Ads For Cheating Website To Air During The Marriage Ref?!

LOLs!

It turns out some NBC affiliates were supposedly in talks to advertise AshleyMadison.com, a website that encourages married people to cheat on their spouses!

Emails were exchanged between NBC's New York affiliate and the site explains Ashley Madison's independent ad buyer, Jud Bardwell saying that an NBC ad rep:

“Confirmed with me verbally on about March 29th that two of the [ads] were approved to run in all the shows that he sent me rates on. We were going back and forth on The Marriage Ref and I indicated that Ashley Madison was planning on running in the 5/6 episode, and also that we were going to be sending a new creative for approval which was actually just submitted this morning [Monday].”

But a rep for NBC's affiliates said that although Ashley Madison approached them about buying air time, they did not agree to air the commercials.

It would be kinda funny, though!

What do U think?

Gawker.TV: The Five Best Videos Ever of the Day [Clipjob]

Network execs hate Jerry Seinfeld's new show as much as we do. It's their own fault for the Leno fiasco, and now they're using Yiddish words and shaking in their "deep doo-doo." Real-life Costanza says it's all about ego.

Interestingly, the Post's write-up is by Jerry Oppenheimer, king of the brutal unauthorized biography, including a one on Seinfeld. Watch him do his thing:

"Jerry could have walked in the door with a show based on a guy sitting with a paper bag over his head and it would have been green-lighted," said the executive. "His name and fame is golden, and the network needs all the help it can get.

"If you know the Yiddish term kvelling, that's what the executives were doing. They were rejoicing. Jerry's back! Seinfeld's in the house again!"

Seinfeld's estranged pal Costanza—who inspired the Seinfeld character with his name—dishes, even though he doesn't talk to Jerry anymore.

Mike Costanza, a former pal of Seinfeld's, believes he decided to do "The Marriage Ref" because of "ego, pure ego."

...Costanza, a Long Island real estate agent, said Jerry was typical of "people who need to know that they can do it again. They had this one unbelievable success and they need to feel that they can do it again. That it wasn't just luck. I'm not in the least surprised that Jerry's doing this new show. I always knew he was going to do something again. And anything he does is a fully measured and thought-out thing."

[NYPost] Earlier: Jerry Seinfeld's New Show Almost Cancels Out Seinfeld

Madonna Fancies Herself A ‘Marriage Ref’

Her Holiness Madonna has deigned to appear on network television to give marriage advice on Jerry Seinfeld’s new TV series for NBC titled The Marriage Ref. Why *anyone* would want to get marriage advice from a woman with 2 failed marriages is beyond me … but I’m guess it’ll make for some interesting television to watch:

With two failed marriages under her belt, Madonna is probably not the most qualified person to hand out marital advice. That didn’t stop her giving her tuppence worth as she aired her views about one couple’s relationship troubles on a new reality US TV show called The Marriage Ref. And she clashed with Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David as they had different opinions on one married couple’s trivial argument. Although the domestic spat was not clear from the trailer shown in the US on Sunday night, it seemed to be enough to get Madonna, Larry and the third celebrity panelist Ricky Gervais hot under the collar. At one point, Madonna, who was married to actor Sean Penn from 1985 to 1989 and divorced director Guy Ritchie in 2008 after eight years of marriage, puts her head in her hands and (Read more...)

Dustin Hoffman "Bets" On A New HBO Project (Because It’s About Gambling!) [Trade Roundup]

Dustin Hoffman's starring in the Deadwood guy's new series. The Dancing with the Stars cast is out. Everyone's partying at the Oscars. The UN pitches movies. Welcome to the roundup, care for a cookie? Too bad. We don't have any.

•David Milch produced the gloriously profane series Deadwood for HBO. Now Dustin Hoffman has been cast in his new series, Luck, about a supersmart ex-con with a horse track betting problem. John Ortiz is will play a horse trainer, and the series will be launching in January. [Variety]

•There are so many Oscar parties coming up! We want to go to them and get really drunk and awkwardly hit on Natalie Portman then drive up into the hills and have an adventure just like in a David Lynch movie! Acording to Variety, there are more than three dozen parties in the next week—an average of six a night. The big party: Saturday's Night Before Party at the BevHills Hotel. You are not invited. [Variety]

•Alec Baldwin will be starring in a Long Island production of Equus, the play famous for Harry Potter getting naked in it and doing it with a horse or something. Baldwin will play opposite Daniel Radcliff as the psychiatrist Martin Dysart who treats Radcliffe's character. [NYT]

•A lot of actors and actresses are in talks to join this Hugh Laurie/Leighton Meester comedy Oranges: Adam Brody, Catherine Keener, Alia Shawkat and Allison Janney are all in talks to join the film, which "centers on a man (Laurie) who has a romantic relationship with the daughter (Meester) of a family friend. That turns their lives, and the lives of their families, upside down." Hawt. [THR]

•The Dancing with the Stars cast list includes Buzz Aldrin! Also, people who, like, didn't go on the moon: Pamela Anderson, Erin Andrews, Shannen Doherty, Kate Gosselin, Evan Lysacek, Chad Ochocino and some other no-names. [TheWrap]

•This is funny: The U.N. is apparently pitching storylines to Hollywood now. Today at the Hammer Museum in Westood, CA, the U.N. held a forum for Hollywood types to convince them to use more U.N.-y stuff in their movies. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke and said that U.N. missions were "'sometimes more dramatic than Hollywood movies,' and cited 'The Constant Gardener' as the type of movie that featured humanitarian work in its storyline." He then went on to detail an idea he had for a movie about an elderly Korean U.N. secretary-general who met a young pixie-ish grad student (Zooey Deschanel) and took a romantic day off to explore New York and learn about indie music with her. [Variety]

•Even though we hated it, Jerry Seinfeld's The Marriage Ref got killer ratings: It "averaged 14.6 million viewers and a 4.8 rating among adults ages 18 to 49," according to the LA Times. NBC just needs to stage an Olympics every Thursday as The Marriage Ref's lead-in and it will do awesome! [LAT]

•Whoops, the Miss America Pageant just got dropped by TLC. [TheWrap]

Gawker.TV: The Five Best Videos Ever of the Day [Clipjob]

Today at Gawker.TV, Three reasons why it's time to put Barbara Walters in a home, highlights from The Soup, The Ricky Gervais Show's Karl Pilkington ponders "eating knob," and how The Marriage Ref sums up everything wrong with NBC.

