for a slight romantic comedy.

 

What "Keeping the Faith" does that I admire, though, is that it takes a premise that seems like the set-up for a really cheap joke -- "So a priest and a rabbi fall in love with the same woman..." -- and finds a way to treat it more semi-seriously than one would ever expect or than you could ever have convinced anybody from trailers or promotion.

 

To be clear: The Jodie Foster-directed "The Beaver," the film I've actually sat down to write about today, has absolutely nothing to do with "Keeping the Faith." They share almost no common DNA beyond their similar basic medium.

 

What makes me link the two movies, in the most tenuous way possible -- I promise that after this introduction, I'll never mention "Keeping the Faith" again in this review or possibly ever again -- is that "The Beaver" could easily be a bad joke writ large. "Mel Gibson plays a guy who goes a little nuts and begins to only speak through a tattered beaver puppet." You hear that and you assume either that it's a cheap punchline or that the Oscar-winning director had a particularly wild weekend and TMZ was there to film the whole thing. See? Cheap punchline! To counteract that perception, "The Beaver" has been marketed as an almost whimsical fairy tale of a movie, something about a main character who was only able to become a better man by becoming a better beaver. 

 

The challenge is that "The Beaver" is neither of those two things. It isn't the broad, lazy joke and it isn't the maudlin, life-affirming, self-help movie. 

 

"The Beaver," which goes into limited release on Friday (May 6), is the kind of dark portrait of mental illness you rarely see on the big or small screen. Or at least that's one of the movies that "The Beaver" is trying to be, the one I appreciated most. Unfortunately, there's a wacky sitcom and a manipulative melodrama that are trying to force themselves onto the screen in "The Beaver" and neither Foster or writer Kyle Killen are quite strong enough to maintain the balance, though I found myself really respecting the effort.

 

More after the break...

 

Happy Monday and time for another Firewall & Iceberg Podcast.

 

It's a light week this week, so we came in at barely under an hour, even after discussing the state of "Justified" and "Fringe" pre-finale and answering a pile of Listener Mail.

 

Next week? Much busier, as we preview where the networks stand on the eve of upfronts. Then the week after that, with the upfronts themselves, we'll probably have multiple podcasts. Very busy.

 

"Justified" pre-finale -- 01:00 - 20:30

"Fringe" pre-finale -- 20:40 - 33:00

Listener mail: Can a comedy be "the best show on TV" -- 33:22 - 39:15

Listener mail: Low-rated networks getting audiences -- 39:15 - 43:10

Listener mail: The decline of the lead-in -- 43:20 - 47:20

Listener mail: Shows that were successful after cast departures -- 47:30 - 58:50

Talking to Eddie Izzard is a good way to feel lazy.

 

An Emmy-winning stand-up comic, stage veteran, TV/movie actor, political activist and occasional marathoner, Izzard can currently be seen on Showtime's "United States of Tara" playing skeptical psychology professor Dr. Hattaras opposite Toni Collette. He's already finished starring in a TV production of "Treasure Island" ticketed for Syfy. He's developing a political-themed drama for FX. He'll become the first solo stand-up act to play the Hollywood Bowl later this summer. 

 

And, as I caught up with Izzard two weeks ago, he was in the early stages of performing his show "Stripped" in Paris. In French. Because he wanted to.

 

That gave us a lot of room to cover. Full interview after the break...

Another week, another "Survivor: Redemption Island" exit interview with a departed member of the Zapatera tribe.

 

Following the ultimately ill-fated decision to throw a challenge to accelerate the departure of Russell Hantz, the tribe went on a barely interrupted string of evictions with Redemption Island dominator Matt and Ometepe mastermind Rob continuing the process that began at their own hands.

 

This week's interview is with Julie Wolfe, the lone member of the Zapatera main alliance to express reservations about losing on purpose and tempting "Survivor" karma. Julie wasn't able to save her tribe, but at the end of Thursday's (April 27), she indicated that she'd been saved herself, through the influence of agent-of-God Matt.

 

What did firefighter Julie have to say about her new faith, challenge-throwing and Phillip's race/rice war? 

 

Click through...

It's not that I'm not a fan of "The Office," but it's not a show I write about regularly or even semi-regularly. That's Sepinwall's terrain. After all, he doesn't go and write about... I dunno... "The Vampire Diaries." That's all me, baby.

 

But Alan's off the grid and Thursday (April 28) night happened to be a pretty momentous evening for "The Office," what with the departure of Steve Carell's Michael Scott, an event that was four or five episodes (or 150) in the making.

 

So I'll do the best I can to set thing up, because I'm betting people have opinions on the 52-minute emotional extravaganza. Sepinwall'll surely write something when he's back.

