My third day of ATX TV Season 15 began with breakfast at my hotel and then headed over to 800 Congress to see FOX’s BAYWATCH HQ Photo Activation. They let us in when it was supposed to start, but it didn’t seem like everything was really set up yet—I had seen some models head inside while we were waiting, but they were nowhere to be seen. So the other person who was there and I just took the photos of each other in front of the poster and lifeguard station, and we each grabbed a pair of the sunglasses we assumed they were giving out.

 

I headed to the Omni for another trip to the Unbox BritBox activation, where I won another notebook, and got a couple more AI photos.

 

Afterwards, I got in line for my first panel of the day, “CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION”. I am a bit behind on Criminal Minds—I’m only in the middle of season 12 and season 19 is currently streaming on Paramount+, but I still had a good time.

The panel was moderated by Emily Longeretta (Variety) and featured Showrunner/Executive Producer Erica Messer, and stars A.J. Cook (“Jennifer Jareau”), Kirsten Vangsness (“Penelope Garcia”), Aisha Tyler (“Dr. Tara Lewis”) & Paget Brewster (“Emily Prentiss”). It was a really fun discussion, with the women remarking about how it was an all-female panel. You could really sense these woman have been great friends for a long time. They talked about how the line between their personal and professional lives has sort of dissolved over the years. In fact, at one point Paget appeared to accidentally reveal something about Aisha’s personal life in one of her anecdotes, but they quickly moved on from that.

The women talked about their characters and how they’ve evolved over the decade or two. A.J. talked about leaving the series and coming back. They also discussed the move to Paramount+, the shorter seasons, and how they deal with the darkness of the show—Kirsten admitted that she doesn’t watch the series, and one time she even got stressed just hearing it in the background, thinking her friends were in trouble. At one point, they tried to show a clip from an upcoming episode, and the sound never started, so the actors just began making up their own dialogue for the video, which was hilarious. They had so much fun that, when the audio on the next clip actually worked, they were a bit disappointed. In the panel, they mentioned that this season, JJ and Garcia will be roommates for a few episodes, but didn’t get into the details of the circumstances.

Hearing them talk about the series makes me want to try to get caught up. There was an ongoing storyline back in season 12 with Reid and his bipolar mother that kind of derailed me back then, but perhaps it’s time to revisit the series.

 

The next panel I attended, “Adaptations: Big Screen to Small Screen”, was in the same Ballroom. It was moderated by Sarah Rodman, and featured panelists Kerry Ehrin (Showrunner/Writer/Producer, Friday Night Lights, Bates Motel), Emilia Serrano (Writer/Executive Producer, Alien: Earth), and Jeffrey Reiner (Director/Producer, Friday Night Lights, High Fidelity). They discussed some of the challenges of adapting movies, podcasts, books, etc. for TV, what makes something a good candidate for an adaptation, their favorite and dream projects, and more.

 

After that panel, I headed down the hallway for “PARENTHOOD presented by NBC100”, which was a smaller and packed room. Samantha Highfill (EW) moderated the panel with Executive Producers Jason Katims (Creator) & David Hudgins (Writer) and stars Peter Krause (“Adam Braverman”) & Sarah Ramos (“Haddie Braverman”). A few seasons back, ATX hosted a big Parenthood reunion as one of the Marquee events, so this was just a mini one, but it was still quite entertaining. The panelists shared all kinds of fun behind-the-scenes stories about making the series, talking about various scenes they had fun shooting, particularly personal scenes and storylines, the emotional nature of the series before This is Us became known for it, the shooting style that often confused directors, why Haddie had to leave the series to keep it realistic, and more. At one point they talked about how Craig T. Nelson was really upset with the decision to kill off his character, and how he brought this up often. However they remarked that this may have actually helped to inform Zeek’s similar negativity about his own situation.

 

Next I headed over to the Hyatt Centric for my only microprogramming panel for this year’s festival. These panels are much smaller—in this case, only about 40 people. This one was titled “SOMEBODY FEED PHIL Brings TV Back to the People”. Moderator Daniel Fienberg (The Hollywood Reporter) spoke with Phil Rosenthal (Creator/Executive Producer/Host, Somebody Feed Phil) about his Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil, and how it will be moving to YouTube for its next season. I have been to many of Phil’s ATX panels about the various incarnations of his series, and always enjoy hearing him speak. It feels like part stand-up/part comedy show as he shares some hilarious stories and anecdotes about the making of his food/travel series. This time, he also talked about the decision to move the show to YouTube so that it was more accessible to everyone. The goal of his series is to show how food can bring the world together and serve as a common language to unite people, and YouTube is a free, global platform that can help spread that message.

 

Before I left the Hyatt, I quickly grabbed some free food (tater tots with queso and other toppings) from the media lounge, and then headed over to the State Theater for my next panel.
 

I was pleasantly surprised by the new Apple TV series Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which has so many fun twists and turns. Each episode usually ends with some shocking reveal that makes you anxious for the next weeks episode. This is the kind of weekly release, water cooler show we need more of. Apple TV is great in this regard.

