The Point Radio: NBC’s BLACKLIST Gives Questions AND Answers

  We begin our look at the new TV season with NBC’s BLACKLIST. Series star Megan Boone talk about how her role takes ongoing research, but on the plus side she gets to work with James Spader, while EP John Eisendrath promises the audience will get answers fast to the show’s mysteries. Plus Amanda Waller heads to ARROW and DC just ain’t too PC these days. Summer is past and now we are back with twice-a-week-updates – right here on ComicMix! THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

The Point Radio. I'm Mike Raub and welcome to The Point. The new TV season is coming. We got your look at the NBC series Blacklist coming up. Plus DC not so PC.

What's up with that? Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point radio. Get to The Point radio.

The new NBC series Blacklist involves a criminal mastermind, played by James Fader, who surrenders to the FBI and gives him a great deal. He'll help them find a whole list of other criminals that they don't even know exist. He does have a few demands, including insisting on working only with a rookie profiler,

played by Megan Boone. I sat down with the executive producer, John Isendrath, and he told me how the process for the show actually began. I was got involved in it at the beginning. I worked at Sony.

I'm a writer and producer there. They had done a project, I believe, the previous development season with John Bochenkamp. That show had not gotten out in the air, but it was a very good experience. They wanted to do something else with him. He and one of the other producers on the show, John Fox,

had the kernel of an idea about what would happen if someone who was a criminal, turned himself in to the FBI, and what would that look like, putting sort of an antihero at the center of a cop show. And that was last July, probably. And so we went through the development process together, John and I,

in setting up the pitch, getting it sold. We went out to several networks, selling it and developing it from the beginning. Meghan said that researching her role is an ongoing process for her. I'm still doing research for the role. I don't think that that will ever end.

There's just an endless amount of information and new information to come as you're developing a series, I think. Every script that comes across the table introduces new elements of her character and personality. For instance, so we're going into, I found that she has a little bit more of a sense of humor about things, which I think is born out of some of the

trauma she experiences prior to that episode. So, you know, the character is always evolving and changing. And, you know, I have the DSM-5 and I have read, I've read some interviews with prominent sniper profilers for the FBI that have, you know, interviewed people and so forth.

And it's always helpful to keep, to stay curious and keep an inquisitive mind about these kinds of things. Some folks call it the law syndrome, but audiences today do hate waiting for answers in shows. And the folks behind Blacklist know that, as John explains. The audience deserves periodic answers along the way. It's not as if you have to wait very long to get some initial answers that all, you know,

build toward the, you know, a final reveal. But we are very mindful that you can't, and we have no interest in just sort of letting that question go unanswered. It's foremost in, obviously, Liz's mind. She will be insistent on asking. And I think that in a relationship like that, it's incumbent on Red to offer up some concrete footholds,

you know, in the first, even in the first 12 episodes. There will be two or three answers that are sort of incremental, you know. But I hope that in any, you know, with any good question like that, you'll get an answer. And it might open up different series of questions that you might not have thought of. There are also some things about the show that separated from other procedural cop shows.

Well, I do think that one of the sort of great things about the premise of the show is that baked into it is the delivery of a good episodic story. And it's an episodic story that has to sort of get over a certain number of hurdles in order to sort of merit being told on our show. And I always think that shows work best when there's a certain specificity, and ours has a lot of that. Because in order to be on the blacklist, you have to be a criminal that the FBI does not know about. And you have to be someone who would be worthy of Red attention.

And so those are hurdles that regular cop shows crime dramas don't have to get over. And so I think that we have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what that means and what sort of characters would be good to dramatize as ones that would qualify as being blacklist worthy. Megan's character has a pretty detailed backstory. Well, I think that my relationship with my father is the key to why I find an interest in the criminal mind and in justice. And the whole course of my life was altered by my experience with my father at a young age.

The New List premieres on NBC on Monday, September 23rd. Get a sneak peek right now at NBC.com. Get on track with the latest in pop culture. DC has lost another creative team from a regular title. J.H. Williams III and W. Hayden Blackmon have announced they're leaving Bad Woman after issue number 26. On their individual blogs, both creators cited a number of editorial changes they were asked to make as their reason for leaving.

One of which included not showing the wedding of the lead character, something they've been building up to for a long time. No creative replacements have been announced by DC yet. Another familiar name is being thrown into the cast of Arrow on the CW. That's Amanda Waller. And she'll be played by actress Cynthia Day Robinson, who you know from Spartacus, War of the Damned and Vampire Diaries.

Next up will be casting of the role of the Barry Allen character, which will lead to the Flash spinoff. By the way, there's a new Arrow teaser up. We've got that for you at GetThePointRadio.com. First episode of the new season debuts on the CW on October the 9th. Sales reports for graphic novels in bookstores are in, and it wasn't a great month again for DC and Marvel.