 

A review of tonight's "The Office" coming up just as soon as I figure out the name of the town I'm moving to in Colorado... [That was fun!]

 

The CW's "Vampire Diaries" has taken a round-about way of introducing menacing Big Bad Klaus.

 

First, the ancient Original was discussed in hushed tones, a looming threat to all that was good, decent and alive in Mystic Falls.

 

Then, Klaus inhabited the body of Matthew Davis' Alaric and wreaked at little general havoc.

 

When we met Joseph Morgan's incarnation of Klaus, he was plenty evil, but also socked away back in the 15th Century in flashbacks. 

 

But last week, Klaus finally arrived in Mystic Falls in the present day and fans are ready to watch things get bloody and berserk starting with Thursday's (April 28) episode.

 

It's unlikely that The CW's core demo recognized Morgan from his work in films like "Master and Commander" and "Alexander" or his wealth of TV projects (including the similarly supernaturally inclined "Hex"), but he seems to have the tools and the cheekbones to become and audience favorite.

 

I caught up with the Welsh actor on Thursday morning to talk about his love for vampires, his hopes that his character doesn't become brooding and sympathetic and which Salvatore brother Klaus is going to take an interest in. 

 

Click through for the full interview...

When "The Office" has a big emotional moment on the horizon, chances are good that Paul Feig is the man called in to direct. 

 

Feig, who was behind the camera for Jim and Pam's proposal, the Niagara wedding and a dozen more memorable "Office" installments, had one of his most important assignments with Thursday (April 28) night's episode, orchestrating the departure for Steve Carell's Michael Scott.

 

Over the past decade, Feig has carved out an amazingly discriminating TV directing resume pretty much limited to the best of the best single-camera comedies, including "Undeclared," "Arrested Development," "30 Rock," "Weeds," "Parks and Recreation" and "Nurse Jackie." While he's still awaiting his big break on the big screen, early buzz indicates "Bridesmaids" may do the trick.

 

Oh and did I mention that Paul Feig created a little show called "Freaks and Geeks"? Even if it isn't directly germane to the topic under discussion here, it's always worthy of mention.

 

I got on the phone with Feig to talk about Thursday's super-sized "Office," but also the progression and evolution of his directing career and why he hopes "Bridesmaids" will let him out of "acting jail."

 

Click through for the full interview.

Nigel Lythgoe returned to "American Idol" and immediately started talking about shaking up the formula, mixing things up with the themes and the results shows and whatnot. Then he ultimately had a reality check, stepped back and with the exception of the two new judges, "American Idol" has looked and felt almost exactly the same this season. And guess what? Lythgoe made the right call, because ratings haven't fallen off, proving that people didn't require a New Coke version of "American Idol."

 

But just because people didn't *require* a New Coke version of "American Idol" doesn't mean we wouldn't gratefully accept such a thing if it were presented properly. 

 

Case in point: Tuesday (April 26) night's premiere of NBC's "The Voice." Leaving aside that "The Voice" is much more a bastardization of the "X Factor" formula, NBC's latest should be a hit -- an NBC-sized hit, whatever the heck that means in 2011 -- exactly because of how different it looked and felt from "American Idol."

 

The first two hours of "The Voice" don't necessarily feel like enough to base a review upon, since I don't get what the actual body of the show is and when that will kick in. But I definitely felt like I got enough out of it to draw a few quick conclusions, with the bottom line being that "The Voice" may be the most effective new show that Mark Burnett has produced in years, which isn't a huge statement, but still has some value. "The Voice" delivered an entertaining two hours, far more tightly packed than any "Idol" audition episode for years, though that's an unfair comparison.

 

Really, I could easily review "The Voice," but I'm too tired to try to gel ideas together cohesively. I'm not too tired for bullet points, so click through...

Happy Monday, Boys & Girls.

 

This was supposed to be a light podcast, with absolutely nothing new to review. Instead, we talked about Steve Carell's departure from "The Office," speculated for a bit about "The Voice" and answered a pile of Listener Mail questions -- including our first discussion of "Archer" this year -- and somehow we ended up going over an hour anyway.

 

As a fair warning if you listen with small children, I say "ass" a lot in the final 10 minutes of the podcast. A lot.

 

So there you have it, sports fans!

 

Steve Carell's "Office" departure -- 01:15 - 21:25

"The Voice"/"American Idol" -- 21:30 - 36:30

Listener Mail - "Archer" - 36:40 -- 42:30

Boston Rob's "Survivor" performance -- 42:40 - 48:00

Points of disagreement -- 48:20 - 52:20

Quick cancellations, particularly "Paul Reiser Show" -- 52:20 - 56:38

TV shows course-correcting -- 56:40 -  01:01:00

Successful and unsuccessful shows using locations -- 01:01:00 - 01:09:30