The “MAXIMUM PLEASURE GUARANTEED presented by Apple TV” panel was held at the State theater, and it opened with showing episodes 3 and 4 of the series. Afterwards, moderator Samantha Highfill took the stage along with panelists Creator/Executive Producer David J. Rosen, and stars Tatiana Maslany (“Paula”), Jake Johnson (“Karl”), Jessy Hodges (“Mallory”), Murray Bartlett (“Dennis”) & Brandon Flynn (“Trevor”).

David talked about how the series came about and the inspiration for the title (a SPAM email for a male enhancement pill), before getting into the characters and storylines. It was a fun and spirited discussion, and as several of the actors talked about having fun filming their death, near-death, or murderous scenes, Jake Johnson looked on in horror, jokingly remarking that all of these people were sick—he once had to play a character being zipped up in a body bag and nearly had a panic attack.

Unfortunately the panel got off to a late start by 20-minutes, and I needed to duck out early in order to make it to my next panel which was now going to overlap. But I look forwarded to hearing the rest of this conversation whenever the ATX folks make the panel available on their YouTube channel.

 

Next door at the Paramount Theater was part two of the big Closing Night Marquee Event panels, “EVERYBODY (STILL) LOVES RAYMOND: A Night of Comedy with Phil Rosenthal, Ray Romano, and Writers”. I had a media reserved seat and arrived just in time. I figured I was going to have to sit in the way back, but when I arrived, the usher told me she was saving a particular seat on the aisle for Kyle (my actual preferred seat from the reserved rows). I have no idea who told her to do this—though I suspect it was one of the ATX campers from my trivia team—but it was great. I did get roasted by some other press friends who weren’t allowed to sit in that seat, even though I assured them I had nothing to do with it.

The panel was moderated by Damian Holbrook (TV Guide Magazine / TV Insider) and on stage were Everybody Loves Raymond Creator/Showrunner/EP Phil Rosenthal, star/EP Ray Romano, and EPs/Writers Tom Caltabiano, Tucker Cawley, Mike Royce, Lew Schneider, Steve Skrovan & Aaron Shure. The format of this event was to demonstrate how many of the shows wacky storylines were actually based on real things that happened in the lives of the writers. The folks on the stage would set up the situations from their real lives and then show clips from the series to show how they integrated these events into the series. After some initial clips, each of the writers came prepared with their favorite clip/story that was taken from their own experiences. It was a fun time, and it was a bit surprising how some of these storylines had actually happened in real life, such as Phil Rosenthal’s parents returning the engraved toaster he purchased for them to a random store, or how the only single writer got razzed by his coworkers after dating a younger woman.

 

In-between the panels in the Paramount, I ran across the street to 800 Congress where there was a “BAYWATCH Sunset Social presented by FOX” already in progress. They had a make-your-own tacos station with some really delicious tacos the beef was particularly good), as well as a bar and other drinks.

 

I headed back across the street to the Paramount and reclaimed my prsonally-reserved seat for the final panel of the night, “Bill Lawrence & Friends”. This was a great time last year, and I was looking forward to it again.

It started off with the ATX co-founders giving Bill Lawrence the 2nd annual Showrunner Award, which went to David E. Kelley last year. Afterwards, moderator Hope Sloop (Decider) took the stage and welcomed Bills friends to join him,. This year, the group included actor/director Zach Braff (Scrubs, Shrinking, Bad Monkey), and actors Sarah Chalke (Scrubs), Donald Faison (Scrubs), Michael Urie (Shrinking), Connie Britton (Spin City, Rooster) & Scott MacArthur (Rooster).

With these folks you just need to set them loose in the room, and they will banter on and on for hours, sharing hilarious stories about working together. Zach in particular knows Bill really well, such as knowing all of his tricks to try to circumvent his policy about not giving reading suggestions to actors. When the topic of most embarrassing early projects came up, Zach mentioned that he was in a Tootsie-like Afterschool special called My Summer As A Girl. Donald refused to mention the name of the sci-fi project that was the worst for him, but did get up and dance at one point. The topic of when they knew they made it came up, and Donald said people used to refer to him as Clueless. Connie talked about working with Bill on his very first project, Spin City, and joining Rooster the day before filming. She told Bill that due to that timing she couldn’t have been his first choice, but he responded “you were my best choice”. Just like last year, newest guy Scott got roasted the most, though he was also dishing it back, pretending to not know who Bill was until he got a text about a flight to Austin the day before. Michael, whose family was in the audience, talked about his crazy speech on Shrinking, and when asked if he still remembered it, he managed to do a lot of it on stage, including the hand gestures.

This panel is always so much fun, and I hope they continue to bring it back each year. It’s a great way to end closing night.

 

Each day there are more panels than you can possibly attend, with some tough conflicts to decide between. Some of the other panels I wasn’t attend on day 3 were for the BritBox series The Other Bennet Sister, as well as themed panels like “Around the TV Set: A Roundtable with the Television Critics Association”, “How to Cast a Procedural (and Get Away with It) presented by CSA”, “Casting, Music, and the Art of Character Building inside the Gilligan-Verse”, “Character Study”, “Needle Drop with Thomas Golubić”, “The Dance: Inside the Filming of FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS”, and more.

Most of these ATX panels will eventually make their way to the ATX TV YouTube channel/Podcast, so you should be able to watch/listen to them in the near future.

If you missed them, check out my recaps from the previous days: Day 1 and Day 2.