In fact, Marvel didn't even crack the top 10 when it came to graphic novel sales in bookstores in August. The top 10 include Attack on Titan volume 2 at number 10. At number 9, the DC Comics Alderman character guide at number 8. First volume of Saga from Image Comics. Number 7, Batman the Dark Knight Returns, the Frank Miller version of course.

At number 6, Walking Dead Compendium number 1 of course again. At number 5, Walking Dead volume 18. Number 4, Sailor Moon, the 12th volume there. At number 3, the second volume of Saga, and a number 2, Attack on Titan volume 1. And the best-selling graphic novel in bookstores for the month, The Ruto volume 62 from Fizz.

Well, if you downloaded that copy of Homeland that was rolling around on the internet a few days ago, you didn't get the complete one. According to Showtime, it is not the version that you'll see when the series premieres on September 29th. There'll be some changes and some edits, and it'll be a little bit different. Right now though, at least at this particular point, well over 100,000 copies have been downloaded. Most of those just in their first few hours.

No one knows how the pirated version got online. It is similar to a version it was given out to the press in a tour that took place in July. The online soap series One Life to Live has been pulled again, this time due to a lawsuit. Back before the time it was actually online, and right after the show was canceled by ABC, the network borrowed characters from One Life to Live and put them on their other soap, General Hospital.

Some of those characters were killed off, and now the producers of the online version of One Life to Live say that ABC sabotaged their production by doing that. As a good possibility, this could be the end of the long-running series, which has not only had this problem, but production problems as well. Since production company Prospect Park moved it online just a little over a year ago. I guess it's safe to say this could be the stuff of legend. It's Superman Lives, that wacky Tim Burton version of Superman.

That Nick Cage is the Man of Steel, Chris Rock is Jimmy Olsen, Tim Allen is Brainiac. Yeah, it actually almost existed, and there's been a Kickstarter program for a documentary to talk about the whole story. That part of the project was successful, the money is raised, and now there will be a documentary that we'll see. And we've got a teaser for you up on our website, GetThePointRadio.com. We'll see the full story of what could be the weirdest Superman movie ever when the documentary is released next summer.

Fans of the show are probably breathing a sigh of relief here, but it looks like True Blood will wrap up in 2014. There'll be a 10 episode 7th season, just like the one that ran over the last summer. And then that'll be it for the series, and it's been a hit for the most part for HBO, even this last season. Brought in some 10.6 billion viewers an episode. Get the point, radio. Here's what's cool.

DC's still on the center of the stage this week in comic stores with Forever Evil and the battle to get the covers that you want. We'll get to those in a minute. Meanwhile, a revival from the 60s, and at least a few people might remember that character is Brain Boy, and Dark Horse has a revival. With the first issue of a new run that begins this week. And then on to Forever Evil, in case you haven't figured it out. Some of the titles that came out last week have new issues this week with just a point to add to their issue number.

For example, there's a new Batman number 23.2 with the Riddler, Batman and Robin, Court of the Owls is there as well. Just like Batman the Dark Knight with a Mr. Freeze cover, and Detective Comics with a Harley Quinn cover that's pretty nice as well. Earth 2 has a Solomon Grundy issue. Flash has a reverse Flash cover. There's a Green Lantern issue with Mongrel, a Justice League issue with Lobo, and a Justice League of America with Killer Frost. And there's another Superman issue this time with Brainiac.

First new Forever Evil tie-ins this week include Teen Titans and Aquaman as well. So you got to check those out and remember you may have a problem getting some of the covers you want. Make sure you talk to your retailer. Also from DC, the FPV Federal Bureau of Physics number one gets a second printing. And there's a new issue number three out this week too.

Walking Dead number 114 comes out to get us a few steps closer to the next season on AMC. Marvel's Infinity continues with Infinity Hunt number one. Best Independent this week might belong to Boom for a title called Hit List. Comes out with a number of different covers. Check the first issue with that out. And Sons of Anarchy back on TV this week.

And the new comic debuts as well with the first issue in stores right now. All that and more waiting for you in a comic book store near you. Check out the comic book locator service at 1-888-COMIC-BOOK or online or with another website too that's interesting called FindMyComicShop.com. That's a wrap but the good news is Summer's behind us and we're back on schedule. You'll get the point twice every week as usual on great websites like ComicMix.com and MichaelDavidsworld.com.

And in the iTunes podcast director where you don't have to miss anything just subscribe. In the meantime Get the Point Radio continues to pump out pop culture 24-7. You can listen to that free at GetThePointRadio.com. On your iPhone or your iPad with again a free app in the app store under Pop Culture in the Point. Or on your Droid or your Blackberry or Android device with the app called TuneIn Radio.

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