TCA: I see dead series!

I'm back in Jersey, and even though it's muggy and overcast, it feels awfully good to be home. I'm taking tomorrow off to recuperate (give or take a couple of pre-written blog entries), but before I crash in my bed, a quick observation from the last night of tour...

In television, as with many industries, the hardest part is getting in the door, and once you're in, it becomes much easier to find other jobs within the industry. So you tend to see familiar faces from season to season, and show to show. And so it can be a fun party game at the press tour evening events to try to identify the guests based on their past series.

Rarely, though, have I been to a party like ABC's last night, where we not only had a bunch of people who had been on failed shows in recent years, but what felt like entire casts of failed shows, now spread out to new shows. We had half the cast of the American version of "Coupling": Jay Harrington (now on "Better Off Ted"), Lindsay Price (one of the witches of "Eastwick") and Sonya Walger (Penny on "Lost" and one of the leads on "Flash Forward"). (Not to mention, we got one of the stars of the UK "Coupling" (Jack Davenport, who's co-starring with Walger on "Flash Forward," which is damned confusing to the five of us who remember American "Coupling"). We had three stars of "The Class": Jesse Tyler Ferguson ("Modern Family"), Jon Bernthal ("Eastwick") and Andrea Anders ("Better Off Ted"). Before "Better Off Ted," Victor Fresco created the short-lived Fox sitcom "Life on a Stick," whose star, Zachary Knighton, is also on "Flash Forward."

Now, it's certainly possible that if I paid close enough attention, I could have come up with similar combinations at the other parties on this tour, or parties at recent tours. But because this was an especially long trip (tacking Comic-Con on to the front end), by the time we came to that last night, I think the only thing I could focus on was this parade of class (and "Class") reunions.

And that's why it's probably for the best that I'm back in Jersey, watching Yanks-Sawx and preparing to pass out.