Three Reasons Why it Might be Time to Put Barbara Walters in a Home
Barbara Walters is one of the hardest working women in show business, not to mention one of the oldest. And do you know what kind of toll the schedule she keeps has on a woman her age?! Take a look.

Karl Pilkington "Could Eat a Knob at Night" on The Ricky Gervais Show
HBO's new offering is even more hilarious than it was when it was a mere audio program. If you still have not met Ricky's object of constant ridicule, the indescribable Karl Pilkington, you need to stop doing yourself a disservice.

Four Reasons Why The Marriage Ref Sums Up Everything Wrong With NBC
It's easy to be hyperbolic about how bad The Marriage Ref is. "Televised Abortion" immediately springs to mind. Inside, the mistakes NBC has made over the years with their programming, and how it's all echoed in The Marriage Ref.

What TV Moments did Joel McHale Make Fun of This Week?
The Soup targeted Tyra's self-obsessed side, how dumb the Amazing Race contestants actually are, the biggest crybaby at the Tool Academy, and KTLA having a laugh at at old man who tried to high jump and fell down—hard.

The Amazing Race: Return of the Roaming Gnome
After two Chile-riffic episodes, the teams finally made their way to another country! All they needed was to take a "scenic, six-hour" bus ride through the Andes into Bariloche, Argentina. And the challenges had the cowboys written all over them.

Jerry Seinfeld’s New Show Almost Cancels Out Seinfeld [The Marriage Ref]

Everyone was puzzled upon learning that Jerry Seinfeld's triumphant return to NBC would be as the producer of a reality/game show called The Marriage Ref. After seeing the first episode, we are still puzzled. The Marriage Ref is a mess.

The Marriage Ref is about married couples getting in absurd arguments and the panel of celebrities who riff on and, ultimately, judge them. On tonight's premier, that panel consisted of Alec Baldwin, Jerry Seinfeld and Kelly Ripa. Seinfeld told The New York Times that the marriage refs do not themselves need to be experts at marriage. This is good because, judging from his screamy phone calls and rage-related divorce from Kim Basinger, we imagine Alec Baldwin would not handle a fight with his wife with the same wit and charm as he did the problems of other couples. Plus, if all celebrities who sucked at marriage were ruled out of the show, it would basically just be Michelle Obama and Kevin Bacon up there wisecracking every episode. (although Wikipedia tells us that both Seinfeld Ripa have improbably functional marriages.)

Many things are bad about The Marriage Ref. The worst is that the married couples never actually appear in the studio, except in a short docudrama introducing their problems, and via satellite to hear the refs' judgment. So The Marriage Ref falls into the reality show trap of making real relationships seem more contrived than anything the hackiest comedy writer could come up with. The first marriage our panel referees is being torn apart by the husband's desire to have his dead dog taxidermied. The dog's name was The Fonz. The wife hated The Fonz. If this is an actual argument two real humans had (the excruciatingly edited video suggests not) there is something strange going on in this man's head worth exploring: Is he an insane person? Is he dangerous? On what obscure Internet message board did he meet his wife? This could have been funny!

Instead, the conflict is framed in the video basically as: Husband = lovable, bumbling schlub; Wife = no-fun evil harpy. There is a darkly funny moment when the wife says the day The Fonz died was the best day of her life, but it is spoken with such a practiced sneer that it obscures the real sadism that is a necessary component of love. The Fonz's ghost will take a ghost shit on this couple's comforter tonight for disrespecting his memory with this tripe. It's just way too fake, and you have to pity the panel of legitimately funny people (well, Kelly Ripa maybe not) forced to dredge jokes out of relationships that are so poorly caricatured—without making fun of the caricaturing itself. It's like if you could only riff on shitty movies with your friends by making jokes the characters in these movies would find funny.

Even with this sparse material, Alec Baldwin got off a few good one-liners ("I think if you're going to stuff your dog, you should stuff it in either a useful or an attractive position."). Seinfeld managed sometimes to dice up the marriage problems humorously, as in the above clip about a couple arguing over placing a stripper's pole in their bedroom. And Kelly Ripa told it like it was, in that way she does. The host, comedian Tom Papa, was generally agreeable but laughed too much at the panel's jokes, like he couldn't believe that he had his own show. (We feel you.) And the humor behind too many of those jokes came from way too similar a place as The Jay Leno Show's.

In a nightmare world, The Jay Leno Show would still exist, and it would be The Marriage Ref's lead-in. In this world, NBC would feature back-to-back shows where audiences could be busted up by someone just saying the word "thong"—just the word itself! Not even a joke about it! It would be a world where there never existed a wildly popular sit-com called Seinfeld that showed how the funniest parts of a relationship are often the least obvious. A show that changed comedy in such a way that it is possible to imagine an actually funny version of The Marriage Ref, where all of the guests (Tina Fey, Ricky Gervais and Larry David will all be on future episodes) get together at a nondescript diner after a taping and kvetch about how hard it is to say no to something, even if you absolutely know it's a terrible idea.